--- title: "Tesla Fires 200 People Working on Its Unfinished Self-Driving Tech" description: "Tesla is gutting a part of its Autopilot department, cutting around 200 jobs from its office in San Mateo, California, CNBC reports." date: "2022-06-29" modified: "2022-06-29" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-fires-people-working-self-driving-tech" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Self-Driving Vehicles" - "Tesla" tags: - "artificial intelligence" - "autopilot" - "elon musk" - "tesla" - "the digest" --- # Tesla Fires 200 People Working on Its Unfinished Self-Driving Tech ![Tesla is gutting a part of its Autopilot department, cutting around 200 jobs from its office in San Mateo, California, CNBC reports.]() *\Image: Tesla\* ## On Autopilot It's [been eight days]() since Tesla CEO Elon Musk's last tweet. And judging by the latest news coming out of the electric carmaker, that may be because Musk has his hands full with unmitigated chaos. *Bloomberg* is [now reporting]() that the company is gutting part of its Autopilot department, cutting around 200 jobs from an office in San Mateo, California, in a potentially significant blow to the company's [controversial]() driver assistance technology efforts. The move is a part of a much greater restructuring at the electric carmaker, and comes after Musk accused his own car factories of [wasting "billions of dollars"]() due to supply chain issues last month. "Both Berlin and Austin factories are gigantic money furnaces right now," Musk explained during a [June interview](). "It should be like a giant roaring sound which is the sound of money on fire." ## Training AI Musk also announced earlier this month that Tesla is cutting ten percent of its full time employee headcount because [he had a "super bad feeling"]() about the economy, though he also insisted that the company was also in the process of hiring, resulting in a total headcount reduction of less than ten percent. That said, the layoffs have been shrouded in confusion, with the company even [rescinding job offers it had already extended](). It's also unclear whether the Autopilot layoffs are part of that wave of firings, or additional. The San Mateo employees were tasked with training the Autopilot's system by labeling videos taken by Tesla cameras on the road, [according to *CNBC*](). In short, they were responsible for identifying and describing objects seen in clips taken by Tesla cameras. That kind of job is often outsourced to other companies, including Amazon's Mechanical Turk, according to *CNBC*. The broadcaster also obtained meeting recordings in which a manager could be heard saying that "unfortunately, we couldn't" move operations to Palo Alto. "So what that means is we have a restructure in place and your positions were impacted." It's hard to tell what the upshot of this decision will be or how integral their work is to Tesla's [long-delayed ambition]() to have its cars become fully autonomous one day. But it certainly won't impress investors, and could be a warning sign of what 2022 still has in store for the company. **READ MORE:** *[Tesla is cutting about 200 Autopilot jobs and closing office in San Mateo, California]()* **More on Elon:** *[Elon Musk Is Missing]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()