Tesla to fire over 3000 employees, Elon Musk confirms move via tweet

Rank 2 | Elon R Musk | Company: SpaceX and Tesla | Net worth: $136 billion | YTD change: Gain by $108 billion (Image: Reuters)

Elon Musk-led Tesla will be cutting nine percent of its workforce as part of a comprehensive organisational restructuring.

The employees were intimated through an email that was leaked to the media and later posted by Musk on his Twitter handle to avoid misinterpretation.

"Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplications of roles and some job functions. As part of this effort, and the need to reduce costs and become profitable, we have made the difficult decision to let go of approximately 9 percent of our colleagues across the company," explained Musk through his email.

Difficult, but necessary Tesla reorg underway. My email to the company has already leaked to media. Here it is unfiltered: pic.twitter.com/4LToWoxScx

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 12, 2018

Musk also added that the cuts were made entirely from their salaried population and none of the associates from the production department was included, with the view to meet Model 3 production targets in the coming months.

According to a report in Arstechnica, Tesla had 37,543 full-time employees at the start of the year. Hence, upward of 3000 employees shall be laid off.

This announcement comes a month after Musk announced a restructuring of the company's organisational charts. Musk stated that he wants to flatten the management structure of the company to make it less bureaucratic.

Since its inception 15 years ago, Tesla has been burning cash continuously and has only registered positive cashflows twice- once in late 2013 and another in mid-2016.