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Silly. They're cash rich and have skilled staff. If they can't do anything with that 10% they should quit business all together.

msoad 2y ago
Because markets are short sighted and the job of the CEO is to confront that. However in this case Elon needs a quick bump in the stock price for obvious reasons
londons_explore 2y ago
In any workforce there are 10% slackers or people who overcomplicate and derail projects. If you can identify these people, then getting rid of them is the right move. But it's super hard to figure out who they are.
- ulfw 2y ago
  Bullshit. You don't do a mass layoff in that case but get rid of 'slackers' over time as you identify them. This has nothing to do with that. There's huge demand issues as Teslas are getting really old and nothing useful is in the pipeline (and no that childish truck doesn't count).
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Obvious slackers, sure. But some people aren't obvious slackers. They might take a simple task ('you're in charge of logistics within the warehouse'), and make it far more complex than necessary ('we're gonna need 3 teams of logistics workers who will move parts only in a clockwise direction as directed by this homegrown custom designed work scheduling system, which by the way we're gonna need a team of 10 coders to maintain'). Those people aren't slackers. In fact, to everyone else around them, they look like the best workers who achieve the most. But, by overcomplicating tasks, they in fact pour resources down the drain when they solve a simple problem the hard way. Sometimes these workers are overcomplicating tasks deliberately (an excuse to become a team lead), sometimes they have misunderstood the requirements, and sometimes because they failed to research or take advice from others on a simpler/easier/cheaper/faster approach. Either way, firing them is good for the business, but usually bad for morale (because the people near them see a hard worker being fired and become scared about their own position, often leading to the real best people jumping ship). So, the common approach is to do mass firings every ~5 years, because the morale hit is lower to do it all in one go.
    - ulfw 2y ago
      And how do you think they'd identify those "not slackers slackers" en masse to do a 14-15,000 people layoff?
  - anothernewdude 2y ago
    That childish truck has been recalled. All 4000 of them.
- acdha 2y ago
  If it’s true – which is rarely the case – a mass layoff is the worst way to deal with it: by your own figure, you have 9:1 odds of getting someone who isn’t a slacker! This excuse is deployed in every layoff but rarely mentions that if true, most of the people losing jobs should be the managers who weren’t doing their jobs. I will also note that most of the people I have seen not contributing positively were responding to the incentives management had set, or coping with policies and resource cuts. Every time it’s been a large group of people, they were working hard at something counterproductive some VP or consulting company came up with, not sitting around watching Netflix.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    > I will also note that most of the people I have seen not contributing positively were responding to the incentives management had set, or coping with policies and resource cuts. Learned helplessness is a critical concept in organizational psychology. people eventually learn it's not worth pushing for things in the org, and stop caring and checkout. Demming was all about how the system creates outcomes, and this is a common outcome.
- anothernewdude 2y ago
  When there are layoffs it's the top 10% that re-evaluate and leave. Because they have options.
TheAlchemist 2y ago
We're about to find out how cash rich Tesla really is.

msoad 2y ago

Because markets are short sighted and the job of the CEO is to confront that. However in this case Elon needs a quick bump in the stock price for obvious reasons

londons_explore 2y ago

In any workforce there are 10% slackers or people who overcomplicate and derail projects. If you can identify these people, then getting rid of them is the right move. But it's super hard to figure out who they are.

ulfw 2y ago
Bullshit. You don't do a mass layoff in that case but get rid of 'slackers' over time as you identify them. This has nothing to do with that. There's huge demand issues as Teslas are getting really old and nothing useful is in the pipeline (and no that childish truck doesn't count).
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Obvious slackers, sure. But some people aren't obvious slackers. They might take a simple task ('you're in charge of logistics within the warehouse'), and make it far more complex than necessary ('we're gonna need 3 teams of logistics workers who will move parts only in a clockwise direction as directed by this homegrown custom designed work scheduling system, which by the way we're gonna need a team of 10 coders to maintain'). Those people aren't slackers. In fact, to everyone else around them, they look like the best workers who achieve the most. But, by overcomplicating tasks, they in fact pour resources down the drain when they solve a simple problem the hard way. Sometimes these workers are overcomplicating tasks deliberately (an excuse to become a team lead), sometimes they have misunderstood the requirements, and sometimes because they failed to research or take advice from others on a simpler/easier/cheaper/faster approach. Either way, firing them is good for the business, but usually bad for morale (because the people near them see a hard worker being fired and become scared about their own position, often leading to the real best people jumping ship). So, the common approach is to do mass firings every ~5 years, because the morale hit is lower to do it all in one go.
  - ulfw 2y ago
    And how do you think they'd identify those "not slackers slackers" en masse to do a 14-15,000 people layoff?
- anothernewdude 2y ago
  That childish truck has been recalled. All 4000 of them.
acdha 2y ago
If it’s true – which is rarely the case – a mass layoff is the worst way to deal with it: by your own figure, you have 9:1 odds of getting someone who isn’t a slacker! This excuse is deployed in every layoff but rarely mentions that if true, most of the people losing jobs should be the managers who weren’t doing their jobs. I will also note that most of the people I have seen not contributing positively were responding to the incentives management had set, or coping with policies and resource cuts. Every time it’s been a large group of people, they were working hard at something counterproductive some VP or consulting company came up with, not sitting around watching Netflix.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  > I will also note that most of the people I have seen not contributing positively were responding to the incentives management had set, or coping with policies and resource cuts. Learned helplessness is a critical concept in organizational psychology. people eventually learn it's not worth pushing for things in the org, and stop caring and checkout. Demming was all about how the system creates outcomes, and this is a common outcome.
anothernewdude 2y ago
When there are layoffs it's the top 10% that re-evaluate and leave. Because they have options.

TheAlchemist 2y ago

We're about to find out how cash rich Tesla really is.