Tesla Reviews

Pros

Exciting, fast paced, quick decisions, minimal bureaucracy.

Cons

Expensive housing in Bay Area of California.

Pros

Stocks were good and friendly coworkers

Cons

Management was biased. Unorganized a bit

Pros

Completely casual dress code Flexibility to work from home when needed Always interesting to work at the factory If you look at the SEC filings, you can see that the top people are basically compensated the same as the other employees, which is a pleasant surprise. Many “beautiful people” here (male and female). Lots of eye candy. A lot of people complain about the pay, but they paid me more than my last company, where I had the same title LGBT friendly The product is cool, and really fun to drive If you’re in the right department, you might be able to drive a Tesla somewhat regularly. If not, there is an ongoing contest where you can be randomly selected to take one home for a couple of nights The company is still growing There is room to move geographically within Service, since Tesla owns the Service Centers Lots of “car guy” coworkers to keep conversations interesting Benefits actually got better and cheaper every year from 2012-2015, and stayed similar after that. I guess this was due to the company growing and getting better group rates. Regardless, not many people can say that. You’ll frequently come to work that day expecting to work on a certain project and end up on something totally different. This can be good and bad. Starting hours are typically flexible, which is a really nice perk. Nobody is making sure you’re in your seat at a certain time. Most employees are surprisingly responsive and friendly. Very heavy email-based communication, and it mostly works quite well. You get good at doing the best you can with the resources you have, rather than doing the best possible job. This isn’t necessarily a complaint, since it’s a valuable skill to have, but you should consider if you’re going to be okay in that kind of environment before applying.

Cons

Rare to be recognized, let alone thanked, for going above and beyond to accomplish something out of the ordinary. Once you've "done the impossible", it's just assumed that you can and will do it again and again from now on. Literally hundreds of people in one room, desks on top of each other, as many as possible in every little space. Companies claim that they’re being “modern” and “progressive” by not having offices and cubicles, but they’re just being cheap. Look at pictures of offices from the 1950’s. You’ll see the same hundreds of desks in a room. Yearly raises are typically less than the cost of living Work/life balance is mediocre at best Smallish yearly bonuses in the form of golden handcuffs. RSUs that vest over 4 years, so you’ll wait a long time to benefit from them Those who were hired before mid-2013 made a lot of money off stock options, but many of those people are leaving now that all of their options are used up. Revolving door. It’s hard to last more than a couple of years here. It’s always seemingly a few steps away from massive failure Very few processes in place, so work is done extremely inefficiently Very common to compose an email and see “This is no longer a valid Tesla address” The entire Service organization shares one budget. I am scrimping to save $50 on software while a barely-related manager wastes literally tens of thousands of dollars a week on cool toys, and it all comes from the same place. Everything’s urgent, and people try to name-drop that Elon’s watching this very project so I need to stop everything for them. Luckily those of us who have been around for a while see right through that charade. Technically, no 401(k) match, though if you’re careful with the health benefits you choose, you can end up with some leftover that can be diverted into the 401(k). Middle managers are very hit-and-miss. Many were promoted because a manager was needed and they were the only one who knew anything about the department. Much room for improvement here. Minimal leadership training. No real employee development opportunities. The results are just as bad as you’d expect. Massive inter-departmental struggles. Most of my problems can be traced to one power-hungry manager of a sister department. It only takes one person to ruin the work lives of many people. There are more meetings than I expected from this kind of company. Elon sent a great email about how wasteful meetings are, but people have fallen into old bad habits. Completely ineffective HR department Every department is grossly understaffed, just barely above the point of collapse. Nearly everyone has to work harder than they would if they were doing the same job at another company. Anything that they can do in house, they’ll do, rather than outsourcing to a supplier. There are people who spend their whole careers deciding “make vs. buy”… no need for them here, it seems. This is corporate arrogance, and it reduces quality, wastes human resources, and slows time to market in many cases. A positive side effect is that more products are made here in California than would be if they were outsourced. Inadequate parking Note to hiring managers at other companies: Watch out if someone from Tesla has “Project Manager” on their title. Many of these people are just general office workers with no skills beyond harassing people via email.

Pros

The company offers good opportunities for advancement in short periods of time. I went from an $18/hr employee to $130k/yr within 5 years. Success is based on the amount of effort you put in and your ability to adapt to an ever changing environment.

Cons

Hours are long and I am on call 24/7. This regularly means I get woken up in the middle of the night or on vacation.

Pros

There were a lot of cool people there and made a lot of lasting friendships and the cars themselves are really fun. It was awesome when little kids would come in and be in complete awe.

