The first signs came when Tesla Motors' founder, Martin Eberhard, was ousted. Now it looks like the purge or "stealth bloodbath" is accelerating, which is never good news, start-up or no.

It also doesn't help that missives like this from new hires and ex-employees are showing up at Tesla Founders Blog:

The atmosphere at Tesla Motors has been suffering for the last couple of months as the new management have slowly squeezed the life out of engineering. The way in which the layoff/reduction-in-force/firings have been handled is one almighty clustercabbage. In a stroke of pure genius, the two HR folks were the first to go, leaving nobody to turn out the lights. Only after they left the building did they realize that now there was nobody to write the termination letters. Like I said, pure undiluted genius.

Say it ain't so :(