These Former Senior Tesla Employees Share What It Was Like Working With Elon Musk: "It's Not A 9-To-5 Experience…"

Benzinga
2025.06.02 15:16
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Former Tesla employees shared insights about their experiences working with Elon Musk, highlighting the high success rate of ex-employees starting their own ventures. They noted the company's culture of self-reliance and minimal bureaucracy, but also acknowledged the pressure and challenges, including Musk's short temper. This comes as Tesla faces declining sales and stock sell-offs, while Musk pushes for regulatory changes in autonomous driving and plans a Robotaxi launch in June. TSLA shares fell 1.41% in pre-market trading, valued at $341.56.

Prominent former Tesla Inc. TSLA employees have shared their experiences during their time with Elon Musk's tech giant amid the CEO’s commitment to the company.

What Happened: "The success rate of former Tesla employees starting their own companies, building hard things, is exceptionally high," former Tesla Optimus lead Chris Walti said, referring to former senior Tesla team members going on to establish their own companies, in an interview with Business Insider on Sunday.

Besides Walti, the interview also featured Gene Berdichevsky, who said that the company offers a sense of "radical self-reliance" and an experience unlike a "9-to-5," while Walti hailed the lack of bureaucracy at the company. "You can solve problems without requiring 20 product managers and five VPs for approval," he said.

However, they also acknowledged that working at the company does have its challenges and pressure. "Elon has a short fuse. It doesn’t matter how many successful projects you’ve delivered. You screw up once and you might be out.” Berdichevsky shared.

Why It Matters: The interview comes at a time when Tesla has been grappling with dwindling sales figures as well as prominent analysts and insiders selling their stock positions in the company.

While sales are declining, CEO Elon Musk has shared that the company is targeting a June 12 launch for its highly anticipated Robotaxi in Austin. This coincides with the billionaire announcing his exit from DOGE and his association with the Trump administration at the White House.

Interestingly, Musk has been actively lobbying U.S. lawmakers to revise regulations for autonomous driving in the country. The billionaire and his team have reportedly been in direct contact with Congress members.

This is in line with Musk's comments during a meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at Tesla's factory in Texas, where Musk outlined a need for federal regulation for autonomous vehicles.

Price Action: TSLA declined 1.41% in Pre-Market trading, currently valued at $341.56, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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