Ex-Tesla manager dishes on the company and his unceremonious dismissal: "They're absolutely hosed."

Matthew LaBrot was fired after posting a protest letter against Elon Musk's leadership. We spoke with him about this move and his thoughts on life at the company in the Trump era.

Matthew LaBrot doesn’t fit the mold of your typical activist and agitator. A sales employee at Tesla with previous stints at Best Buy and Starbucks, he was, by any measure of the word, a superfan of the electric car company, with a Model Y and a Cybertruck in his driveway.

But Musk’s antics and role in national politics — and their deleterious effect on the car company — pushed LaBrot to a different place. He published a letter anonymously on a website he created called Tesla Employees Against Elon, that argued that the CEO was damaging the company, hurting its image and tanking sales, urging the company to move on without him.

“It’s time to say the quiet part out loud,” the letter read. “Let’s be clear: we are not the problem. Our products are not the problem. Our engineering, service, and delivery teams are not the problem. The problem is demand. The problem is Elon.”

LaBrot was fired within two days, with the company having sniffed out his role despite his attempts to cover tracks. He has since become one of the faces of the nascent tech resistance to the Trump era and its collaborators in Silicon Valley. He spoke with us about the reasoning behind his monumental but costly decision, what it’s like to drive a Cybertruck around in the Bay Area these days, and why he believes the company’s days may be numbered.

Hard Reset: Tell us a little bit about how you came to work at Tesla?

Matthew LaBrot: I started with Tesla in November 2019, so I ended up being there for about five and a half years. I was an assistant manager in Southern California, then became a general manager, moved up to the Bay, and transitioned to other roles. Most recently I worked on the North American sales and delivery training team, which involved creating sales content, product knowledge, and training materials for all of North America.

I think I added a ton of value, especially the last position. Every sales and delivery employee was being trained through my words. And I think that that shows the trust that Tesla had in me. It is kind of crazy to be on the outside now, no longer being a part of that.

HR: You own a Cybertruck and a Model Y. You’re a big Tesla fan. Where did you find inspiration to undertake this act of protest, after many years of loyal corporate service at the company?

ML: You know, this wasn't a new thing for me. Over my entire time at Tesla, I considered myself an activist for electric vehicles, and clean energy. For almost six years, I’ve been focused on overcoming misinformation about EVs and helping grow that mission. It has become easier in recent years, but in my first couple of years at the company, every sales conversation we would have involved trying to change people's opinions. Once we hit a tipping point where the person who's running this company is now pushing customers away from the mission, then the priority shifted. That priority was to be an activist to try to save the company.

HR: How much risk assessment did you do beforehand and how did you weigh the potential consequences of your action?

ML: I try to stay off the comment sections, but have seen plenty of people say, “Yeah, of course this guy got fired.” It’s a fair take. But I talked to my wife about it before, and we asked ourselves if it was worth it for me to say something. Initially the answer was no, especially financially, and especially with him still in charge. But the conversation eventually shifted from “Is it worth it?” to, “Can I continue to go to work without saying something?” And it hit that tipping point eventually where I couldn't go to work every day trying to train sales and delivery employees to sell EVs, knowing that the biggest detractor from the business was within our own company.

HR: What kind of security measures did you take?

ML: I actually purchased a brand new computer and only worked on it at home using my home network. Never used work devices, wi-fi or anything like that. I'm no slouch when it comes to technology and I thought I took a decent amount of steps to keep myself anonymous, but probably screwed myself on something dumb, like having my personal email open on my work computer at some point, even though I never typed in anything for the new website. You can spend six months on all the forums and stuff trying to figure out how to be anonymous, but it is pretty impossible.

I spent my first week trying to see if there was any type of wrongful termination [to be found] there. It didn't bear any fruit. Nobody was willing to take the case on. After that, I decided that what I had to do is try to make this as worthwhile as possible, and get the website seen by as many people as possible. That's when I decided to no longer be anonymous, because plenty of reporters had reached out to me.

HR: How would you describe the general response to the letter?

ML: Aside from still being unemployed, I would say the reception has been phenomenal. So many people reached out to me, including tons of people that used to work for Tesla or still work at Tesla. There were some very brave souls who were willing to like my LinkedIn post, even though they are still employed by the company.

HR: Were you an Elon Musk fan when you signed up to work at Tesla?

ML: I’ve always been a big fan of the technology. It is tough to look back and say, “Oh yeah, I used to love that guy.” But it's also tough to look back and not admit that there wasn't some admiration.

I was never a huge Twitter person, but [when Musk took over], I created my first account and tried to participate thinking that I was supporting free speech, the same way that I was supporting sustainable energy. But very quickly I grew disillusioned.

