Tesla Proceeds With China Hiring Event, Despite Musk Job Warning

Tesla is still in hiring mode, at least in China, despite recent comments made by co-founder and CEO Elon Musk.

Reuters reported that on Thursday Tesla added two dozen new job postings for China, and also kept open an invitation to a hiring event in the country.

This was despite Elon Musk indicating last week his intention of large scale job losses for Tesla staff in the months ahead, amid his concern for the global economy.

China hiring

In an email sent to Tesla executives last week, Musk said he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wanted to cut about 10 percent of jobs at the electric carmaker.

That came just days after he issued a series of no nonsense emails to all Tesla workers, telling them to return to the office full time or resign.

As of last week Tesla had 5,000 job listings on LinkedIn, covering a range of positions from sales in Tokyo; engineers in its new Berlin gigafactory; to deep learning scientists in Palo Alto.

The world’s most valuable carmaker employs roughly 100,000 staff, and a 10 percent workforce reduction could see as many as 10,000 people being let go.

But Reuters reported that despite this, Tesla added 24 new job postings for China on Thursday and kept open an invitation to a hiring event.

Tesla had announced plans to hold the event online starting from 7pm Shanghai time (1100 GMT) to recruit staff for “smart manufacturing” roles, according to an online post.

The event was not visible from other accounts as of late Thursday and it was not immediately clear whether it had proceeded for applicants.

Tesla had no immediate comment, Reuters reported.

Job openings

Tesla did have 224 current openings in China for managers and engineers under that category, according to a separate post on its WeChat account, 24 of which were newly posted on 9 June.

Among the posted positions are managers and engineers to supervise the operation of its 6,000-ton die casting machines known as Giga Press, one of the world’s biggest.

According to Reuters, Tesla regularly holds such hiring events online in China, with the latest one held in May for summer interns.

Musk has frequently publicly spoken about restrictive working practices in the West, whilst praised the flexibility of China labour laws.

Western staff?

Tesla proceeding with its Chinese hiring, while Musk hints at job losses, may be a concern for staff in the United States and potentially Germany, especially as Musk has said that Tesla is overstaffed in some areas.

And it should not be forgotten that Tesla is seeking to double its production capacity in China.

It was reported in February this year that Tesla plans to start work on a new factory in Shanghai to more than double its production capacity in China, in order to meet growing demand for its cars in the country and export markets.

The new plant will be located in the vicinity of its existing production base in Lingang, Pudong New Area.

Tesla had become the first foreign carmaker to operate a wholly owned factory in China with its Shanghai plant, which opened in 2019.

Tesla actually started production at its Shanghai plant, also known as the Gigafactory 3, less than a year after breaking ground.

The plant makes the Tesla Model 3 sedan and the Model Y, and was used to build 500,000 cars per year, but expansion plans for Gigafactory 3 could see production this year at that factory ramp up to 1 million EVs a year.

However, output at the Shanghai plant was badly hit recently by by a two-month Covid-19 lockdown in the region.