ELECTREK – Tesla has laid off both the president of its LGBTQ+ community and a lead involved in diversity and inclusivity programs at the company.
While they were let go as part of a broader wave of layoffs, it comes amid several comments Tesla CEO Elon Musk made, concerning what he describes as the “woke mind virus.”
Earlier this month, we reported on Musk telling Tesla executives in an email that they need to cut 10% of the workforce and pause hiring due to having a “super-bad feeling” about the economy.
Later, the CEO decided to clarify the Tesla layoffs in an email to all employees. He claimed that the 10% reduction would be for “salaried headcount” due to Tesla becoming overstaffed following a long growth phase.
Tesla ramped up the layoffs last week, and we reported that unlike what Musk said, they did include hourly employees.
Now we learn that many employees involved in diversity and inclusivity programs were part of the layoffs – including the president of Tesla’s LGBTQ+ community – and a lead involved in diversity and inclusivity programs at the company.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Bobby Berretta-Paris, a five-year Tesla veteran, was let go last week. He was hired as a recruiter and promoted three times during his tenure. He was also the volunteer president of LGBTQ+ at Tesla.
Sources also told Electrek about a software engineer that was also let go by Tesla last week. The engineer had been working at Tesla for four years – most recently as senior software engineer in charge of naming conventions in Tesla’s vehicle UI team – and had been promoted three times.
The engineer volunteered as a diversity and inclusion leader and was involved in employee protection when it came to issues of diversity and inclusion.
Berretta-Paris and the software engineer involved in the diversity and inclusion program didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The layoffs of those diversity leaders at Tesla come amid CEO Elon Musk making several comments about what he calls “the woke mind virus,” which he believes is “destroying civilization” …
