• The company failed to provide any advanced notice during the layoffs, which is required by federal law.
• The remaining 47 staff members out of 276, are expected to be hired by Tesla's Buffalo Autopilot office.

Automotive major Tesla Inc. has reportedly dismissed 229 staff from its autopilot team and has shut down its San Mateo office located in the United States.

According to California regulatory filing, the San Mateo office consists of 276 employees out of which 229 are recently fired. However, the remaining 47 staff members are expected to be hired by Tesla's Buffalo Autopilot office.

Most of the employed workers were in low-skilled and low-paying jobs like Autopilot data labeling, which involves verifying whether Tesla's computer correctly detected an object.

Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, had announced a 10% decrease in the paid workforce that would also include potential layoffs. Tesla soon began firing paid staff members, which resulted in a 3.5% reduction in the overall headcount of the company.

Currently, over 100,000 individuals work for Tesla at all its locations.

Meanwhile, some former Tesla employees who were fired last month have been given emergency protection from a U.S. court. The attorneys requested the judge to restrict Tesla's capacity to continue employee layoffs in exchange for one week of severance, in a motion filed in the US. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

The plaintiffs claimed that the company didn’t provide any advanced notice of 60 days during the layoffs, which is required by federal law. It is worth mentioning here that more than 500 other employees were ordered to leave Tesla's Gigafactory 2 in Nevada state last month.

Even Tesla’s director of AI and head of Autopilot vision team Andrej Karapathy is officially leaving. The development comes after the deep learning and computer vision expert was found to be on a more than three-month absence, further stimulating speculations of his return.

Source Credits:

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/tesla-fires-229-employees-from-autopilot-team-shuts-san-mateo-office-122071300362_1.html