Not so smooth in the Danish kingdom: top managers leave Tesla



    Despite the fact that Tesla Inc. gradually increasing production volumes, to achieve the promised it has not yet succeeded. This is one of the reasons that the company suffers losses , and rather big ones. On top of that, top managers are gradually leaving Tesla. Perhaps this is a mere coincidence, but senior executives began to leave their posts starting in February.

    The most sensitive loss for the company was the departure of one of the main assistants, Ilon Mask, in the difficult task of producing electric cars. We are talking about Doug Field, who was engaged in the creation of new models. For example, he took the most active part in the development of the Tesla Model 3. Musk called Field one of the most talented managers in the world.

    His departure was accompanied by a comment that the top manager just needed to spend more time with his family, and he also wants to “recharge”. Musk shortly before the dismissal of Field, he personally began to control the course of mass production of the problematic Tesla 3. Problem in the sense that the company could not start producing as many cars as needed for break-even production.

    In addition to Field, Jim Keller, the head of Autopilot development, left the company last month. True, he moved to Intel, so perhaps this is just a more profitable or interesting offer for the manager. In March from Tesla Inc. Two top managers left at once, in February, John McNeill, the sales director, quit - he moved to Lyft.

    The last (or one of the last) is Matthew Squall. He developed the security system of electric vehicles, which, apparently, does not work as planned. As a result, different Tesla models get into accidents, which, apparently, could have been avoided. Squall, by the way, goes to a competitor Tesla - a division of Google, engaged in the development of robotic mobiles - Waymo. In the new place, he does almost the same thing as he did in the old job, and even the position is the same.

    Such a staff turnover, and not ordinary employees or even middle managers, but tops, could not fail to attract the attention of investors. One of them, Jim Chanos, managing Kynikos Associates Ltd., believes that something is wrong with the company. He bases his conclusion on the premise that if stock prices are high, but top managers leave the company one by one, then something goes wrong. According to Chanos, top managers are aware of some problem and leave the company for this very reason.

    As for the Mask itself, it doesn’t particularly cover this issue. In one of the deployed letters to employees, he says that the company plans to recruit more people who will be involved in the release of Model 3. At the beginning of the year, 37,453 employees worked in the company. Now people need a company located in Fremont.

    “One of the stages of the reorganization of the company is to simplify the governing structure. It is necessary to improve the communication process, we gradually remove what is not vital for our mission. In addition, we will continue to hire people to increase Model 3 production in the near future, ”says the entrepreneur.

    Now the company's goal is 5,000 electric vehicles per week - this level of production is planned to be maintained during the current quarter.

    In his desire to achieve the goals Musk puts pressure on his own employees. “He is definitely one of those hard to work with, and it devastates people. Now Tesla employees are under constant stress due to the need to maintain a high rate of work, ”says Efraim Levy, an analyst at CFRA.

    By the way, experts who monitor how things are going with Mask, considerthat he and his staff need to learn a lot. In addition, these same experts believe that Musk makes a large number of errors that were characteristic of a number of automakers in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, General Motors in the 1980s spent millions of dollars in vain on attempts to automate the production of automobiles. All this turned out to be in vain - the robots (at least at the time) could not replace people by 100%. Tesla now also robots everything that is possible, but not always successfully.

    As for the care of top managers, the reason is still unclear, but perhaps the situation will soon become clearer.

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