Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."
Sounds to me like the plan is to finish what is already under contract and do no more. I sure am glad the US authorities committed to that north american charger standard... what's even the status on getting a full specification for it including third-party development at this point anyway?
I can't pull a quote for the new vehicle development team's situation because Tesla basically just keeps making the Model 3 with barely even incremental improvements to it, and even that one has totally inconsistent build quality vehicle to vehicle. Unless someone thinks the Cybertruck is going to save them -- hah.
We can't claim to know it left them with "bad" employees. I think there's vanishingly little evidence that recruiters actually go after the "good" employees effectively -- I'm pretty skeptical that a pro recruiter actually gets you better employees, they just make the process of getting employees way less stressful. We also have no reason to assume that a good or bad employee is correlated in any way with caring about not returning to office -- it's possible very bad employees are just as likely to quit as very good ones. How do you even tell good from bad, anyway?
What this "return to office" stuff definitely DOES do is preferentially retain the most obedient/desperate employees. Which may be part of the goal, along with low-key downsizing.