Tesla's Reputation Takes A Beating From Employees, Musk Approval Rating Drops 38%

Current and prospective employees of Tesla Inc. are taking an increasingly dim view of their future with the world's leading maker of electric vehicles (EVs).

Once revered as a great company to work for, Tesla is becoming a less than popular first choice for employment. New data from LinkedIn and Glassdoor affirms ever widening employee dissatisfaction with Tesla amid a string of bad news about layoffs, strategy shifts, financial pains and high executive turnover.

Tesla was ranked 16th on LinkedIn’s annual “Top Companies 2019” list published in April. It placed fifth in 2017 and sixth in 2018. This ranking is compiled from billions of actions taken by LinkedIn's more than 600 million users that indicate job interest and demand.

Glassdoor said Tesla’s overall company rating fell to 3.2 stars out of 5.0 stars based on reviews written in the first quarter. Tesla previously had a high of 3.6 stars in 2017.

Based in California, Glassdoor is a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies and their management.

As for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, his approval rating plummeted to 52 percent from 90 percent in 2017. Musk was hailed as a visionary by 18 current and former employees interviewed by Reuters. On the other hand, these people also said Musk’s management style and the exodus of executives have left a void in leadership.

Tesla’s “recommend to a friend” rating fell to 49 percent in the first quarter from a high of 71 percent two years before, said Glassdoor.

Tesla's Glassdoor ratings for culture and values, career opportunities, senior leadership and six-month positive business outlook all wound-up lower. Only Tesla's “work-life balance” and “compensation and benefits” remained unchanged. Glassdoor said no Tesla metrics improved.

Asked to comment about the downbeat LinkedIn and Glassdoor rankings, a Tesla spokeswoman said the company remains a highly sought after employer. She said Tesla received over half a million job applications in 2017 and 2018, and expects to exceed that figure in 2019.

Tesla and sister company, SpaceX, were also ranked as the most attractive employers for engineering students by Universum, an employer branding firm. Employer branding is the process of promoting a company, or an organization, as the employer of choice to a desired target group.

Tesla keeps taking a beating on Wall Street, with its shares falling 39 percent so far this year. Tesla also lost $700 million in the first quarter and saw a plunge in deliveries of its EVs.

Tesla had 48,817 full-time employees in 2018.