Why Elon Musk wants to slash 10% of Tesla’s workforce

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that he has a “super bad feeling” about the global economy, and has called for a temporary halt to all hiring activities worldwide, in addition to calling for a cut in the electric car maker’s workforce.

According to Reuters, which viewed an internal email titled “pause all hiring worldwide” sent to Tesla employees on Thursday, the 50-year-old billionaire called for a 10% cut in Tesla’s workforce.

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Tesla currently has around 100,000 employees worldwide, and a 10% cut would mean the loss of 10,000 jobs. The company did not respond to Reuters’ requests for a comment. Musk, at the time of writing this article, had not commented on the report either.

The news comes a couple of days after the billionaire asked all Tesla employees to return to the workplace or face the risk of being fired.

“Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” the 50-year-old wrote in that email, adding, “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”

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“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That is why I lived in the factory so much — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt,” Musk had further said.

Subsequently, the world’s richest man had a heated social media exchange with Atlassian Plc co-founder Scott Farquhar, who ridiculed Musk’s demand as “something from the 1950s.”

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In response, the Tesla CEO tweeted, “recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function,” something that he had alluded to earlier.

In late May, when quizzed about whether the economy was headed towards a recession, Musk had said, “Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen.”