Cons

They like to get rid of programs out of the blue without notifying workers ahead of time and then leave them to clean up the mess in person. One day they got rid of the referral program and so many clients stormed in wanting an explanation. You're constantly berated by people who don't like EVs coming into the store (if you work in a mall). People are constantly calling in to complain about their cars or wanting to talk to their sales team who never call them back. Just terrible customer service and a terrible place to work in.

Pros

Great benefits, wfh option, training provided, discounts on tesla merch, my managers were supportive and coworkers were great. The in office environment was fun and most people in the engineering and design dept are fun and cool people. You will do well here is you are a high achiever and thrive in a constantly changing fast-paced work environment.. Work is still work, but at the end of the day it made me feel a little better knowing that my work was helping the earth.

Cons

Fast paced environment, sometimes can be working on something new every week. Sometimes too many company meetings that can easily interrupt your flow of work. Feels like you have to give 200% all the time. The company sets very high unrealistic goals, but that is the nature of working for a company that is at the forefront of solar and electric cars. The training is great, but can be difficult to keep up with the pace. You are expected to have what you learned from training down within 3 months. If you can't keep up with the pace you may be axed. Layoffs are common in the engineering and design dept. Work life balance was not great as it was common for the pv and ess designers to work mandatory OT to meet company quotas.

Pros

- Ability to take on new initiatives and lead complex project - Your work and accomplishments have a direct impact on the company’s bottom line - Supportive team members - Lots of eye candy

Cons

- Poor leadership: lack of mentorship, training, coaching, guidance - Toxic culture: unrealistic expectations and deadlines, lots of finger pointing, lack of accountability - Unstructured organization: lack of clarity on person’s responsibility so you have to wear many hats and accept work outside of your scope/expertise - No flexibility to work from home: mandatory to be onsite 40 hours a week

Pros

The benefits are exceptionally good, for what is needed. Healthcare for me that would have cost well over $15,000 on many non-Tesla plans was achieved for well under $1,500 out of pocket, during my time of employment. Let us face it, in America, ultimately the good healthcare plan is what you need, the house with the Spanish style architecture and palm trees is what you want, yet the top-notch employee benefits are what you need that are there at organizations like Tesla who hire direct, and not with organizations that do the 12 month contracts or 15 month contracts through a 3rd party. Given the wages are not high due to the industry having tighter profit margins compared to other Silicon Valley businesses (SaaS, IT consulting, Internet companies), I hoped for some sort of tuition reimbursement, yet I cannot just expect that any company is going to foot the bill of my education loan debt; they did offer benefits for refinancing education debt, as well as other debt. Note: I can only speak to my role as being direct hire. In the 9-to-5 itself, I really loved the structure. You always know exactly what the expectations are.

Cons

My one wish would be that there was an outlined pathway for: "coming in as a Data Annotation Specialist, this is what education you need to do additionally and what job performance you need to move forward into a Data Scientist role or Software Engineer role at this company". Essentially, because there was not that pathway lined out, I resigned to pursue finishing a Computer Science degree and find a more known and less unknown career pathway.

Pros

At the time, there was a shine attached to working for Tesla. The brand and the products are sexy and exciting and literally changing the world. Though I suspect in the last year, the shine and reputation of the brand has dulled pretty significantly.

Cons

Leadership is often put into place due more to tenure than relevant experience. The revenue generating side of the business is King and is responsible for making decisions for all sides of the company, whether it is within their lane or not. Talent acquisition, specifically, plays the role of a support to the business, rather than as a partner, and leadership would punish employees for operating differently. Pay is well below market (and explained away by people saying, "It's Tesla, you should want to work here"). Work life balance is non existent as many recruiters are working upwards of dozens and dozens of open roles at a given time and their productivity is graded similarly to a sales organization, rather than as the strategic initiative that it should be considered. The recruiting teams operate within severe dysfunction (and attempt to paint it as "ever changing") with very little quality leadership to guide or impact real, helpful change.

Pros

Great job .. new experiences.. meeting great hard working people.. good pay.. free transportation.. insurance-not first day as they say but about 5th day still not bad..

Cons

Horrible company.. turnover rate will never go down.. No work home balance at all.. only company that can change your whole contract without acknowledgment or permission.. only toe kissing will make it.. they are not appreciative at all nor do they care.. breaks suck.. I worked there for 10mnts same department had 8 different supervisors.. HR and upper management are completely blind don’t know anything, they use you until they feel they don’t need you, rules change everyday- etc. because this list can go on- Definitely have a lot of problems with discrimination and side picking