7 ms·

1,200 of 33,000 employees amounts to 3.6% of the work force. This level of action, 1 in 25 employees, gives managers an opportunity to release employees that lo

1,200 of 33,000 employees amounts to 3.6% of the work force. This level of action, 1 in 25 employees, gives managers an opportunity to release employees that looked good in the interview but did not meet expectations. Whether Tesla conducted this in a proper manner is open to debate and perhaps details will emerge if/when any former employees pursue Tesla in court. But any company needs to address the inevitable hiring mistakes and I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that.

Bartweiss 9y ago
> I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that If the lack of promised performance reviews is accurate, that's the obvious issue - it implies a labor force decision disguised as a performance decision. This is a pretty common move in e.g. game development, so it certainly isn't unthinkable. The point about total workforce size is well taken, though; this still seems like it could be as simple as "times are tough so we're cutting more stringently than we might otherwise".
- walshemj 9y ago
  Then the WARN act applies
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- SRasch 9y ago
  Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even. Concerning the performance review: would expect that after acquisition, SolarCity would adjust to Tesla's performance standards. So even if they were based on prior performance reviews, still seems like a reasonable action and level to me. As much as I try to squint, I'm having troubles seeing the smoking gun here.
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    > Welch has said his first rule of firing an employee as a manager is to avoid any element of surprise. Your workplace ought to be built on constructive criticism and feedback. > Expectations should be so clear that anyone in the aforementioned bottom tenth of your firm knows they'll be there before the ranking and yanking starts. "Anybody who is fired and surprised? That's the bosses' fault," Welch said on Bloomberg TV in 2015. Contrast the GE description to what happened here with Tesla: absolute blindsiding where the employees were not given any performance feedback before getting axed. https://www.thestreet.com/story/14315785/1/how-to-fire-people-like-jack-welch.html https://www.thestreet.com/story/14315785/1/how-to-fire-peopl...
  - ifhd 9y ago
    When MS fired people for performance every year people hated them for it, and their culture was considered notoriously awful.
    - brianwawok 9y ago
      They had stack rankings. Fire one guy per department even if everyone is ok. Any signs this is what tesla did? Lowest 2% is fine. Lowest 2% per team is not fine, means you need a scape goat for each team.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    I thought the concensus now was that Welch's leadership under GE was not good. There's been a lot of rants about the utility of stack ranking and this sort of "fire the worst performers because everyone else is better" attitude. Namely wrong incentives. You have John Carmack and a clone of John Carmack working on your game engine. You have stack ranking. Which one should you let go during review season? Should you hire some extra people to protect your good people?
    - kamaal 9y ago
      That worked at GE largely because they were getting rid of the gold watch retirement crowd. That worked in the past as companies had people who worked there all life, and most of the time late in career they would come to work, do nothing all day and go home. Jack Welch was simply doing long pending layoffs.
moduspol 9y ago
Indeed. Calling 3.6% a "mass firing" to me looks like pushing a narrative.
- gowld 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff > "Mass layoff" is defined by the United States Department of Labor as 50 or more workers laid off from the same company around the same time.
  - yeezul 9y ago
    That's a pretty inaccurate way set point a term. In SolarCity case, that means 0.15% of their workforce.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      Its what the law calls it and with my Industrial Relations / HR hat on firing > 50 at one time is redundancy / layoffs. firing an entire team of 10 or so for malfeasance I could buy - btw collective punishment of employees is allowed under common law
  - moduspol 9y ago
    By that definition, they could lay off only 0.15% of their workforce and still qualify. Likewise, bigger companies are probably in a perpetual state of "mass layoff." Context is important, though. The term can be simultaneously technically correct in the context of US Department of Labor terminology and misleading to a general audience. I think that is happening here.
    - FireBeyond 9y ago
      If the layoff is part of one event, then why shouldn't it qualify? Your "bigger company" example is just an example of scale, there's just lots of individual events. Instead, here is SolarCity firing 1,200 employees on the same day and saying that it's all just coincidence on their individual performances, not a unified decision.
hellbreaker 9y ago
Although I agree with you, you are also making an assumption that certain managers are not hiring mistakes as well. Managers can be just as bad as employees. Especially in a big company, bad managers can hide behind smoke screens by shifting the blame on employees.
- gozur88 9y ago
  Do we know there aren't any managers leaving? Where I work when they do this sort of thing only the very top layers of management are secure.
- taeric 9y ago
  I think the assumption there was more that, for the purposes of that sentence, all employees are workers. Managers are just employees that are assigned to manage people.
eighthnate 9y ago
> 1,200 of 33,000 employees amounts to 3.6% of the work force. This level of action, 1 in 25 employees, gives managers an opportunity to release employees that looked good in the interview but did not meet expectations. That level of "firing" is rather suspect for an "new" company that is supposed to be growing. > But any company needs to address the inevitable hiring mistakes and I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that. If you are making that level of mistake where you have to conduct mass layoffs, then it doesn't bode well for tesla.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  It's so easy to hire bad apples. I've been through three rounds of layoffs at two separate companies: each time most of the people who were let go were poor performers, they either were bad salespeople or bad coders. The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5, and taking frequent time off for silly reasons like "my rabbit is sick." As long as you're cutting less than 10% of staff you're cutting fat, not muscle (though you might hit a small amount of muscle by accident).
  - Posibyte 9y ago
    > The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5 I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?
    - StudentStuff 9y ago
      Because the code-slaves should work harder and give at least 80hrs a week! No, but seriously, if a job is asking more than 9 to 5, they're asking you to put out sub-standard work while stealing your time needlessly. So many people here forget 12 hours pay for an 8 hour day was a rallying cry for organized labor at one point, and that all these terrible labor practices that seem common at smaller tech firms (and Tesla) are very bad and create bugs, sickly workers and hurt everyone involved. Not that management is smart enough to realize that!
    - jdavis703 9y ago

