On June 3, according to the Reuters news agency, Tesla CEO musk, who was recently accused of sexual harassment, said in an email sent to senior executives on Thursday that Tesla needs to "cut about 10% of its jobs". This means that nearly 10000 people will be laid off by musk - according to Tesla's annual financial statements submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in February this year, by the end of 2021, its global number of employees was 99290.
"I have a super bad feeling about the economy." Musk said in the email entitled "suspension of all global recruitment".
Coincidentally, in the past few months, affected by the Omicron epidemic and the downward pressure on the economy, China's well-known Internet companies have also made layoffs more or less. The world is as cool and hot as this.
On June 1 local time, it was also reported by Reuters that musk sent an e-mail to employees on the evening of May 31 local time, requiring "everyone at Tesla must work in the office for at least 40 hours a week".
"If you do not appear, we will assume that you have resigned." Musk writes. "The higher your position, the more you should let everyone see you. That is why I have lived in the factory for so long, so that people on the production line can see that I work with them. If I didn't do this, Tesla would have gone bankrupt."
"Of course some companies don't need this, but when was the last time they released a great new product? It's been a while." Musk continued, "Tesla has created and is about to create the most exciting and valuable products in the world. This cannot be achieved by calling."
Although the epidemic has made business owners all over the world more or less accept the remote office mode, for many business owners, especially those in China, this is not a working mode that can reassure them. In the two months since Shanghai and Beijing responded to the Omicron epidemic, there have been a lot of questions about "what if the boss thinks you are fishing when you work at home?" Discussion of. On this point, musk is obviously on the same front with Chinese business owners.
The direct motivation for layoffs comes from pessimism about the macro economy. As musk said, he "has a super bad feeling" about the economy.
In fact, this is not the first time he has been pessimistic about the economy.
According to Fox News on May 17, musk said in an interview with the all in podcast host that the U.S. economy "may" be in recession. "(economic recession) may be one year, or it may be 12-18 months. The situation will be a little difficult during this period." He said.
According to the data released by the US Department of Commerce on May 26, the US real gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2022 recorded an inflation adjusted annualized rate of -1.5%, which was unexpectedly revised down from the previous initial value of -1.4%. In addition, according to foreign media reports, due to the difficulty of some enterprises to offset the soaring costs, the profits of American enterprises in the first quarter recorded the largest decline in nearly two years, the overall economy also shrank, and consumers are also facing decades of high inflation.
Musk warned the company to pay attention to costs and cash flow, and layoffs have been considered as an immediate choice to reduce costs.
However, musk, who is singing down the US economy and preparing to cut 10% of jobs, has shown great "confidence" in China's economy, which is what we are scarce at present.
Musk said: "we will see that China will become an economy twice or even three times the size of the United States. All living people will witness (this moment). It will be extraordinary to live in such a world."
According to the U.S. Bureau of economic analysis, last year, the total U.S. GDP was about $23 trillion. According to the data of China's National Bureau of statistics, China's total GDP in 2021 is about $17.7 trillion, about 77% of that of the United States.
"The United States had better stop internal fighting and stop beating its face. There are so many things Americans attack themselves. It's really stupid. Let's think about it. A new entrant will be two to three times our size. We need to speed up our action and stop internal fighting." It is a pity that musk did not join the Biden administration's think tank. Not only that, he publicly announced that he would no longer support the Democratic Party but the Republican Party, and threatened to restore the twitter account of former U.S. President trump after the acquisition of twitter.
In mid April, musk announced that it would acquire twitter for a consideration of about $43billion. On the morning of April 25, US western time, Twitter's board of directors unanimously approved and accepted Musk's acquisition and privatization offer.
"If you live in China, you basically have to rely on wechat. Wechat has powerful functions, similar to Twitter and paypal payment, plus other functions. These functions are integrated. The interface is also great, which is really a good app." On May 16 local time, musk spoke highly of wechat when attending a podcast summit. "There is no such application as wechat outside China. I think such an application is very useful, and it has no spam. You can comment and post videos on wechat, and content creators can get a share of revenue."
In addition to preparing to launch the payment function, in Musk's idea, he also plans to let twitter launch the subscription service function. PinWan believes that this is Musk's homework "microblog value-added service" to copy the microblog.
At the same time, on May 22, the week before his e-mail of 10% layoffs, "Tesla Recruitment" published a recruitment post on its wechat official account to recruit technical R & D personnel for its R & D and innovation center in Lingang, Shanghai. It is expected to recruit more than 100 jobs.
According to surging news reports, on May 10 local time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the auto summit held by the financial times that Tesla would expand the production of Shanghai Super factory and had no plan to add a second factory in China in the near future. He said that in the long run, the Chinese market is expected to account for 25% ~ 30% of Tesla's global market.
When asked who Tesla's biggest competitor in the electric vehicle industry is, musk said that the biggest competition in the future will come from China. "I think there will be some very powerful companies in China. There are many super talented and hardworking people in China. They really believe in the manufacturing industry."
He also praised the diligence of Chinese workers. "They (Chinese workers) not only stay up late, but also work conscientiously at 3 a.m., and they won't even leave the factory. American workers try not to go to work."
Musk may not know that 996 and Zhou Xiaozhou have become street mice in China.
There are various signs that musk is more or less expressing his "love" for China and looks more like a Chinese boss.
Author / zhouchaochen