Tesla Is Burning Through Top Employees - Why Are They All Leaving?

Elon Musk's leadership style has been described as mercurial, at best. Over the years, he has come to control a whole bunch of well-known companies across different domains, including EV brand Tesla, an AI lab named xAI, the social media platform that now goes by X, a leading private space company called SpaceX, and the Boring Company. That's an impressive repertoire, but while at it, Musk has also attracted infamy for burning through executives, and his management style continues to trigger an employee exodus. It appears that the situation with staff exit has worsened in 2025, and it's hitting hardest the crown jewel in Musk's companies — Tesla.

"Important members of Tesla's US sales team, battery and power-train operations, public affairs arm, and its chief information officer have all recently departed, as well as core members of the Optimus robot and artificial intelligence teams on which Musk has bet the future of the company," says a report by Financial Times. Troy Jones, VP of sales, service, and delivery for Tesla's North America operations, departed the company in July following a stint lasting well over a decade.

Jones' departure came soon after the dismissal of Omead Afshar, the chief of sales and manufacturing, and a longtime aide. According to The Wall Street Journal, Afshar was "Musk's fixer" and "one of the most powerful executives at the electric-car maker." In the same year, Jenna Ferrua, who led the human resources department, departed Tesla. Milan Kovac, an engineering executive who oversaw the Optimus humanoid robot project, also went through the exit door.

Andrej Karpathy, a founding member at OpenAI and former AI director at Tesla, explained Musk's leadership style and team preference at a Sequoia Capital event last year. He said that the Tesla chief prefers small, strong, highly technical teams. "Elon is very friendly by default to getting rid of low performers. I actually had to fight to keep people on the team because he would by default want to remove people," Karpathy explained. Transcripts of his speech were shared – twice – by Musk on X.

Musk's love for downsizing became apparent soon after he took over X following a $44 billion acquisition, when he fired thousands of employees. Between 2021 and 2025, the social media company's workforce shrank by 80% to nearly 1,500. Even the top brass is not safe. According to Financial Times, power struggles ultimately forced former CEO, Linda Yaccarino, to resign from X, which is now merged with xAI.

Prior to her arrival, Musk was also targeted in a lawsuit by former X CEO Parag Agrawal and a few executives, over unpaid severance totaling $128 million. That lawsuit was only settled earlier this month, years after a public confrontation on social media. Even employees in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was shortly led by Musk, resigned in protest earlier this year. Under Musk, there was a mass layoff at numerous agencies, while emails in his name asked them to prove what they accomplished in terms of work.

Musk has often made waves for his hard taskmaster reputation. Soon after he took over X, Musk made it clear he expected a hardcore work ethic. "This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he wrote in a memo that was seen by CNN. Earlier this year, he again started asking employees the same. And it seems a similar output is expected of Tesla employees, too.

"Even the board jokes, there's time and then there's 'Tesla time'. It's a 24/7 campaign-style work ethos. Not everyone is cut out for that," an advisor was quoted as saying by the Financial Times. In April last year, Tesla slashed its workforce by 10%, and days later, it was reported that Musk fired numerous top executives, alongside hundreds of employees who worked under them. "Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction. While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so," Musk said in an email following the cuts.

One Tesla employee publicly quit earlier this year, citing unease with Musk's political activism and stances. Another employee shared publicly that he was fired for criticizing Musk. Tesla is also going through a rough phase in terms of its market position, as competition in the EV segment heats up, rivals from China continue to make steady progress, and controversial political conundrums continue to rile employees reeling under stressful work conditions.