Tesla has let the data annotation team working on Autopilot go, closing their California office and laying off 200 people. These job cuts are reportedly due to the worsening economic conditions, part of a broader reduction of jobs at Tesla. What makes these layoffs significant is the fact that these employees were previously seen as critical resources to the company’s Autopilot advanced driver assistance system.
Read: Google Hangouts will shut down in November 2022
Notably, CEO Elon Musk always placed a lot of emphasis on this team and product it offers customers, with plans to further develop automated driving functions through the $12,000 optional FSD system. Tesla had hundreds of data annotation employees working on the Autopilot team in San Mateo and Buffalo, New York. The San Mateo office had a headcount of 276, and after laying off 195 staffers from all ranks (from supervisors, labellers and data analysts), the team is left with 81 workers, who sources say will be relocated to another office.
Most of the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such as Autopilot data labelling, which involves determining if Tesla’s algorithm identified an object well or poorly, according to one source. The source noted layoffs of this team were rumoured to be on the table for months, and that the work would be offloaded to Buffalo.
Keen eyes will be on Tesla to see what they want to do with the Autopilot system from here on out. Perhaps it needs to shift its focus and focus more on the visual approach that most other autonomous vehicle companies are exploring. This would then introduce lidar and radar to its vehicles.
While sources confirm the 195 Autopilot team members who were let go this week were indeed laid off, they also say most of the “layoffs” that began in the end of May were, in reality, terminations based on performance.
