7 ms·

Makes sense that if you are an executive at a car factory, you should show up at the car factory and not just be some faceless void that sends orders from email

by imgabe 4y ago

Makes sense that if you are an executive at a car factory, you should show up at the car factory and not just be some faceless void that sends orders from email. Yet, people are in here acting like this is a violation of the Geneva convention or something.

crossroadsguy 4y ago
Maybe there’s some similarity? :) Because Geneva Convention also applies to weaker/smaller or defeated countries. For the rest it’s something on the paper; like human rights.
forum_ghost 4y ago
Indeed. Why shouldn't there be a binding UN convention that enforces work from home where possible to save us from climate change?
- temp8964 4y ago
  LoL. Whose gets to decide "possible"?
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  Well for starters, the moment (nearly) all other nations dictate the laws of your country, you no longer have a country – and certainly not a democratic one. Your elections become irrelevant because people in distant lands (including those with tyrannical governments) can simply overrule the will of your people. Codifying the long-term destruction of your own nation into law for the sake of a single issue is a bad idea.
- bruce511 4y ago
  Let me answer this with an analogy. And I'm really not wanting to explore the analogy directly (so let's not get off topic) but it may help you to understand how this ends. Why shouldn't there be a binding UN resolution that enforces public transport, and bans the production and use of cars to save us from climate change? Or here's another even more contraversial one (again, let's not get distracted) why don't we have a UN resolution banning the personal ownership of firearms? I'm hoping you can see from these why UN binding resolutions would be pointless - they would simply result in the ultimate dissolution of the UN. (uxit?)
drewcoo 4y ago
- pesfandiar 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
  - rat9988 4y ago
    You missed his point though.
mise_en_place 4y ago
It’s interesting. Would a hardware company like Atari, or Apple, succeed if all the execs were fully remote? My gut feeling tells me no.
- ng55QPSK 4y ago
  There is a reason why we talk Metaverse/XR in Industry 4.0. Being at the place of production might not be needed in the future, anyway.
  - supramouse 4y ago
    sitting with a headset on for 8hrs a day seems worse than being in a cube
    - djhn 4y ago
      In a company owned headset, that measures your resting heart rate, blood pressure and eye movement with a dystopian sensor/camera setup to monitor your body language.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        Could measure your brain activity to give you a notification to stop slacking off. Or detect non typical brain activity to alert a manager to check the worker isn’t playing games or looking at memes.
        asteroidbelt 4y ago
        You can do it already by installing malware on employee computers.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  This is confusing to me because most Apple execs don't live in Asia.
sulam 4y ago
From the email you can quickly work out that he intends this to apply to everyone. He would not ask for exceptions to be routed to him if he meant this just to apply to his direct staff.
- imgabe 4y ago
  Many of the workers have to be there because it is physically impossible to do their jobs if they aren't. The rest have to support, manage, or otherwise interact with the people who need to physically be there, and the most efficient way to do that is if they are also there.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    I imagine the design, AI, software and technical operations etc workforce is fairly large. Likewise their accounting groups etc. I.e., the segments of every other company that are rebelling against coming in. None of these are working with the line workers. Just like Amazon, most of the employees work in Whole Foods or fulfillment centers. But the professional staff in software engineering etc don’t have to be in the office to do their work. Even if their software impacts the fulfillment center they likely have never set foot in one.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      If you're designing a car, are you not ever going to go down to the production line to see how your design worked out? If there's an issue with your design and you need to rearrange it to accommodate some production limitation, do you think it might be helpful to be able to walk down to the factory floor and look at it first hand? There's tons of companies where you can do all the work remotely. If that's a high priority, don't work at Tesla. When you need to make physical products, it's helpful to be at the place where the physical product are being made, because they don't just exist entirely in your code editor.
      - hooande 4y ago
        Cars also involve software, design, marketing materials. None of those things require physical presence any more than those jobs did when they were remote during the pandemic. Many of those roles were successfully performed remotely before and after the pandemic. If people really want to work for any company non-remote, then they will. That doesn't mean that banning remote work is popular or necessary.
ng55QPSK 4y ago
BMW (my closest car factory) is allowing a certain degree of home office for executives and production controlling employees. Of course they have teams on site to react fast, but the next layer of decisions is anyway a few hundred meters away on the end of an internet connection.
- manquer 4y ago
  BMW is a more mature organization with relatively slow or even unchanging processes. Tesla on the other hand is rapidly scaling up and constantly changing its assembly line and was doing work out of actual tents until recently (probably now as well). What works for BMW is unlikely to work for Tesla . Even if Tesla was stable their manufacturing processes and tech DNA are very different from BMW or other major car makers, more in-house vertical integration and electric driver train vs traditional ecosystem and conventional combustion engine.
