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Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week
- xfour 9y agoWow love to here the inside scoop on this. Anyone from Tesla want to comment. Accountability for late shipments?
- jandrese 9y agoOr it could just be trimming some fat.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoStrange that always happens at the bottom of the org chart instead of the top.
- late2part 9y agoReally? I don't agree. Average CXO position lasts 3-5 years... https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/31713/the-average-age-and-tenure-of-c-suite-executives https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2017/31713/the-average... Lots of fat trimmed all around. Kalanick, etc...
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- maxxxxx 9y agoTheir severance is a little better in average though....
- komaromy 9y agoI don't see how you can possibly construe Kalanick's firing as a result of 'trimming the fat'. He generated controversies for years and he was finally taken out in the face of massive public backlash.
- late2part 9y agoFat.... Cancer.... Ma Ma Hu Hu - same same but different. Things that must be removed.
- mulmen 9y agoHow did you conclude this is a result of trimming fat and not just moving on to a better opportunity?
- Molkar 9y ago"Trimming fat" is a funny euphemism for sending people into unemployment.
- lotsofpulp 9y agoNot all people add value to an organization, and they might stop adding value too. Unfortunately, it's not possible to know this for sure prior to hiring, so the only realistic way to maintain the organization is with constant pruning.
- mulmen 9y agoI think this is a bit of a fallacy. You don't have to always be firing some percentage of your workforce. While hiring the best is not easy and you may need to let people go you also shouldn't just constantly be on the hunt for the next head to chop. I have seen the effects of stack ranking and it's not pretty.
- lotsofpulp 9y agoI don't mean to suggest that there needs to be a set percentage that must be fired at some set time interval, but I do think that new hires don't always work out, and people can change from being a value adder to a value detractor, especially once you get to the huge numbers of employees that some companies have. The process of evaluating the people that make up the organization should be under constant improvement though, and again, simply because of dealing with large numbers, there might be a few false positives, but on the whole as an organization, management should be on the lookout for who isn't performing.
- mulmen 9y agoI disagree with the adversarial approach to management you seem to advocate at the end of your comment. I think it can create a toxic environment where management focuses on failures and ignores success. If someone has to be let go that is a failure at the management level or at the recruiting level and the goal should be to minimize it.
- Nothorized 9y agoTo give a scale, Tesla has more than 30 000 employees [1]. That is just a little above 1%. [1] https://electrek.co/2017/06/01/tesla-elon-musk-employees-hardcore-tesla-killers/ https://electrek.co/2017/06/01/tesla-elon-musk-employees-har...
- dmoy 9y agoYea seems like the more interesting title/angle for the article would be "Tesla misses model3 production by 5-6x", rather than "Tesla fires 1% of workforce".
- Avshalom 9y ago1% is a hell of a lot of percent for a company of 30000.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hkmurakami 9y agoThe typical headline making layoff % at a Fortune500 type company is ~10%, fwiw.
- nostrademons 9y agoSome of them just routinely fire the bottom 10% every year.
- KGIII 9y agoPopularized by Jack Welch, called Rank-and-Yank. He has a couple of books but I'll not be making the effort to link them.
- hkmurakami 9y agoAlso "Up or Out" at the professional service firms, though I believe the percentage for this is around 3-5%.
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoIt’s interesing that the company can just decide not to report this as a mass layoff. While the performance reasons for letting someone go may be true, it seems like an easily exploitable loophole. Model 3 production rates were missed by a wide margin, so at least a few people should have known that management would react.
- Avshalom 9y agoDo public company actually have an obligation to report mass layoffs?
- cbanek 9y agoYes, it's the WARN act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... California also has their own version: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/californiawarnact.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-...
- Avshalom 9y agoTIL. ETA: this is getting downvoted; I have enough karma that I don't care about being downvoted but for the record, I am sincere that Today I Learned.
- csours 9y agoReddit style, low value add comments tend to get downvoted on HN.
