Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric car maker, he said in an e-mail to executives on Thursday.

The message, seen by Reuters, came two days after the world’s richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company. Tesla employed around 100 000 people at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing.

Tesla was not immediately available for comment.

In an e-mail titled “pause all hiring worldwide”, Musk said he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy.

On Tuesday, Musk told staff to return to the workplace or leave the company, a demand that has already faced pushback in Germany where the company has a new factory. “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” Musk wrote in that email. “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”

Musk also engaged on Thursday in a Twitter spat with Australia tech billionaire and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, who ridiculed the directive in a series of tweets as being “like something out of the 1950s”.

Musk tweeted that “recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function” in response to a tweet by Farquhar who encouraged Tesla employees to look into its remote work positions.

In late May, when asked by a Twitter user whether the economy was approaching a recession, Musk said, “Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen.” — Hyunjoo Jin, (c) 2022 Reuters