  - ng55QPSK 4y ago
    As far as i understand, BWM is way more agile then Tesla is - they are planning (and executing) to be able to build any car and configuration on any production line - ICE / e-drive / hybrid. This has not been visible in Tesla's planning for the Berlin factory.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      Tesla doesn't make ICE or hybrid cars so why would they configure their factory for that?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - _ea1k 4y ago
        I think he means more like separate models. Things like being able to easily swap a line from 3 to Y and vice versa. AFAIK, Tesla does do that at plants that produce both. There have been no announcements of other models for Berlin, but it'd be shocking if it stays only producing Y. There will b similar flexibility when that changes, possibly for new models.
gpapilion 4y ago
I believe this is directing his staff to bring all the employees back. The exceptional individual part is him saying if they are a really good ic I’ll consider it.
jmkni 4y ago
I think that part is fair enough. But reading between the lines, factory workers are expected to do more than 40 hours a week? That's less fair.
- water554 4y ago
  Well they will get OT and if they don’t like it can always find another job
- imgabe 4y ago
  They're probably paid hourly and get overtime.
  - kennywinker 4y ago
    That “probably” is doing about 60 hours a week of work in that sentence. The ford motor company bargain was 8 hours of work, 8 hours of life, 8 hours of rest and a middle class lifestyle. The tesla motor company bargain is…? Seems like mediocre to bad pay, 12 hours of work, 6 hours of life, 6 hours of sleep? Yeah, i’d be unionizing if I was a tesla worker.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      Who says the pay is mediocre/bad? Seems like "Manufacturing Associate" and "Machine Operator" is at $18 / hr. Which would average out to $21 / hr if they're getting time and a half overtime for 20 hours a week. Not bad for an entry level factory job. They get stock too. Sure, they should unionize if they want. Seems like most are pretty happy with the job though. https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla/salaries?job_category=manufacturing https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla/salaries?job_category=manuf...
      - kennywinker 4y ago
        If you have to sacrifice 60 hours a week of your life to get good pay, it’s not good pay. And $63k/year is mediocre at best. It’s below the national median, and I’d be willing to bet if you adjust for cost of living near most of the locations where tesla workers work, it’s worse than “near average” As for if the workers there like it? https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/10/tesla-employee-satisfaction-ratings-slip/ https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/10/tesla-employee-satisfact... > At jobs site Glassdoor, Tesla's overall company rating fell to 3.2 out of 5.0 stars based on reviews written in the first quarter from a high of 3.6 in 2017 A high of 3.6 isn’t exactly a enthusiastic endorsement. Toyota has a 4.0, Ford has a 4.1.
bravetraveler 4y ago
The thing is, I don't suspect this is limited to just the exec staff. I believe the purpose is dissemination 'If there are particularly exceptional contributors ... I will review and approve those exceptions directly' If this were truly limited to only the executive team, it's an existing point-to-point connection. No routing or extra direction necessary
- q1w2 4y ago
  I LOVE remote working. It allows me to manage scheduling issues at home (like deliveries and sick children), and stops me from the endless distractions of office chatter. ...and the upsides cloud my judgement as to whether it's a net positive from the company's perspective. While all the good I've seen for myself, it's also been a nightmare for managing the small group of people I have. I had to terminate TWO people because we discovered they were also working a 2nd job, and multiple people have had trouble focusing on work while at home. Some people did great - others didn't. ...and there's no question that the company culture overall has suffered. I'm not saying I'm definitely for or against it - but I wish people would stop taking absolutist positions on this debate.
  - bravetraveler 4y ago
    I'm with you. I love remote working. (Knocking on wood) I'll do it until I retire. It's very easy for this to become a heated thing. I too wish discussions on this would trend away from absolutism. There's too much gray in the world for this to be productive. I find a possible motivator in that is there being a sort of imbalance with preference -- if we assume whoever 'wins' sets the tone for the future. If those who love the office get their way, the remote lovers (more likely) concede more than the opposite. The remote people don't need other people to be remote. Just accommodate by using Slack, Git, whatever. The in-office people however do 'need' people to also join them on-site for the benefits of it to truly realize (As much as I hate words like synergy, it really is sometimes easier to just hash things out in person)
  - colmvp 4y ago
    Serious question: Is there a law that says a person cannot be working two jobs? I mean, I get it if the people fired failed to do their job, but if they were fulfilling their duties and weren't working for a competitor, I don't see an issue.
jedberg 4y ago
VP of HR, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing... I can name plenty of top execs for a car company that don't need to be onsite.
seydor 4y ago
> and not just be some faceless void that sends orders from email. No, even that, logically, does not make sense from an efficiency standpoint (assuming productivity is equal). Besides, if i were a factory worker i'd rather not have the boss over my shoulder

by imgabe 4y ago

crossroadsguy 4y ago

Maybe there’s some similarity? :) Because Geneva Convention also applies to weaker/smaller or defeated countries. For the rest it’s something on the paper; like human rights.

