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> Tesla just laid off its whole self-driving department. I had to check since I hadn't heard of this. All the sources I checked were about 200 low-level employ
by niij 4y ago
> Tesla just laid off its whole self-driving department.
I had to check since I hadn't heard of this. All the sources I checked were about 200 low-level employees who were mostly doing manual annotation of images to help improve the algorithm. Not developers themselves. Definitely nothing about laying off "the whole self-driving department".
From https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/28/tesla-layoffs-autopilot-workers-san-mateo/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/28/tesla-layoffs-autopilot-wo... :
"Most of the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such as Autopilot data labeling, which involves determining if Tesla’s algorithm identified an object well or poorly, according to one source."
- ncmncm 4y ago"Most of" is carrying a mighty heavy load, there. They are closing the entire San Mateo unit. If I were among the "self-driving" staff remaining, I would be updating my résumé. Curiously, all those dumped were "terminated for underperforming", which will make finding work elsewhere hard, unless other companies see it as a cynical ploy to dodge regulations on normal layoffs.
- niij 4y agoI don't understand the significance of the San Mateo city in this context. I don't work in this industry. Were there higher level programmers included as well, instead of work akin to Amazon Mechanical Turk? Do you have a source for the underperforming thing? That'd be next level incompetence for them to lay off 200 people for that reason all at once. (not saying it's impossible obviously!)
- ncmncm 4y agoSame article you linked (tx), at the end. So, you know as much as I do. Before, I only knew the headline: closed office, flushed staff. Agree, abusing labor law like that would be pretty scummy. Is it "incompetent" if it costs less? Depends on who is getting in trouble.