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I’m wondering why Tesla isn’t considering something like this I’m thinking it’s because they aren’t firing people at random. They’re letting go their weakest

by 300bps 8y ago

I’m wondering why Tesla isn’t considering something like this I’m thinking it’s because they aren’t firing people at random. They’re letting go their weakest performers. This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades: https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-employees-every-year.html https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-...

raesene9 8y ago
That would imply that they're able to correctly identify their "weakest performers" with sufficient accuracy to do that. From what I've seen of large corp. performance appraisal systems, that's very rarely the case. Those systems tend to reward people who are good at self-promotion, not necessarily people who are good at their jobs.
collyw 8y ago
> They’re letting go their weakest performers. This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades. Not in places that I have worked. Weak performers still have jobs years later, yet decent performers have been sacked quickly at other companies when they were struggling with money.
- gaius 8y ago
  Because positions are made redundant, not people.
  - collyw 8y ago
    Not in the last case I was thinking about. But then management were pretty clueless about tech...
matwood 8y ago
In principle I agree that companies should always get rid of people who are not working up to some defined standard. I disagree that a company should stack rank and get rid of the lowest performers for no other reason than 'because'. Hiring and firing is hard, and very disruptive. If the whole team is better than the standard set by the company, the company should consider itself lucky and not screw it up. With that said, in large companies it can be very hard to determine just who is below whatever standard is set. Instead it becomes more of a game to be liked by your manager or claim credit for work. By the way, part of working at or above a standard also includes not being an asshole.
- Xylakant 8y ago
  I also think stack-ranking is hard or even impossible to get right. The criteria often favor those people that produce visible work and tend to disfavor people that enable said work (think: producing new features vs. maintenance, writing high-profile code vs. doing the review for those, producing visible output vs. mentoring, ...) So stack ranking (or any kind of ranking by criteria) tends to nudge people into "let's do what the standard expects us to do" instead of "let's do what makes the team, company and product improve."
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's not how it usually works at large layoffs. They lay off whole departments regardless of performance.
justin66 8y ago
This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades: https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-employees-every-year.html https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-... It's a short article so maybe a little leeway should be given, but it is nuts the way the author equates reviewing employees and firing employees: You don't have to a rigid rule, such as fire the bottom 10% every year, but you do want to be reviewing your entire workforce (at the very least) once a year, with an eye toward constantly improving it. You should be reviewing your employees a lot more often than once a year and it doesn't need to result in anyone getting fired. Reviews are a more effective process - especially in the small company environment the author is talking about - if nobody ever approaches them like that (with the expectation that people will be fired).

by 300bps 8y ago

raesene9 8y ago

That would imply that they're able to correctly identify their "weakest performers" with sufficient accuracy to do that. From what I've seen of large corp. performance appraisal systems, that's very rarely the case. Those systems tend to reward people who are good at self-promotion, not necessarily people who are good at their jobs.

collyw 8y ago

> They’re letting go their weakest performers. This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades. Not in places that I have worked. Weak performers still have jobs years later, yet decent performers have been sacked quickly at other companies when they were struggling with money.

gaius 8y ago
Because positions are made redundant, not people.
- collyw 8y ago
  Not in the last case I was thinking about. But then management were pretty clueless about tech...

matwood 8y ago

In principle I agree that companies should always get rid of people who are not working up to some defined standard. I disagree that a company should stack rank and get rid of the lowest performers for no other reason than 'because'. Hiring and firing is hard, and very disruptive. If the whole team is better than the standard set by the company, the company should consider itself lucky and not screw it up. With that said, in large companies it can be very hard to determine just who is below whatever standard is set. Instead it becomes more of a game to be liked by your manager or claim credit for work. By the way, part of working at or above a standard also includes not being an asshole.

Xylakant 8y ago
I also think stack-ranking is hard or even impossible to get right. The criteria often favor those people that produce visible work and tend to disfavor people that enable said work (think: producing new features vs. maintenance, writing high-profile code vs. doing the review for those, producing visible output vs. mentoring, ...) So stack ranking (or any kind of ranking by criteria) tends to nudge people into "let's do what the standard expects us to do" instead of "let's do what makes the team, company and product improve."

maxxxxx 8y ago

That's not how it usually works at large layoffs. They lay off whole departments regardless of performance.

justin66 8y ago

This is very common and has been encouraged in business for decades: https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-employees-every-year.html https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-... It's a short article so maybe a little leeway should be given, but it is nuts the way the author equates reviewing employees and firing employees: You don't have to a rigid rule, such as fire the bottom 10% every year, but you do want to be reviewing your entire workforce (at the very least) once a year, with an eye toward constantly improving it. You should be reviewing your employees a lot more often than once a year and it doesn't need to result in anyone getting fired. Reviews are a more effective process - especially in the small company environment the author is talking about - if nobody ever approaches them like that (with the expectation that people will be fired).