There are currently more than 1,600 job openings listed on Tesla’s website at the moment — including everything from job openings for radar engineers, to openings for service managers in Mexico City, to openings for autopilot software engineers.
What to make of that exactly? Well, that the company is continuing to grow rapidly — and is obviously still quite bullish on its future prospects. Or, perhaps, that CEO Elon Musk is still quite bullish on his vision of a mass-scale transition to electric vehicles.
As often noted by those who remain on the bearish side of things with regard to Tesla’s prospects, the company isn’t actually cash-flow positive currently — largely owing to fast operational growth in recent years (as one can ascertain from the number of new positions currently open at the company). Musk has stated, though, that he intends for this to change next year.
Bloomberg Business provides more:
After losing $1.88 billion since 2007, Tesla is piling on the personnel as it offers more models, builds the world’s biggest battery factory and expands globally, including stores opening this week in Mexico City and Edinburgh. For the youngest publicly traded US automaker, it’s a race to grow without jeopardizing Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s push to turn cash-flow positive in next year’s first quarter.
Since the end of 2010, the year of its initial public offering, Tesla’s headcount has already grown 15-fold — comparable to the increase in its enterprise value — to more than 14,000. Five years ago, the Palo Alto, California-based company sold only one car, a limited edition Roadster, and only in the US. Now it sells two electric models on three continents and Tesla Energy, which offers stationary battery systems for home, business and utility use, is its own business unit.
[Editor’s Note: Tesla sells electric vehicles in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia — that would be four continents by my count, but maybe they are grouping Asia and Australia.]
“During 2016 Tesla will face a balancing act of funding its rapid growth aspirations and showing the market its ability to deliver profits,” stated Ben Kallo, an analyst with Robert W Baird & Co. “Workforce expansion across all divisions is necessary” given all the tasks ahead in both the carmaking and battery businesses, he said.
Despite the seemingly large number of current job openings at Tesla, it should probably be noted here that the company has reportedly received around 1.5 million job applications over the past 14 months — according to the company’s vice president of human resources. So there’s clearly no lack of interest….
Image Credit: Bloomberg
Love what Tesla does but would never want to work for them.
On the other hand, if you’re young, single, very talented, want to devote years of your life to accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and don’t mind having a boss who continually makes unreasonable demands, Tesla is perfect.