ALT Tesla is terminating ~10% of its workforce and making it look like these are performance-related layoffs. But it’s actually a mass layoff happening in one go. I talked with three software engineers who all exited on Wednesday, 14 June. The setup was the same in all cases: The manager of the employee read from a script when terminating the employment, saying they were terminating based on performance. These meetings were done in secret, in the sense only the affected employee and their manager knew of the layoff. Employees had five business days to accept the severance package, which is one week only. Compare this with both Klarna and Coinbase’s offerings of at least 14 weeks-worth of severance. Managers were not allowed to say the layoffs were en masse; to do so risked their own position. Tesla is trying to bypass the WARN act in California in order to avoid paying severance. This act requires the employer to