The Tesla Brain Drain (or "Tesla DOGE-d Itself" - article headline earlier today). Patrick George, The Atlantic)

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https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/06/tesla-doge-elon-musk/683217/

Before DOGE, there was Twitter. In 2023, Elon Musk seemed too distracted by his latest venture to run the world’s most valuable car company. Tesla was faltering as he focused on remaking (and renaming) the social-media network. So at Tesla’s investor-day event in Austin that March, Musk responded with a rare show of force. He was joined onstage by a cadre of more than a dozen of the company’s top executives, all to signal that even if he was extremely busy, Tesla was run by a world-class team: “We’ve obviously got significant bench strength here,” Musk said. Sure enough, Tesla closed out 2023 with the best sales it’s ever had.

Musk is in bad need of a similar comeback right now as he returns from Washington to focus on his struggling car company. In recent months, Tesla sales have plummeted as the chain-saw-wielding, far-right centibillionaire has turned off traditionally liberal electric-car buyers. The MAGA faithful never stepped up to take their place, and they’re less likely to do so now that the Trump-Musk bromance is over. Musk has other problems: Tesla created the modern electric car as we know it, but now the automaker is falling behind the competition while Musk is more focused on AI and robots than selling cars. And on top of everything else, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act working its way through Congress could cost Tesla billions each year.

This time around, however, Musk can’t lean on that aforementioned bench even if he wants to. Something similar to DOGE’s steep staffing cuts has been playing out at Tesla. About a third of the executives who stood onstage with him two years ago have left Tesla or been ousted. Many other high-profile company leaders have resigned. Just since April, Tesla has lost its head of software engineering, head of battery technology, and head of humanoid robotics. Tens of thousands of rank-and-file employees left last year amid waves of mass layoffs. At the end of the day, Tesla is the Musk show: The company is the biggest source of his wealth, and is core to his reputation as a tech genius. Now, after all of the pivots and attrition, the future of Tesla rests singularly on Musk more than it ever has.

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The silver lining for the future of electric vehicles is that these former Tesla staffers are fanning out to the rest of the car industry. Take Field, the former head Tesla engineer (or “head vehicle engineer,” in Tesla’s telling). He now leads advanced vehicle software at Ford, as well as a program tasked with making an affordable EV. Tinucci, the former head of Tesla’s charging team, is now overseeing Uber’s shift to electric vehicles. “I think we’ll see kind of a Tesla diaspora,” Kristin Hull, the founder of Nia Impact Capital, an investment firm with a stake in Tesla, told me. “The rest of the world is catching up. And I think that’s also playing a part in why the talent is moving on.” (Field and Tinucci didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

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Whether through layoffs or resignations, Tesla has lost many of the employees that helped build the world's most valuable car company. Without them, Elon Musk is about to face his biggest challenge yet, writes Patrick George.

— The Atlantic (@theatlantic.com) 2025-06-18T18:15:16.845Z

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