Trae Cervantes, a former engineering technician at Tesla, revealed why he departed from the electric vehicle manufacturing giant in March 2025 after a seven-year tenure at the company’s Gigafactory in Nevada.
His decision to quit was not due to the demanding 12-hour shifts or the company’s culture, but rather a growing moral conflict stemming from CEO Elon Musk’s increasingly controversial public behaviour.
‘Tesla helped me to improve my life…’
Cervantes’ tenure in the Electric Vehicle (EV) giant began in 2018 as a production associate. He was drawn to the company during a difficult period in his life, aiming to improve his life after personal struggles.
“I was drawn to Tesla because I needed a way to improve my situation,” he told Business Insider. “I’d gone through a divorce, I got arrested for drinking and driving, and I was working two jobs to make ends meet.”
During that time, one of Cervantes’ best friends who was working in Tesla advised him to apply. “When I got the job, I quit the two jobs and immediately got a better-paying role with more time off,” he recalled.
‘I believed in the mission’ but then something snapped..
Cervantes quickly advanced through multiple roles during his tenure and praised Tesla for offering him career growth and better pay without a formal education.
Despite this, a significant shift in his loyalty began to occur due to Elon Musk’s increasingly controversial public actions. While there had always been a “cult of personality” around the Tesla CEO, Cervantes initially “believed in the mission”.
Even early controversies like Musk smoking weed on the Joe Rogan incident or the “Thai diver incident” did not deter his commitment.
The breaking point
The turning point came with Musk’s deeper involvement in Twitter and politics, which Cervantes felt was “detracting from the company’s mission.”
The “giveaway for prospective voters” struck Cervantes as “morally wrong,” making him actively dig into Musk’s history and the company’s unfulfilled promises like full self-driving vehicles.
The breaking point arrived with an incident in which Musk appeared to make a “Nazi salute”, leading Cervantes to feel “ashamed to tell people where I work”.
Even though Cervantes chose to leave without a job lined up, he had an explanation: “I have to leave. I can’t do this anymore. It’s getting to a point where I feel like I’m compromising myself morally by walking through those doors every day.”
Despite the emotional difficulty of leaving a place that transformed his life, Cervantes asserted, “I didn’t leave the place because of the company. I left because of the face of the company.”