@facw said in The reason Musk fired the Supercharger team:
Yeah, it seems like Musk made a dumb ultimatum and reacted stupidly when he was called on it.
If you're a CEO and someone stands in the way of restructuring, you fire them. I recently went through a restructuring and even though I wasn't fired per se, I was sidelined and told to look for another job. I made no threats, offered support, and continue to look out for the company's best interest until I'm done there.
However, if you have a team lead that hires up and builds a culture into that team which will continue to stand in your way if you fire the lead, then you need to get rid of nearly everyone. Musk, the introvert that he is, probably just did the math on reinterviewing the entire team and said "fuck it, just start over, that math doesn't work".
It's firing 101 to gut a team when you fire the lead. If you don't, you end up employing people who will actively work to sabotage the company.
Frankly, a lot of the commentary, especially from journalists, about the business moves that Elon makes come from people whose entire experience with management is being managed. I've been in the room for reports, layoffs, etc and been on the other end of this myself (including having a portion of my team let go along with me). There's not really much here at all that I would say is outside the norm. What I'm most surprised by is that the supercharger team was 500 people. That's huge and probably no longer needed. Tesla is not longer a company with a huge infrastructure problem. That's every other car manufacturer.
The bright side to this situation is that a lot of these people will end up taking what they've learned and infrastructure in general will likely be all the better for it.