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Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

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Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#21

Post by caseysoftware »

mc32 wrote: post #20
caseysoftware wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While 300-700 people sounds massive, it's out of 33,000 or about 1-2%. It's not hard to believe that 1-2% of a company were bad hires, couldn't/didn't deliver, or weren't a great match for the job anymore.

Admittedly it's a small fraction. To me, while not a communist by any means, I do think that cos. often simply think about he employee-employer relationship as unidirectional: the employee owes the employer but I see more and the company owes society at large to support its workers, where it can. Not saying they should carry inept unqualified workers, but that they should make some effort to place mal-assigned worker…

Without knowing the details - which we never will - we don't know which of them were just in bad positions for them or if they moved 10, 100, or 1000 to better fitting roles or if there were the "better fitting" roles for this group.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#22

Post by spectrum1234 »

2 key sentences in the article say so much: "Several said Model X, Model S and former SolarCity operations seemed to be targeted." ... "The spokesman said most of the dismissals were administrative and sales positions, and outside of manufacturing."

This has little to do with performance or any conspiracies. If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain stable among all departments. I would guess if shifting a company's labor requirements was more politically correct, the shift would be much larger.

The average pundits head might just explode trying to rationalize the juxtaposition of a clean tech company increasing production rapidly yet 'firing' hundreds. The rational, however, applaud these efforts and the difficult decisions this requires.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#23

Post by TuringNYC »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #8
tedsanders wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to waste time pointing out what you already know, but I think it's worth adding that you can be fired without being dead weight. Many firms (especially in law or consulting) have chosen to have pyramid structures with up-or-out policies that fire half the employees every two years. Even if the fired employees are good, this keeps everyone motivated and allows you to churn through employees to find the really exce…

> The system is not inherently good or bad, as long as all parties are aware of it. There's a lot of problems with stack ranking, not least that it discourages cooperation and encourages direct or indirect sabotage (e.g. declining to hire new prospects who you suspect might be better than you). Wikipedia discusses many of the issues: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Vitality_curve

There is another problem with stack ranking -- I saw this at a previous employer: some people are hired into "4s and 5s" from the onset. I heard some hiring managers upset that they would have to force rank their hand-selected elite team into 1-5 ranks, and upset at the situation, they purposefully hired weak workers with the intention of slotting them into 4 and 5 ranks. Their argument was (i dont agree):

- these weak workers wouldnt otherwise have a job

- these weak workers get an extra year of employment they "dont deserve"

- the strong team members get the 1,2,3 ranks they deserve

- the hiring manager is "forced" to do this

All that said, seems incredibly unfair to hire people directly into the chopping block without the expectation set from the start.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#24

Post by dilemma »

Joky wrote: post #15
mc32 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that tech (and I consider Tesla tech even if it's inherently auto) companies were getting away from the stack rank evaluations (save a few). So I'm a bit surprised Tesla is going in that direction. High demand workers have more opportunities and those that can (the good ones) will find a diff job that does not play this kind of churn game. So I'd thought.

There is no stack ranking involved (as far as I know, at least in SW). That's why when an engineer is evaluated as under-performing this is really about their own (manager-perceived) performance vs the expectation, and there is no question about whether they'd be in an exceptional team. Now instead of a formal PIP that we know won't get anywhere, HR isn't shy about letting go dead-weight. My impression is that the de…

Occasional underperformance is normal variance as is overperformance. If you can't handle these cases you don't belong in management, and if you fire everyone for underperforming once (your suggestion) you will soon have no workers, and you will cause everyone remaining to underperform.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#27

Post by [deleted] »

spectrum1234 wrote: post #22

2 key sentences in the article say so much: "Several said Model X, Model S and former SolarCity operations seemed to be targeted." ... "The spokesman said most of the dismissals were administrative and sales positions, and outside of manufacturing." This has little to do with performance or any conspiracies. If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#29

Post by wpietri »

Do other companies do this? Unless this is GE-style force ranking, I've never heard of it.

If somebody isn't performing well, I have no idea why I'd wait up to a year to deal with it. And it seems terrible for morale (and PR) to have a regular event where a bunch of people will be let go in one block.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#30

Post by jeffdavis »

mc32 wrote: post #20
caseysoftware wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While 300-700 people sounds massive, it's out of 33,000 or about 1-2%. It's not hard to believe that 1-2% of a company were bad hires, couldn't/didn't deliver, or weren't a great match for the job anymore.

Admittedly it's a small fraction. To me, while not a communist by any means, I do think that cos. often simply think about he employee-employer relationship as unidirectional: the employee owes the employer but I see more and the company owes society at large to support its workers, where it can. Not saying they should carry inept unqualified workers, but that they should make some effort to place mal-assigned worker…

There is some truth there but what you say really only makes sense if you are talking about massive layoffs that would have a major effect on the local labor market.
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