Great company to come from but not to be in
Pros
People at Tesla are very open and accepting of change. It's one of the best and worst things about it. If you happen to land in the right fit team for you, it can be the best thing ever because although you work long unpredictable hours, you'll get to do a lot of what you love. Also, there are some managers who also protect their teams from the surrounding chaos of the company. I wasn't fortunate to have a manager like that but I knew of some.
Cons
Work life balance is given no consideration, expect to be at work/on call 24/7, even worse when you are good at your job. Employee turn over rate is high, most engineers will tell you they don't expect to be at the company in 2 years time, even those just starting. Tesla really fails when it comes to developing their employees. There is no care into what projects individuals want to do and lean towards, everyone just needs to be carbon copies of good controls engineers and that's what every manager wants. It also doesn't help that motivation is through fear. Elon is more feared than respected. The drive is to never show up on Elon's radar. I heard someone put it quite well "Tesla is a great company to come from, but not a great company to be in". Any job you take after this will feel like a vacation. Teams are pushed to be homogenous and not heterogenous, meaning that everyone is meant to be a cog of the same size in the wheel. No thought at all is given to differences between individuals. Things like team diversity or using the individuals strengths of people to the full capacity are things for other companies that have visions past the next 3-6 months.