- Avshalom 9y agoI mean like I said, I don't really give a shit about being down voted, it's not about to get me hell banned or anything but: cbanek, js2, fjsolwmv and pravula might care that i am glad to be informed and my original comment was actually a question and not just me being a dick.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoIf you read this article about some of the cheap labor they used. I wonder has this anything to do with some of the Investigations the DOJ is doing in to work visa abuse? ## Article about imported Labor. http://extras.mercurynews.com/silicon-valley-imported-labor/ http://extras.mercurynews.com/silicon-valley-imported-labor/
- bitL 9y agoGaming industry style? Milestone reached, instead of thank you, get off my lawn?
- virtuabhi 9y ago"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature. Tesla denied the accusations. Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted." - Local paper http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/13/4819750/ http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/13/4819750/ Edit: Added more lines from the preceding paragraph
- dmitrygr 9y ago> pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted I hate sneakily-worded sentences like this. Also among them, were women, hetrosexuals, and probably one or two Vietnam veterans. Some believe they were targetted.
- virtuabhi 9y agoMy rule of thumb is to give benefit of doubt to weaker sections.
- wallace_f 9y agoIn theory, Tesla might actually be the weaker party in this case. An industry-specific union is known in textbook economics as a labor cartel, or as a device which holds labor hostage. While historically they were necessary, today fewer examples exist of employees as the captive market--where a union makes sense. In other words, many times it is the employer who is taken advantage of. If unions were open and free to join for all people, I mean that would be one thing; but they are not. Membership is dependent on things such as family. They're tough and politically correct, but regressive and unfair.
- weirdstuff 9y agoHow's it sneaky? Business management and shareholders routinely try to shut down unionizing all the time throughout the last two centuries. My buddy is a manager at a national retail chain and often comments on how proactively anti-union they are, just like their competitors. Other demographic groups like the ones you pointed out really don't have that same collective effect on the bottom line for shareholders across industries like those that unionize, whose only trait in common is that of a provider of labor.
- m52go 9y ago> Though Tesla cited performance as the reason for the firings, the source told Reuters he was fired in spite of never having been given a bad review. Highly odd for a company that's just starting production of its highest-volume product ever. Is there something about Tesla beyond the hype we should know? If I were an investor, this news would have me quite concerned. You would think they can't hire fast enough.
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- yipbub 9y agoHow so? (genuinely asking) Isn't Tesla focused on using automation to scale?
- throwingerman 9y agoI would bet it is related to the mismanagement of the German automation plant that Tesla acquired about a year ago (on mobile, too hard to post links, maybe someone wants to help). The plan as I understand it was to use the technology at this company to speed up production but it hasn't been going as planned, in large part due to misunderstanding of cultural differences i.e. No one is going to be happy here in Germany if you start changing the terms of contracts that were supposed to last for the next few years and people in general don't respect abusive bosses. Unemployment rate is 3%, no need to (and lower for highly skilled workers). And you can't just tell people to not take vacation because production is behind, you'll get laughed at.
- dom0 9y agoGrohmann Engineering. And yes, this has happened a few times now - American corp buys some German corp and replaces managers with American ones (or American-styled ones) and a few years later no one in the industry wants to work for them any more.
