I Left Tesla After Almost 8 Years. I Lost Faith in Elon Musk’s Vision for the Company.

• Over the past year, several Tesla employees have resigned.

• A former Tesla employee, who worked there for nearly 8 years, explained why he decided to quit.

• According to the employee, a lack of confidence in Elon Musk's leadership played a role in the decision.

This essay is based on a conversation with a former Tesla employee who resigned from the company earlier this year and spoke anonymously to protect his privacy. Business Insider has verified his identity and employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My partner and I were big fans of space for a long time. I was really inspired by the landing of the Falcon 9 booster in 2015 and I knew I wanted to be a part of that optimism for the future. The following year, Tesla and SolarCity came to my city and I started doing sales at SolarCity.

I wasn't very good at it at first, but I expressed my passion early on for what the company did and what Elon Musk stood for. When Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016, I started working in sales for Tesla Energy. Since then, I've held nine different titles at Tesla and worked in five different locations over the course of nearly eight years in a variety of departments, including sales, service, and operations.

I was very mission-oriented and I think that's why they kept me. I knew clearly why I wanted to be there and that I believed in the future of electrification.

Tesla is constantly changing and you have to be able to adapt. For example, I was on the sales team when Musk announced he wanted to sell only online. There was a lot of uncertainty for the team at that time.

You have to be willing to move quickly when you work for a startup and I liked that. Once I know how something works, I teach it to someone else, delegate it, and then move on to the next thing. I was very upfront about my willingness to relocate to grow and my partner and I started to adjust our lifestyle accordingly. We even signed a month-to-month lease.

Tesla's breakneck pace can be exhilarating, but also exhausting

In 2022, I worked on a project that was part of a direct request from Musk. I spent weeks preparing for a presentation that was supposed to be given to him, but it was ultimately canceled after he focused on his Twitter purchase. It was disappointing, but also a relief. Most of my friends said it could have gone wrong, but I was also ready to show my work.

There's always been a pendulum swing with Musk's attention. When he bought Twitter, he was a little less focused on Tesla and everyone generally relaxed a little bit. We were still working hard, but we were able to focus our energy where we thought it could be best used. When Musk is around, he can get hyper-fixated on something, and we all have to focus our attention on that too, which is great for solving the problem, but not always great for balancing the rest of our responsibilities.

When he bought Twitter, Musk went radio silent for a while. He stayed out of the picture for a bit in 2023, but in May 2023 he sent an email saying he had to approve all hires. It was clear that his attention had shifted back to Tesla.

Musk laid off over 10% of our workforce in April of this year. He said you have to cut to the point where you have to add people back, which may work better in raw technical terms, but when you look at the morale of an organization, it doesn't work.

The layoffs hit hard. A few months earlier I was told my position was being cut due to "redundancy" so they offered me another position in a different location. It was a three hour commute each way. When I started in December I was told it would be temporary.

We tried to hire someone to replace me so I could move to another location, but then there were mass layoffs and Tesla went on a hiring freeze.

At that point, I had little confidence in the direction Musk was taking the company.

I started to feel that his personal mission for Tesla and the stated mission of the company were no longer the same. It didn't seem like he wanted to grow a car company anymore. It seemed like he wanted to use it as an incubator for new technologies, like AI, and his other technology companies.

Early in Tesla's history, it was known for innovation. It made sense to come up with products that were unexpected. It was a different way of thinking about things and creating a better product without 100 years of design bloat, but I think it's gotten to the point where it feels forced. For example, the Model S and Model X joystick. It seemed like there was no intention to design something better. It was just a gimmick.

The company has also ignored traditional automaker strategies in a way that I think has been detrimental to the brand. The 2021 Model S and Model X refreshes were designed to make them look the same as the old models. They didn't want to capitalize on an industry that has these refreshes. The explanation was, "No, you're going to like the classic design forever."

I don't know when the tipping point was, but it went from a fresh and innovative strategy to a strategy where Tesla was trying to convince customers that this was what they actually wanted. I don't know if that still serves the interests of the consumer.

My decision to leave Tesla came from a bunch of different factors that had been creeping into my mind for a few years. If I had had a better commute and a job I liked, I might have been able to shrug it off and say to myself, "No matter what crazy thing Musk does next, I'm just going to keep my head down and keep working." But with the layoffs, it all came to a head: I wasn't happy with what I was doing anymore, and I didn't feel like I had confidence in Musk's plans for the company.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Contact the reporter via a non-business email address and device at gkay@businessinsider.com or 248-894-6012.

The decision to leave was really hard. I've put my whole life into that job - I've moved three times and worked in five locations, supported 35 sites.

It felt like a divorce, but I think I made the right choice. I have now moved on and my partner and I have decided to start our own business.

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