There was a certain point where sales at Tesla started to become a little bit more difficult. We noticed customers, return customers, shying away from us a little bit. And that's when I started to see the things that he was putting on Twitter and the political views he started to have. So that was really the transition for me knowing that the people that he was choosing to support were the exact people we had been fighting against while trying to accelerate sustainable energy.

HR: Can you give us an insider’s take on why Musk has been able to continue on the way he has even if his involvement in politics is hurting the brand?

ML: It still goes back to the board or Tesla leadership as a whole. There was an opportunity for Tesla to say, he's still the CEO, but we don't agree with this, this and this. When it came to the salute — I still call it a salute — I was like, Tesla's going to take care of this. In 2010, CEOs were getting fired for having affairs. This guy's doing all this crazy stuff and Tesla's not going to do anything?

But actually they did do something: they doubled down and made him even more of a figurehead. They had him do an all-hands call, and had him be the only person that presented. That's not how all-hands calls normally go. That was Tesla saying, we stand by this guy.

For employees still there, collect your paycheck if you want, ride this thing down to the grave, that makes sense to me financially. But I think it's just important for people to acknowledge that this is not going to get better with that guy in charge.

The new things that the board has done, like the clause that makes it harder for shareholders to sue them for lack of fiduciary responsibility — things like that are insane. Folks on the board have so much money now that you have to ask, do they even care? The head of the board, she's made more than [$500 million from stock sales] since she became the leader in 2018. She's fine. So she's just going to ride this thing down to the grave as well.

HR: Your background is in sales. Was it clear that the backlash toward Musk was affecting sales?

ML: Without speaking to anything that hasn't been published — the Q1 numbers obviously came out and showed a decline. You’ll hear what they're saying about while we were ramping up production, that's why we didn't sell very many cars. People were waiting for new Model Y. Fine. But now you can just use your eyes and drive by any location and see how many new Model Ys are available, in inventory. You can go to the Tesla website, and get almost any configuration of a new Model Y available same day. That is not how Tesla works. The company needs a backlog in orders to hit the delivery numbers that they have. They're absolutely hosed. I expect gigantic drops in sales, even potentially lower than Q1 sales.

HR: Do you think that’s reversible?

ML: I don't think that there's anything he can do to change the people's opinion that have decided they're not going to support Tesla outside of him leaving. And even a lot of people that I've spoken to don't even think that's enough at this point. They want him to sell all his shares and things like that, which I don't expect. I think for Tesla, as far as vehicle sales go, it's game over.

HR: The general ethos in corporate America seems to be like, keep your hands clean. The classic Michael Jordan adage comes to mind: “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Don't let anything that is divisive or controversial push customers away. We just want people to buy stuff. And this was the exact opposite playbook.

ML: Now that the sales are declining, Elon has been saying, I don't care about vehicle sales. It's about autonomous driving and robotics and this kind of stuff, which I get and even support as a long-term goal. But how much money is that going to cost? They need revenue to be coming in on a quarterly basis in order to fund all those other projects. Tesla will be the first EV startup to leave profitability — to have hit mass adoption and been a profitable company and then fall below that. There's no precedent for that. And obviously the stock market doesn't care if that's all just made up or whatever. But how many quarters of negative profit will Tesla have on the books before they become actually insolvent.

HR: How do you feel about driving around in the Cybertruck these days? Does a bumper sticker fix the bad vibes?

ML: These days I've got one on the back that says, “ProTeslaNotElon.com” which takes you to the website I made. On the side, it says Tesla Employees Against Elon. So a lot of people from the front still give me a thumbs down or flip me off, but people who come up from behind are very supportive.

HR: We’ve noted how a lot of activism at tech companies has been pretty quiet, compared to the first time around. You are one of the brave souls who has gone out and lit that flame. Can you offer some advice to somebody who might be considering doing the same thing, even if it could cost them their job — is it worth it?

ML: Companies have been able to benefit from the fact that there are so many people now that are incredibly skilled, incredibly smart, and have great resumes but cannot find jobs. People used to think, “I'm going to speak out, but if this doesn't work out fine, I'll go work at Facebook or I'll go work at Google or whatever.” But now even the brightest people out there are struggling hard to find jobs. So for people living still paycheck to paycheck in an expensive place like the Bay Area — I can't tell 'em if it's worth it or not because I'm on the L side of this right now. Will I be proven right when Q2 numbers come out? Yes, I absolutely believe that. But that's not going to help me pay for my family.

I've gotten so many people reaching out, so many recruiters and others who have said, “I appreciate what you did. Let's get you a role.” And then those people will ghost you. I have not had a single interview. I'm not blaming anybody specifically for this; I don't think there's a conspiracy or anything like that, but I'm a qualified individual and I haven't had a single interview in 40 days. That's tough.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week. If you are a tech employee who’d like to chat on background and/or potentially have your story featured here, you can reach me on Signal @elirosenberg.30.