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- grandalf 9y agoIt's important to keep in mind that Tesla (like Walmart, Whole Foods, and Amazon) has been targeted by big labor for infiltration and union formation [1] [2] This is not necessarily because working conditions make workers feel that they would prefer the tradeoffs of unionization, but simply because Tesla is much more competitive without its workforce unionized, and so labor groups that are entrenched in legacy car manufacturing wish to prevent Tesla from accelerating those companies' decline. In many states labor unions have significant power granted by favorable laws that far exceed the market power they derive simply from organizing labor and leveling the playing field a bit. [3] [4] So while I strongly support organized labor in abstract [5], it's difficult to blame Tesla for wishing to make its workforce less vulnerable to attack from big labor. Like many interest groups, big labor is mostly concerned with its own survival [6] and growth, and is not really about the workers at all. For example, when Borders Books employees went on strike, it was the big labor groups that sponsored ruffians to join the employees on the picket line and make the strike much more aggressive. Similarly, whenever you see an inflatable rat alongside striking workers, chances are that rat was brought in by big labor to help dramatize the strike effort. [7] They also help name and shame fellow employees who aren't enthusiastic about the union to exert social pressure to make it form. 1. https://groundswell.org/whole-foods-employees-move-to-unionize-but-im-conflicted-about-it-heres-why/ https://groundswell.org/whole-foods-employees-move-to-unioni... 2. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Union-Organizers-Target-Amazon-com-Labor-hoping-2695088.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Union-Organizers-Targ... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_labor_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_labor_law 4. http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-charged-uaw-employees-supressing-unionization-efforts-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-charged-uaw-employees-s... 5. While labor laws came to exist for good reason and helped improve living standards quite a bit, they went too far and tried to address too many issues via labor laws. Many things that are given to workers via labor laws should be given to all citizens, whether employed or not. Labor laws should not create an incentive for firms to eliminate unions, and should not act to correct social inequality. If such measure are needed they should happen via other laws. 6. https://www.unionfacts.com/employee/Air_Line_Pilots/TIMOTHY/CANOLL/ https://www.unionfacts.com/employee/Air_Line_Pilots/TIMOTHY/... 7. http://mentalfloss.com/article/28466/story-behind-giant-inflatable-union-rat http://mentalfloss.com/article/28466/story-behind-giant-infl...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Molkar 9y agoPaid Tesla actors are gaming the comments. Hacker News is influential. Votes can easily be gamed. Fake accounts are easy to make and hard to track. Noise is added to mix good info with misinformation to confuse and frustrate people sifting through comments trying to make sense of things. These people will make weaker arguments against Tesla's actions so those arguments can be easily discredited. People making stronger arguments against Tesla will be clumped with them. Trolling increases noise and frustration. It makes people not want to read or post adversarial comments. Denigrate, dismiss, discredit. Sort comments by old. One of the top 3 upvoted comment is usually gamed, because it makes the most lucid argument (it was pre-written; look at timestamp) and is seen as the most solid piece of info amid the noise.
- mjcl 9y agoThey're not alone. I spent about five hours (across several meetings) trying to convince a CFO that giving an employee no annual increase was a negative signal. I think he only gave in when he realized I wasn't going to let it go.
- mulmen 9y agoIs a complete lack of empathy required in order to reach that level?
- dang 9y agoYou posted this like 4 times. That's obviously not cool. Also you're breaking the HN guidelines which ask users not to make gratuitous accusations of astroturfing or shillage without evidence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sdk300 9y agoPaid Tesla shills are dominating the comments. Hacker News is influential. Upvotes can easily be gamed. Noise is added to mix good info with misinformation to confuse and frustrate people sifting through comments trying to make sense of things. These people will make weaker arguments against Tesla's actions so those arguments can be easily discredited. People making stronger arguments against Tesla will be clumped with them. Trolling increases noise and frustration. It makes people not want to read adversarial comments. Denigrate, dismiss, discredit. Sort comments by old. Highest upvoted comment is usually gamed, because it makes the most lucid argument (it was pre-written) and is seen as the most solid piece of info amid the noise. This comment will not be allowed to rise above 3 points, but will not fall below 1 point. The ideal number is 2 points. It will be flagged for deletion.
- idlewords 9y agoAnd yet they failed to fire the worst-performing employee of them all.
- chmaynard 9y agoAmen.