forum_ghost 4y ago

Indeed. Why shouldn't there be a binding UN convention that enforces work from home where possible to save us from climate change?

temp8964 4y ago
LoL. Whose gets to decide "possible"?
ARandomerDude 4y ago
Well for starters, the moment (nearly) all other nations dictate the laws of your country, you no longer have a country – and certainly not a democratic one. Your elections become irrelevant because people in distant lands (including those with tyrannical governments) can simply overrule the will of your people. Codifying the long-term destruction of your own nation into law for the sake of a single issue is a bad idea.
bruce511 4y ago
Let me answer this with an analogy. And I'm really not wanting to explore the analogy directly (so let's not get off topic) but it may help you to understand how this ends. Why shouldn't there be a binding UN resolution that enforces public transport, and bans the production and use of cars to save us from climate change? Or here's another even more contraversial one (again, let's not get distracted) why don't we have a UN resolution banning the personal ownership of firearms? I'm hoping you can see from these why UN binding resolutions would be pointless - they would simply result in the ultimate dissolution of the UN. (uxit?)

drewcoo 4y ago

pesfandiar 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
- rat9988 4y ago
  You missed his point though.

mise_en_place 4y ago

It’s interesting. Would a hardware company like Atari, or Apple, succeed if all the execs were fully remote? My gut feeling tells me no.

ng55QPSK 4y ago
There is a reason why we talk Metaverse/XR in Industry 4.0. Being at the place of production might not be needed in the future, anyway.
- supramouse 4y ago
  sitting with a headset on for 8hrs a day seems worse than being in a cube
  - djhn 4y ago
    In a company owned headset, that measures your resting heart rate, blood pressure and eye movement with a dystopian sensor/camera setup to monitor your body language.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Could measure your brain activity to give you a notification to stop slacking off. Or detect non typical brain activity to alert a manager to check the worker isn’t playing games or looking at memes.
      - asteroidbelt 4y ago
        You can do it already by installing malware on employee computers.
CameronNemo 4y ago
This is confusing to me because most Apple execs don't live in Asia.

sulam 4y ago

From the email you can quickly work out that he intends this to apply to everyone. He would not ask for exceptions to be routed to him if he meant this just to apply to his direct staff.

imgabe 4y ago
Many of the workers have to be there because it is physically impossible to do their jobs if they aren't. The rest have to support, manage, or otherwise interact with the people who need to physically be there, and the most efficient way to do that is if they are also there.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I imagine the design, AI, software and technical operations etc workforce is fairly large. Likewise their accounting groups etc. I.e., the segments of every other company that are rebelling against coming in. None of these are working with the line workers. Just like Amazon, most of the employees work in Whole Foods or fulfillment centers. But the professional staff in software engineering etc don’t have to be in the office to do their work. Even if their software impacts the fulfillment center they likely have never set foot in one.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    If you're designing a car, are you not ever going to go down to the production line to see how your design worked out? If there's an issue with your design and you need to rearrange it to accommodate some production limitation, do you think it might be helpful to be able to walk down to the factory floor and look at it first hand? There's tons of companies where you can do all the work remotely. If that's a high priority, don't work at Tesla. When you need to make physical products, it's helpful to be at the place where the physical product are being made, because they don't just exist entirely in your code editor.
    - hooande 4y ago
      Cars also involve software, design, marketing materials. None of those things require physical presence any more than those jobs did when they were remote during the pandemic. Many of those roles were successfully performed remotely before and after the pandemic. If people really want to work for any company non-remote, then they will. That doesn't mean that banning remote work is popular or necessary.

ng55QPSK 4y ago

BMW (my closest car factory) is allowing a certain degree of home office for executives and production controlling employees. Of course they have teams on site to react fast, but the next layer of decisions is anyway a few hundred meters away on the end of an internet connection.

