Last week, Tesla asked about 3,600 workers to go home and not come back. The layoffs hit the engineering staff, as well as sales and the front office, all in an effort to fulfill CEO Elon Musk's promise to make the electric car maker profitable by the second half of 2018.
Factory workers were spared in the culling, primarily because the company is still ramping up production on the Model 3.
The cuts came as a shock to employees. Business Insider caught up with a few of them, and they are not happy.
One former salesperson said her team received a 1 a.m. email to clear a block of time for a video conference call. Turns out the call was with human resources and 250 people who would receive the bad news together.
Another worker in vehicle delivery was cut without prior notice and after working six day, 60-hour work weeks.
And an engineer still with the company didn't learn that his manager had been fired until his boss didn't show up for a meeting and the email bounced back when they tried to see what was going on.
Now, not all of their gripes were of grand consequence. For example, some employees were promised company apparel and never received it. Egregious.
Some employees believe that this is only the beginning, and that current Tesla employees should fear for their jobs.
What is odd is that in a tweet from less than a month ago, Elon Musk asked "Why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" Well, I can think of about 3,600 reason why.
