Many would-be interns report that Tesla Inc. has rescinded offers just weeks before their internships started, resulting in employees taking to the social media network LinkedIn to ask other employers to take them in.
Miami University student Joshua Schreiber, who had already spent “thousands” on housing before his start date, which was only three weeks away, was quoted as saying: “At 8:46 a.m., I opened a Tesla email for flight info. By 11:25 a.m., my internship offer was gone.”
Like many would-be interns, Schreiber is one of those who are close to the end of their schooling year. As a result, the calls from Tesla informing students that their offers to work with them are no longer available are leaving many without time to find replacement opportunities for the summer, inspiring not just hurt but confusion.
One current Tesla employee who posted on LinkedIn has asked her virtual network to step up and help one of the interns who was meant to start at the carmaker. “Please make our loss your gain!” Diana Rosenburg, who works in the battery supply department at Tesla, was quoted as writing.
According to Elon Musk, Rosenburg blamed the decision to rescind the intern’s offer on the massive layouts at Tesla Inc., which came as Tesla “made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally.”
Since then, several executives have left the company as Musk has pushed for further cuts. Most of the company’s 500-person Supercharger division and its newly formed marketing team have been terminated.
People familiar with Musk’s thinking have said that the billionaire is determined to target a 20% reduction amid the lack of electric vehicle sales and significant expenditures for his robotaxi service. However, revoking offers to interns is unlikely to save Tesla money. At least of the intern positions were for unpaid placement, while paid internships, according to data from Glassdoor, typically only offer $18 to $28 an hour.
However, the decisions have affected the company’s hiring process, as more than 3,000 university and community college students worldwide are hired for Tesla internships each year. “Perform meaningful work from day one,” reads the company’s intern website.
The move has also delivered a life lesson to the students affected by the lost opportunities.
“Rejection is redirection,” Brook Gura, a communications student at the University of Texas at Austin, stated. “While I am incredibly disappointed that I will not have the summer I intended to have, I know that this moment will only help me grow stronger as a professional.”
Gura claimed that she received the call that her offer was terminated three weeks before her start date.
Gura, Schreiber, and Rosenburg have declined to comment beyond their social media posts. Elon Musk did not respond to a request for comment, offering little to no hope for the interns who had big aspirations for working for Tesla Inc.
