Tesla has a lot of irons in the fire at the same time. They're ramping up production on the Model S electric sedan and the Model X electric crossover while building a worldwide network of stores, service centers, and Supercharger stations, while building the world's biggest battery factory (powered by renewable energy), while putting the last touches on the upcoming Model 3 EV (as well as some still unannounced models -- an electric pickup truck anyone?), while building out Tesla Energy and writing complex software so that cars can drive themselves. Just one of these tasks would be enough to occupy a regular company, but Elon Musk wants to do it all quickly.
As a result of all this activity and growth, the company has been on a
perpetual hiring spree, especially in the past 5 years, creating
thousands of good "green" jobs. It took about 7 years to get to a
thousand employees (they had 899 at the end of 2010), but in the
following 5 years, they hired 13,000 more employees, bringing the total
to over 14,000 today.
That's not the end point: Tesla has about 1,600 positions open, and
filings reveal that they plan to hire at least 4,500 people in the next 4
years (they had to reveal that for a tax credit application). Chances
are, if all goes well, they'll hire even more people than that... And
that's probably not counting jobs at sub-contractors like the
construction companies building the Gigafactory in Nevada, and those at
suppliers making parts for Tesla.
The company's latest push is for software engineers to work on the
Autopilot feature that allows Tesla's to drive themselves under some
conditions. Elon Musk made a call for applicants on Twitter.
This is just one more piece of evidence that the company sees Autopilot
as crucial. I've written about how they might be thinking about creating
a kind of Uber competitor with self-driving EVs.
By: Michael Graham Richard.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.For The #FacebookTeam
