Sometimes, insecure people don't like to have people who they know are smarter under them because they fear they will eventually try to take their job. Second, manager compensation is some function of the number of heads and pay grades of people under them. For that reason, managers have two easy ways to increase their own pay: 1. Keep the salary of the highest paid or at least a few people under them as high as possible (managers usually, but not always make more than the people they manage) and have as many people under them as possible. So firing someone would go against that objective. A weak manager will try to convince others that they need a lot of people because they are doing a lot of work. So having 12 mediocre engineers under you looks better than having 3 rockstars who are super efficient.
Well, from 40 to over 70 by close... it's about a 10% drop. Looks like Musk was feeling bad for Gates losing a few bucks shorting TSLA on the recent long from 617 to 780 so he threw him a bone to get out while he can. Or maybe Musk was feeling upstaged with these predicted hurricanes and floods so he had to spill out his 2 cents? We'll never know.
"Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port, and the other was an atrocious liar." (Don Bamford) Smooth sailing!!!
There are quite a number of those, serving various purposes from pick/packing, RFID, loading, etc. Usually systems integration is the weakness, with companies offering valid solutions for specific tasks that then require many hours of coding to integrate with legacy systems. It's also important to remember that human replacement technology needs maintenance and the equipment can be fickle. For the customer, it's an unwelcomed expense. For the business, it's an income stream. Logistics companies always weigh the total cost of tech against the total cost of labor.
Symbotic also in the news very recently...seems that robotics companies are being looked at hard lately to stem labor and supply chain issues. Not sure this will be a silver bullet solution though. Doing research on this topic, Japan has done extensive robotics and labor replacement introductions. It has led to a kinda of soulless empty existence within most of the industries that have used them in mass. The remaining humans in the industry and the neighboring towns no longer thrive and community suffers greatly. Japan itself has a very low birthrate and much of its industrial areas only house elderly and empty homes. Most youth leave and move on to innovation and start up centers near universities and research areas. Although... much of the US midwest has also become abandoned and most youth have gone. But US midwest is central to logistics and hub distribution because of its geography. So I guess in certain situations labor replacement technologies will occur in large number regardless. Wlamart is talking about complete rebuilds of midwest and deep south hub distribution with Symbotic Corp "totally automated warehousing and autonomous trucking and automated shipping".
In countries like the US where jobs are plentiful, warehousing/logistics labor is a real pain point for employers. It's really tough to convince guys to show up for work, it's impossible to impose a no drugs policy. The existing human replacement tech can do just about anything warehousing labor can, just faster, with fewer errors. Maintenance of that equipment and software support require more expensive skills that quickly add up. In the end, the decision lies with how much of a burden the human labor force is versus integration and maintenance cost of equipment. Either solution can be outsourced or done in-house, but that's more of an accounting question.