Tesla Inc. closed down its California facility resulting in hundreds of workers in its autopilot team losing their jobs, according to people having information on the matter.
More on the lay-Off
Most workers who lost their jobs were hourly workers, surprising as people requested not to be identified since the information was private. CEO Musk had recently outlined plans to cut 10% of the salaried staff but also said he was increasing the hourly job workers.
The San Mateo office had teams tasked to evaluate customer vehicle data with features related to Autopilot diver assistance and perform data labeling. One of the people said that many of the data annotation staff were in hourly positions.
As per Bloomberg News, about 200 workers were handed the pink slip. Before the downsizing, there were about 350 employees at the California office, and some of them were recently transferred to nearby facilities before shuttering the office.
A request for comment was not responded to by Tesla.
Tesla is trimming its workforce after it has increased its hiring in recent years. The Company shifted its headquarters to Austin, Texas, and now employs about 100,000 employees globally after building factories in Berlin and Austin.
Earlier this month, Musk had surprised everyone after he announced that job cuts were necessary for an economic environment that was increasingly shaky. He clarified to Bloomberg in an interview that about 10% of the salaried staff will lose their job in the next quarter though the overall headcount would be more as hours workers will get jobs.
The Electric Vehicle leader’s efforts towards staff downsizing are limited to areas that grew too fast. Some software engineers and human resource staff are among those who were laid off, and in some cases, employees who had just joined the Company a few weeks ago had to take the hits.
Those employees hit in the latest move were working on the higher-profile features in Tesla’s vehicles. The job postings by Tesla for these affected positions had mentioned that labeled data was a crucial ingredient for training powerful Deep Neural Networks that helped Tesla vehicles to drive autonomously. San Mateo, New York, and Buffalo employees spent hours labeling images for the environment and cars that navigate, such as traffic lanes and street signs.
According to a person familiar with the matter, Tesla is continuing its Autopilot data labeling team expansion at its Buffalo facility. However, these workers are paid lower than those doing the same job at the San Mateo facility.
Shares of Tesla fell less than 1% on Tuesday in a late trading session. The stock already tumbled 34% this year till Tuesday’s closing, whereas the S&P 500 index declined by 20% during the same period.
