If there's one thing that says "Our company is entering a growth phase" it's when you are laying off a large proportion of your staff.

Btw Tesla's statement about it being 10% is debated because reports on the ground are that the actual numbers are somewhere between ~10-20% and Tesla is "accidentally" screwing people over on their severance packages - this could be greed, this could be incompetence (it's Elon Musk after all), but it could also be a cynical manoeuvre to try and recoup costs by any means necessary.

I don't think this is moment that the everything collapses with the whole operation but it definitely feels like it's a sign of terminal decline - I'm skeptical about Elon Musk having any other aces up his sleeve and I don't see things improving on any front:

• The Boring Company is dead, his shitty Vegas tunnel is a disaster that they don't have enough money to throw at it in order to rehabilitate its image.

• Solar City is irredeemable garbage and people hate it, idk if anyone even takes it seriously these days but any mention of it is probably going to raise attention about the glaring lack of solar roof tiles.

• Tesla is hot garbage and they aren't going to get FSD or robotaxis any time soon, plus all the usual complaints (safety, quality, cost etc.) along with the empty promises about the low-cost options and new models that are vaporware

• Starlink is unfeasible on a technical and economic level. It cannot afford to expand its operations and Elon Musk is in hot water with the liberals over using Starlink as a geopolitical tool.

• Neuralink is the typical Elon playbook - massive amounts of (attempted) hype, very little to back it up with, and there's a whole lot of competitors elsewhere that are quietly doing similar things that don't make grandiose claims and that are making strides in this area. I don't see it going very far.

• Idk that much about SpaceX - there have been rumblings about it not being viable but I'm not sure as to the truth of such claims. I do know that they are relying on government money to be viable. SpaceX seems to be the most secure and sustainable part of Elon Musk's empire and that could change abruptly with one lost government contract or one disastrous launch.