job-hunt-of-2024

What Happened

I was laid off from Tesla as part of a mass layoff on 2023-04-29
It was both shocking and surprising because the whole Supercharging organization was laid off and with seemingly no logical reason. There are some explanations like high capital expenditure spend or pivoting the company into an “AI” first company, but to me these explanations are just retrospectively connecting the dots. Since it is a profitable business and also solving the number one reason for EV adoption, I don’t see this as a tertiary business to Tesla.
However, if we are admitting that Tesla is pivoting from a “sustainable energy” company and fully into an “autonomous driving/robotics” company, then okay - I can buy this argument.
Though it still does not explain the speed and rashness of the decision. Which leads to my opinion that there was a disagreement at the highest level and signs of defiance with the executive mandate set forth by Elon himself, which resulted in a public display of punishment and warning for all others.

Date	Event
2023-04-29	WARN Act layoff notice
2023-06-26	Reached out about return offer. I accepted with a salary bump and started immediately to get ahead of the official termination date on 2023-06-29
2023-06-29	End of effective employment. Due to WARN act - the layoff needed to be notified 60 days in advance.
2023-08-27	End of H1B grace period for new employer to file new H1B petition

I should gain more skills that I can show on resume in the field of AI/ML whether that is LLM or other “hot” technologies
- Projects and courses
Keep a positive mindset despite opportunities that you think you would get end up not materializing
- There are so many factors that goes into why a company decide not to move on: timing, other candidates, fit, duplicated backgrounds, etc

#tesla