manquer 4y ago
BMW is a more mature organization with relatively slow or even unchanging processes. Tesla on the other hand is rapidly scaling up and constantly changing its assembly line and was doing work out of actual tents until recently (probably now as well). What works for BMW is unlikely to work for Tesla . Even if Tesla was stable their manufacturing processes and tech DNA are very different from BMW or other major car makers, more in-house vertical integration and electric driver train vs traditional ecosystem and conventional combustion engine.
- ng55QPSK 4y ago
  As far as i understand, BWM is way more agile then Tesla is - they are planning (and executing) to be able to build any car and configuration on any production line - ICE / e-drive / hybrid. This has not been visible in Tesla's planning for the Berlin factory.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Tesla doesn't make ICE or hybrid cars so why would they configure their factory for that?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - _ea1k 4y ago
      I think he means more like separate models. Things like being able to easily swap a line from 3 to Y and vice versa. AFAIK, Tesla does do that at plants that produce both. There have been no announcements of other models for Berlin, but it'd be shocking if it stays only producing Y. There will b similar flexibility when that changes, possibly for new models.

gpapilion 4y ago

I believe this is directing his staff to bring all the employees back. The exceptional individual part is him saying if they are a really good ic I’ll consider it.

jmkni 4y ago

I think that part is fair enough. But reading between the lines, factory workers are expected to do more than 40 hours a week? That's less fair.

water554 4y ago
Well they will get OT and if they don’t like it can always find another job
imgabe 4y ago
They're probably paid hourly and get overtime.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  That “probably” is doing about 60 hours a week of work in that sentence. The ford motor company bargain was 8 hours of work, 8 hours of life, 8 hours of rest and a middle class lifestyle. The tesla motor company bargain is…? Seems like mediocre to bad pay, 12 hours of work, 6 hours of life, 6 hours of sleep? Yeah, i’d be unionizing if I was a tesla worker.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    Who says the pay is mediocre/bad? Seems like "Manufacturing Associate" and "Machine Operator" is at $18 / hr. Which would average out to $21 / hr if they're getting time and a half overtime for 20 hours a week. Not bad for an entry level factory job. They get stock too. Sure, they should unionize if they want. Seems like most are pretty happy with the job though. https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla/salaries?job_category=manufacturing https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla/salaries?job_category=manuf...
    - kennywinker 4y ago
      If you have to sacrifice 60 hours a week of your life to get good pay, it’s not good pay. And $63k/year is mediocre at best. It’s below the national median, and I’d be willing to bet if you adjust for cost of living near most of the locations where tesla workers work, it’s worse than “near average” As for if the workers there like it? https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/10/tesla-employee-satisfaction-ratings-slip/ https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/10/tesla-employee-satisfact... > At jobs site Glassdoor, Tesla's overall company rating fell to 3.2 out of 5.0 stars based on reviews written in the first quarter from a high of 3.6 in 2017 A high of 3.6 isn’t exactly a enthusiastic endorsement. Toyota has a 4.0, Ford has a 4.1.

bravetraveler 4y ago

The thing is, I don't suspect this is limited to just the exec staff. I believe the purpose is dissemination 'If there are particularly exceptional contributors ... I will review and approve those exceptions directly' If this were truly limited to only the executive team, it's an existing point-to-point connection. No routing or extra direction necessary

q1w2 4y ago
I LOVE remote working. It allows me to manage scheduling issues at home (like deliveries and sick children), and stops me from the endless distractions of office chatter. ...and the upsides cloud my judgement as to whether it's a net positive from the company's perspective. While all the good I've seen for myself, it's also been a nightmare for managing the small group of people I have. I had to terminate TWO people because we discovered they were also working a 2nd job, and multiple people have had trouble focusing on work while at home. Some people did great - others didn't. ...and there's no question that the company culture overall has suffered. I'm not saying I'm definitely for or against it - but I wish people would stop taking absolutist positions on this debate.
- bravetraveler 4y ago
  I'm with you. I love remote working. (Knocking on wood) I'll do it until I retire. It's very easy for this to become a heated thing. I too wish discussions on this would trend away from absolutism. There's too much gray in the world for this to be productive. I find a possible motivator in that is there being a sort of imbalance with preference -- if we assume whoever 'wins' sets the tone for the future. If those who love the office get their way, the remote lovers (more likely) concede more than the opposite. The remote people don't need other people to be remote. Just accommodate by using Slack, Git, whatever. The in-office people however do 'need' people to also join them on-site for the benefits of it to truly realize (As much as I hate words like synergy, it really is sometimes easier to just hash things out in person)
- colmvp 4y ago
  Serious question: Is there a law that says a person cannot be working two jobs? I mean, I get it if the people fired failed to do their job, but if they were fulfilling their duties and weren't working for a competitor, I don't see an issue.

jedberg 4y ago

VP of HR, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing... I can name plenty of top execs for a car company that don't need to be onsite.

seydor 4y ago

> and not just be some faceless void that sends orders from email. No, even that, logically, does not make sense from an efficiency standpoint (assuming productivity is equal). Besides, if i were a factory worker i'd rather not have the boss over my shoulder