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Tesla’s intense work culture is a perfect fit for the industry’s most driven workers
Tesla, just like SpaceX, operates under Silicon Valley principles. While this enables Tesla to evolve faster than traditional automakers, such a system also requires employees to continuously dig deep in order to accomplish targets. When SpaceX was starting out, its recruiting pitch was simple — it was the “special forces” in the space industry — and it was this pitch that attracted talent who are hungry and motivated enough to help the company achieve its milestones over the years.
The same is true for Tesla. The electric car maker has been around for 15 years — a short period of time considering the pedigree of rival automakers — but the company has already established itself as a leader in premium electric vehicles. Such growth and progress did not come easy, though, with Elon Musk openly admitting to tech journalist Kara Swisher at an episode of the Recode Decode podcast that milestones such as the Model 3 production ramp were only made possible due to “excruciating effort” and “hundred hour workweeks by everyone.”
Such an intense work culture has attracted a lot of detractors. Critics have accused the company of overworking its employees, as reflected in multiple critical exposes published about Tesla’s operations this year alone. One of the executives who left Tesla, former Chief Accounting Officer David Morton, also cited the company’s pace of work as among the reasons behind his departure. With its intense work culture, ambitious targets, and its frenetic pace, Tesla’s work environment is definitely not for everyone.
As revealed by data from Handshake, a student career-services app, though, it is exactly this type of intensity that makes Tesla attractive to young, driven applicants. Handshake noted that Telsa received more job and internship applications than any other company listed on the app in the 2016-2017 academic year. Last year alone, Tesla collected almost 500,000 applications, which is about double the volume it received in 2016. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Cindy Nicola, vice president of global recruiting at Tesla, noted that the company had already received more applications to date this year than it did in all of 2017.
“Our interest from candidates continues to grow year over year,” she said.
Part of Tesla’s allure among young job applicants is the company’s mission — to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy — as well as the passion of its CEO, Elon Musk, a hands-on leader known to work long hours with his employees when needed. Kiran Karunakaran, who worked as an engineer at Tesla before he moved to Seattle, noted to the WSJ that before he was employed by the electric car company, he received a job offer from Apple. The iPhone-maker’s $115,000 per year offer was superior to Tesla’s 95,000 a year offer, but according to the engineer, the decision for him was a no-brainer.
“What really attracts young people to Tesla is instant gratification. You see these incredible things you’ve worked on come to fruition, on the road, in months,” he said.
Tesla’s attractiveness among applicants extends well into its internship program. For interns, the company’s flat organizational structure provides them with an opportunity to exercise their ideas and be heard. Anusha Atluri, a student from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business who worked as an intern at Tesla this past summer, experienced this firsthand. She worked at Tesla at a time when the company was ramping Model 3 production, and partway through her internship, she came up with an idea that could speed up the electric sedan’s lines.
The intern presented her idea in a Powerpoint presentation to her team, and it was well-received. She initially planned to discuss her suggestions with management the following week, but Tesla opted to implement her suggestions the next day. By the following week, the line was running more smoothly. “They were like, why not just try it tomorrow?” she said in a statement to the WSJ.
While the demanding hours and ambitious targets in Tesla could be exhausting, some workers have found themselves being underwhelmed in other companies after a tenure with the electric car maker. An engineering manager, who opted to remain anonymous, noted that she actually left Tesla after having a baby. When she was ready to get back on the workforce, she accepted an offer from a large tech company. Eventually, though, she felt that she was not a good fit. It did not take long before the engineering manager decided to go back to Tesla’s high-intensity environment.
“It isn’t just about working less. Everybody should have more work than they can possibly finish at all times. It forces the person to draw the line on when they give up—when they say, I’m done for the day. At Tesla, you have to achieve some kind of comfort knowing you didn’t do it all,” she said.
Elon Musk has noted that Tesla probably has the most exciting product roadmap in the market today. With exciting new electric cars and energy products in the pipeline, the company is bound to grow and expand its workforce even more. The company would most likely demand long hours and ambitious targets for its employees for years to come. Despite this, the company would likely continue to attract the most driven individuals that the talent pool has to offer — individuals that, just like Elon Musk, thrive in the face of pressure.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at an all-time high on Tuesday, jumping over 3 percent during the day and finishing at $489.88.
The price beats the previous record close, which was $479.86.
Shares have had a crazy year, dipping more than 40 percent from the start of the year. The stock then started to recover once again around late April, when its price started to climb back up from the low $200 level.
This week, Tesla started to climb toward its highest levels ever, as it was revealed on Sunday that the company was testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin. The spike in value pushed the company’s valuation to $1.63 trillion.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
It is the seventh-most valuable company on the market currently, trailing Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
Shares closed up $14.57 today, up over 3 percent.
The stock has gone through a lot this year, as previously mentioned. Shares tumbled in Q1 due to CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pulled his attention away from his companies and left a major overhang on their valuations.
However, things started to rebound halfway through the year, and as the government started to phase out the $7,500 tax credit, demand spiked as consumers tried to take advantage of it.
Q3 deliveries were the highest in company history, and Tesla responded to the loss of the tax credit with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y Standard.
Additionally, analysts have announced high expectations this week for the company on Wall Street as Robotaxi continues to be the focus. With autonomy within Tesla’s sights, things are moving in the direction of Robotaxi being a major catalyst for growth on the Street in the coming year.
Elon Musk
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs says.
Tesla is in the process of rolling out its Robotaxi platform to areas outside of Austin and the California Bay Area. It has plans to launch in five additional cities, including Houston, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
However, the company’s expansion is not what the focus needs to be, according to Delaney. It’s the speed of deployment.
The analyst said:
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Profitability will come as the Robotaxi fleet expands. Making that money will be dependent on when Tesla can initiate rides in more areas, giving more customers access to the program.
There are some additional things that the company needs to make happen ahead of the major Robotaxi expansion, one of those things is launching driverless rides in Austin, the first city in which it launched the program.
This week, Tesla started testing driverless Robotaxi rides in Austin, as two different Model Y units were spotted with no occupants, a huge step in the company’s plans for the ride-sharing platform.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
CEO Elon Musk has been hoping to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis in Austin for several months, first mentioning the plan to have them out by the end of 2025 in September. He confirmed on Sunday that Tesla had officially removed vehicle occupants and started testing truly unsupervised rides.
Although Safety Monitors in Austin have been sitting in the passenger’s seat, they have still had the ability to override things in case of an emergency. After all, the ultimate goal was safety and avoiding any accidents or injuries.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘Neutral’ rating and its $400 price target. Delaney said, “Tesla is making progress with its autonomous technology,” and recent developments make it evident that this is true.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
Tesla stock closes at all-time high on heels of Robotaxi progress
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