- baddox 9y agoWhat’s the general impression of what it’s like to work for Tesla? I’ve always gotten the impression that they work their employees quite hard, and that they can afford to do so since there are a lot of talented people who are intrigued by their specific mission. That sounds similar to what I’ve heard about video game development. I’m sure it’s a crude oversimplification, and my only anecdata is one acquaintance who worked in accounting at Tesla and had worked straight through Christmas two years in a row.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rubberchiben 9y agoPaid Tesla shills are dominating the comments. Hacker News is influential. Upvotes can easily be gamed. Noise is added to mix good info with misinformation to confuse and frustrate people sifting through comments trying to make sense of things. These people will make weaker arguments against Tesla's actions so those arguments can be easily discredited. People making stronger arguments against Tesla will be clumped with them. Trolling increases noise and frustration. It makes people not want to read adversarial comments. Denigrate, dismiss, discredit. Sort comments by old. Highest upvoted comment is usually gamed, because it makes the most lucid argument (it was pre-written) and is seen as the most solid piece of info amid the noise. This comment will not be allowed to rise above 3 points, but will not fall below 1 point. The ideal number is 2 points. It will be flagged for deletion.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 9y agoWARN Act: [A] US labor law which protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees, as defined in the Act. In 2001, there were about 2,000 mass layoffs and plant closures which were subject to WARN advance notice requirements and which affected about 660,000 employees. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrai...
- KGIII 9y agoYour link indicates they aren't covered by the WARN act. It is fewer than 499 employees and less than 33% at a single facility.
- dredmorbius 9y agoAh, good eyes. I wasn't sure quite what the threshold was. I've seen companies get spanked for a pattern of layoffs which stay just below the threshold, so there's that. If there's a plausible case that this is targeted at union organisers / organisation, there's that as well, though prosecution at the national level strikes me as unlikely, even with Musk's testy relationship with the Trump administration. There's also California law to contend with. Same article: California requires advance notice for plant closings, layoffs, and relocations of 50 or more employees regardless of percentage of workforce, that is, without the federal "one-third" rule for mass layoffs of fewer than 500 employees. Also, the California law applies to employers with 75 or more employees, counting both full-time and part-time employees.
- KGIII 9y agoI am entirely unfamiliar with California's regulations. But, unless the penalty is insignificant, it seems unlikely that they'd flagrantly violate the law. It seems very likely that they were advised by legal council and followed those recommendations. The visibility of Tesla makes me suspect they are very likely to be aware of both optics and law. Disclosure: I am invested in Tesla and have been since the early days. However, I've made every effort to remain objective,
- jefferson123 9y agoIs anyone else being redirected to a “congratulations you won” type website hosted on cloudfront.net? I’m using Safari, iPhone 6s, iOS 11.0.2, T Mobile, in NYC (only happens on LTE, doesn’t happen on wifi network)
- dredmorbius 9y agoCheck your DNS provider. Google seems better (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4), OpenDNS possibly. I used to get those every so often. Since I've been massively firewalling sketchy domains, not so much. (About 33k entries, mostly based on uBlock and other blocklists.)
- jefferson123 9y agoAny way to do this for LTE on a non jail broken phone?
- dredmorbius 9y agoNot off the top of my head. I've discovered that Android does seem to have dnsmasq installed by default in explorations of my own non-jailbroken phone. Though I've not configured it. Most of this I deal with at the router, using wifi. AT&T in particular are exceptionally bad about this based on my exploration.
- projectant 9y agoMaybe it's about cutting costs for new project ramp up, or maybe they are trying to get rid of leakers / security threats / bad eggs, or both.
- Bridon 9y agoDespite multi billion - dollar investments in cyber security, one of its root problems (blessings in disguise) has been largely ignored: who are the people who write malicious codes? Who are the real hackers? Aye. We stay anonymous for some good reasons. The law may feel what we do is illegal but we save lifes, relationships, jobs, even the government hire us in secret, without notice. Well, if indeed you seek a professional hacker with absolute discretion, then you have met the right person. If you are not in for a real job please do not contact me. While i was working on a job, a lady contacted me saying she needed to hack into an iPhone, and she needed both the messages deleted and the new ones, the call logs, the messages sent, the EVERYTHING in the phone which could be done in hours but she included that she needed to hear the conversation of the past calls and she wants to monitor the new calls listening to every conversation, in which i call SORCERY! Such can never be done! Since i have been hacking for years, i have never came across such. Anyone who says it can be done, you AVOID THEM. They are more or less scammers. Be careful so u don't get scammed. You need a hack job done? Send a mail to Mobilotech@protonmail.com