Tesla’s hiring effort increases 33%, mostly for service and software

After a tough year for its workforce with rounds of layoffs, Tesla is now ramping up its hiring efforts with a 33% increase in job listings since mid-July – mostly for service and software.

When Tesla initiated a restructuring of the company last year, it reportedly had about 40,000 employees.

At the time, the company announced that it would be laying off about 9% of its workforce, which would reduce the headcount to the mid-30,000s.

Late last year, Tesla had again grown and it reportedly had about 45,000 employees.

Earlier this year, the company had more layoffs and significantly slowed down its hiring effort, but it’s starting to pick up again.

Research firm Thinknum reports that Tesla’s job listings increased by 33% since mid-July and that service jobs represent the biggest part of the increase:

“The types of jobs Tesla is opening points to a maturing auto manufacturer. That’s because the most numerous category of job openings at Tesla are for its Service division, with multiple openings for customer-facing service people to repair and refresh Tesla customers’ vehicles (and keep them as customers too). After all, the oldest Teslas are now more than 7 years old, and those customers are re-entering the auto market with more options than they had when they originally got into the EV game.”

CEO Elon Musk recently said that Tesla is now expanding service at ‘max speed’.

Here’s Tesla’s history of job listings:

However, the hiring level is stiill way below where it was during previous hiring sprees in the last few years.

According to the report, Tesla has also been looking to hire a lot of people in its software department.

Electrek’s Take

I think that in the past, Tesla has grown its workforce way too fast and it wasn’t done in an efficient way.

It led to massive layoffs, which are obviously bad for many reasons. It’s disruptive and it’s bad for employee morale, market perception, and more.

Now a 33% increase is a lot, but it’s still not as crazy as previous hiring sprees and I like that the focus is on service, which definitely should be an area of focus.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.