Bartweiss 9y ago

> I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that If the lack of promised performance reviews is accurate, that's the obvious issue - it implies a labor force decision disguised as a performance decision. This is a pretty common move in e.g. game development, so it certainly isn't unthinkable. The point about total workforce size is well taken, though; this still seems like it could be as simple as "times are tough so we're cutting more stringently than we might otherwise".

walshemj 9y ago
Then the WARN act applies
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
SRasch 9y ago
Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even. Concerning the performance review: would expect that after acquisition, SolarCity would adjust to Tesla's performance standards. So even if they were based on prior performance reviews, still seems like a reasonable action and level to me. As much as I try to squint, I'm having troubles seeing the smoking gun here.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  > Welch has said his first rule of firing an employee as a manager is to avoid any element of surprise. Your workplace ought to be built on constructive criticism and feedback. > Expectations should be so clear that anyone in the aforementioned bottom tenth of your firm knows they'll be there before the ranking and yanking starts. "Anybody who is fired and surprised? That's the bosses' fault," Welch said on Bloomberg TV in 2015. Contrast the GE description to what happened here with Tesla: absolute blindsiding where the employees were not given any performance feedback before getting axed. https://www.thestreet.com/story/14315785/1/how-to-fire-people-like-jack-welch.html https://www.thestreet.com/story/14315785/1/how-to-fire-peopl...
- ifhd 9y ago
  When MS fired people for performance every year people hated them for it, and their culture was considered notoriously awful.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    They had stack rankings. Fire one guy per department even if everyone is ok. Any signs this is what tesla did? Lowest 2% is fine. Lowest 2% per team is not fine, means you need a scape goat for each team.
- rtpg 9y ago
  I thought the concensus now was that Welch's leadership under GE was not good. There's been a lot of rants about the utility of stack ranking and this sort of "fire the worst performers because everyone else is better" attitude. Namely wrong incentives. You have John Carmack and a clone of John Carmack working on your game engine. You have stack ranking. Which one should you let go during review season? Should you hire some extra people to protect your good people?
  - kamaal 9y ago
    That worked at GE largely because they were getting rid of the gold watch retirement crowd. That worked in the past as companies had people who worked there all life, and most of the time late in career they would come to work, do nothing all day and go home. Jack Welch was simply doing long pending layoffs.

moduspol 9y ago

Indeed. Calling 3.6% a "mass firing" to me looks like pushing a narrative.

gowld 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff > "Mass layoff" is defined by the United States Department of Labor as 50 or more workers laid off from the same company around the same time.
- yeezul 9y ago
  That's a pretty inaccurate way set point a term. In SolarCity case, that means 0.15% of their workforce.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Its what the law calls it and with my Industrial Relations / HR hat on firing > 50 at one time is redundancy / layoffs. firing an entire team of 10 or so for malfeasance I could buy - btw collective punishment of employees is allowed under common law
- moduspol 9y ago
  By that definition, they could lay off only 0.15% of their workforce and still qualify. Likewise, bigger companies are probably in a perpetual state of "mass layoff." Context is important, though. The term can be simultaneously technically correct in the context of US Department of Labor terminology and misleading to a general audience. I think that is happening here.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    If the layoff is part of one event, then why shouldn't it qualify? Your "bigger company" example is just an example of scale, there's just lots of individual events. Instead, here is SolarCity firing 1,200 employees on the same day and saying that it's all just coincidence on their individual performances, not a unified decision.

hellbreaker 9y ago

Although I agree with you, you are also making an assumption that certain managers are not hiring mistakes as well. Managers can be just as bad as employees. Especially in a big company, bad managers can hide behind smoke screens by shifting the blame on employees.

gozur88 9y ago
Do we know there aren't any managers leaving? Where I work when they do this sort of thing only the very top layers of management are secure.
taeric 9y ago
I think the assumption there was more that, for the purposes of that sentence, all employees are workers. Managers are just employees that are assigned to manage people.

eighthnate 9y ago

> 1,200 of 33,000 employees amounts to 3.6% of the work force. This level of action, 1 in 25 employees, gives managers an opportunity to release employees that looked good in the interview but did not meet expectations. That level of "firing" is rather suspect for an "new" company that is supposed to be growing. > But any company needs to address the inevitable hiring mistakes and I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that. If you are making that level of mistake where you have to conduct mass layoffs, then it doesn't bode well for tesla.

jdavis703 9y ago
It's so easy to hire bad apples. I've been through three rounds of layoffs at two separate companies: each time most of the people who were let go were poor performers, they either were bad salespeople or bad coders. The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5, and taking frequent time off for silly reasons like "my rabbit is sick." As long as you're cutting less than 10% of staff you're cutting fat, not muscle (though you might hit a small amount of muscle by accident).
- Posibyte 9y ago
  > The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5 I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    Because the code-slaves should work harder and give at least 80hrs a week! No, but seriously, if a job is asking more than 9 to 5, they're asking you to put out sub-standard work while stealing your time needlessly. So many people here forget 12 hours pay for an 8 hour day was a rallying cry for organized labor at one point, and that all these terrible labor practices that seem common at smaller tech firms (and Tesla) are very bad and create bugs, sickly workers and hurt everyone involved. Not that management is smart enough to realize that!
  - jdavis703 9y ago