Even interns aren’t safe from Tesla’s recent layoffs.
According to several social media posts, Tesla has started canceling summer internships, even before they were to have started.
This week, dozens of young professionals on LinkedIn posted that their dreams of working for Tesla over the summer were dashed by a phone call.
“After a single phone call of less than two minutes, my entire plan for this summer had vanished as if it had never even existed,” one LinkedIn user posted Thursday.
The calls have likely cast a harsh shadow over the end of the semester. Thousands of students apply for internships at Tesla each year and those who are accepted look forward to the experience for months.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago that I received my offer to intern with Tesla starting this May. I was ecstatic at the opportunity and looked forward to joining their dynamic team,” another user posted. “But, like many others, I was recently informed that my internship offer was being rescinded due to the company’s #layoffs.”
The internship cancellations are part of grander cost-cutting measures at Tesla that began last month when CEO Elon Musk announced the company would be cutting 10% of its global workforce.
However, as industry experts predicted, the cuts did not stop there and have even extended to several executives and other lucrative departments at Tesla. Earlier this week, Tesla laid off the entirety of its Supercharger team, which included about 500 workers.
The cuts are meant to help Tesla stay competitive as EV sales slow and competition increases both domestically and internationally.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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