The same can be said about Coinbase and look what's happening. Let's just say buyer beware when it comes to meme companies.
Move fast and break things might have been fine in the early days. Seems to me like the company needs to 'grow up' and demonstrate responsibility to shareholders and customers, and to do that it likely involves significantly sidelining Musk, who clearly behaves very erratically.
This specific pattern, switching suddenly from "thousands of open positions" to “freeze and maybe layoffs” is typical for large large, mature, professionally managed companies.
Elon's been off his rocker the last couple weeks. But this is just honesty. At the end of the day, this is the CEO's job. Some dress it up with more corporate speak. Others, like Elon, are more direct.
I have a ton of respect for what he's accomplished, but from my perspective, I think he's been pretty chaotic in communications for years.
True. But he was less impulsive in his actions. The Twitter acquisition is a boondoggle. He could have just tweeted about it.
Oh, and this was immediately after the Thailand cave diver pedo fiasco, and immediately before the Joe Rogan marijuana controversy.
Two years before this, in 2016, Tesla bought the unprofitable SolarCity at a price that's truly ridiculous considering Tesla's share price today. I hardly think they've made more than a token profit in the eight years since. The thing seemed like a spur-of-the-moment decision.
I don't think we're seeing a difference of magnitude in Musk's impulsive big decisions. Pretty sure they're strongly correlated with the personality traits that's given us the successes of SpaceX and Tesla already. I think everyone should just lean back, relax and enjoy the drama if that's what they're into. Or read a good book otherwise, and check back on the progress of Musk's companies in five years.
Also need to point out that the Twitter purchase hasn't closed yet. Musk pulling out of that at the last moment would not be very unexpected.
I want to push back on this a little: Tesla Energy's revenue was $2.79B in 2021, while SolarCity's revenue topped out at $735M in 2016 just before acquisition. SolarCity had seen 82% YoY revenue growth 2015-6, and apparently averaged 30% YoY growth for the next five years. That's not necessarily a great purchase, but it's not terrible.
>the Twitter purchase
More than anything, it was astonishingly bad timing. Few investors have ever managed to buy effectively $40B worth of tech stocks right before the whole NASDAQ collapses. But even fewer can time the market!
It was literally to save a company his brother was heavily invested into from bankruptcy, and using Tesla to do so.
Pretty sure he's malding over the fact that Chelsea Manning is boffing his ex.
But Tesla is supposed to manufacture more cars than it manufactures now. It is supposed to grow its capacity to explain its valuation, at least partially. I think they make 1 million cars per year and want to make as much as Toyota + Volkswagen combined who make probably around 20 million cars per year.
So how some short term cuts by 10% connect to the idea that Tesla will grow by 1000%?
Of course in every company you can trim some fat, but isnt Tesla supposed to expand to at least partially explain the valuation?
Also if they wash out people who can get a better job, they are left with those who are stuck there (there is a difference between firing non performers and making best people leave - I define best as someone who can find another job). Will their quality stay the same? Their competitive edge was markering and (supposedly) better technolofy / engineering / programming. Losing top staff in exchange for engineers who accept working as in a sweatshop doesnt sound mature for me.
Shareholders paid him tens of billions to stay after he wanted to step down as CEO after Model 3 push.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/21/elon-musk-s...
Elon Musk is golden goose for Tesla shareholders.
"No idea what they're doing" is probably a bit harsh on my part, but I stand by my opinion that Ford seems to be in a better position moving forward. The F-150 Lightning is a compelling product that went from announcement to consumer driveways in the span of a year. The Cybertruck still has no ship date in sight, and feels like it was designed to appeal to people buying Brodozer's rather than people needing something to do truck stuff. And from what we've seen so far, Ford does not seem to be suffering from the same chronic quality control issues as Tesla.
But so far the results haven't been spectactular. Their goals for 2025 look like Tesla's goals for next year.
That could change, though. Ford in particular has been making a lot of solid moves recently, and unlike GM there seems to be more movement than talk.
It's been proven over and over! (not really)
Find me another car executive that would have been bold enough to do something like Tesla Giga Castings before Elon decided to go for it.
There are 4 entities to date that delivered people to Earth orbit:
- Russia - USA - China - SpaceX
There is only one entity that made rocket reuability profitable: SpaceX
There is no person alive with better track record on delivering things that were believed by experts to be impossible.
Shotwell is absolutely awesome, but she did not came up with the initial capital or the idea of rocket reusability and Mars settlement. She did not convince Tom Muller to join SpaceX etc. etc.
The fact that Elon noticed Shotwell and gave her COO position is an example of excellent leadership skills from Musk.
For contrast, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin is an excellent example of bad leadership.
Boeing is also an excellent example of bad leadership.