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Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

reuters.com

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Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#141

Post by Avshalom »

Avshalom wrote: post #139
ci5er wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of firing the bottom 10% of annual 360 reviews, but, do you think that having a 10% false-positive rate on interviewing/hiring is outside the realm of possibility? EDIT: Just so you know ... the cumulative quarter average (done annually) cull of the bottom 10% (people who have been put on improvement plans 3 quarters ago), is done by people that have nothing to do with interviewing/hiring. You'd probabl…

Outside the realm of possibility? No. But if 10% of my work (I'm a warehouse worker) had to be thrown out I'd have been fired within a month.

Actually not fired because then Target might actually have to pay out on unemployment, I would simply have been scheduled for 4 hours a week in perpetuity.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#142

Post by nostrademons »

Avshalom wrote: post #139
ci5er wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of firing the bottom 10% of annual 360 reviews, but, do you think that having a 10% false-positive rate on interviewing/hiring is outside the realm of possibility? EDIT: Just so you know ... the cumulative quarter average (done annually) cull of the bottom 10% (people who have been put on improvement plans 3 quarters ago), is done by people that have nothing to do with interviewing/hiring. You'd probabl…

Outside the realm of possibility? No. But if 10% of my work (I'm a warehouse worker) had to be thrown out I'd have been fired within a month.

Your work is a lot more predictable than that of either the folks doing the hiring or the folks being hired.

Well over 99% of my work has been thrown out. (I'm a software engineer & entrepreneur.) I think I calculated that when I was at Google, the half-life of my code was roughly 1 year, i.e. after a year, half of my code would be ripped out and deleted. So after 5 years there, 97% of it was gone. The remaining 3% had made a few hundred million dollars in revenue. It's been similar (but worse) in the startup world, where I had 4 ideas that all failed in my startup before Google, and 10 so far in the startup after.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#143

Post by yellowapple »

csours wrote: post #122
lord_jim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that number surprising, although I also know very little about what it takes to manufacture things. Any idea what the employee breakdown looks like in terms of profession and area of focus (since they have solar city too)?

No more than 3k would be working on the assembly operations, and maybe a good deal less (based on knowledge of other automotive assembly operations). That 3k would include line assembly workers, material delivery, quality inspectors as well as skilled trades like electricians, pipe fitters, tool and die makers (for stamping operations) Another 1-2k assembly staff (IT, Quality Engineers, Controls Engineers, Material C…

1k seems pretty low for sales staff if we really are including the showrooms. I'm counting ~100-110 showrooms listed on Tesla's website, so that would amount to 10 people per showroom. Doable, I guess, but still low.

Are janitorial/maintenance staff considered to be employees in this count? Or are they contracted out?

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#144

Post by yellowapple »

wokeland wrote: post #74
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #4

It’s interesing that the company can just decide not to report this as a mass layoff. While the performance reasons for letting someone go may be true, it seems like an easily exploitable loophole. Model 3 production rates were missed by a wide margin, so at least a few people should have known that management would react.

The word “layoff” appears nowhere in this report. The words used are “fired” “dismissals” and “firing”. This is a completely different activity than laying off.

To elaborate further, "firing" makes sense if Tesla is pinning its low Model 3 production numbers on inefficient and/or incompetent staff.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#146

Post by Bridon »

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Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#147

Post by FireBeyond »

grandalf wrote: post #28

It's important to keep in mind that Tesla (like Walmart, Whole Foods, and Amazon) has been targeted by big labor for infiltration and union formation [1] [2] This is not necessarily because working conditions make workers feel that they would prefer the tradeoffs of unionization, but simply because Tesla is much more competitive without its workforce unionized, and so labor groups that are entrenched in legacy car ma…

Come on... you're quoting "unionfacts.com" as an unbiased site about unions (sorry, "big labor")?!?

There is NOTHING objective about that site. It's run by a company for the express purpose of conveying "corporate messaging", funded by, among others, Walmart.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#148

Post by FireBeyond »

grandalf wrote: post #121
hexane360 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>simply because Tesla is much more competitive without its workforce unionized Do you really think unions believe that they have a negative effect on business? This action fits in with the stated ideals of unionization, so why do you feel the need to explain it as part of some hidden agenda? >In many states labor unions have significant power granted by favorable laws that far exceed the market power they derive simp…

> Do you really think unions believe that they have a negative effect on business? They don't care. Unions drove the US automakers into bankruptcy with unsustainable pension plans, and corrupt regulators failed to adequately insure them via the PBGC. Thus Unions and firms colluded to foist pension risk onto taxpayers. I've encountered the most bigoted, anti-immigrant, racist rants from union workers. Rather than focu…

> Because of the cronyism with regulators

Whereas of course banks, Wall Street, corporations in general have _never_ been accused of being a little too cozy with their regulators, right?

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#149

Post by dredmorbius »

KGIII wrote: post #134
dredmorbius wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, good eyes. I wasn't sure quite what the threshold was. I've seen companies get spanked for a pattern of layoffs which stay just below the threshold, so there's that. If there's a plausible case that this is targeted at union organisers / organisation, there's that as well, though prosecution at the national level strikes me as unlikely, even with Musk's testy relationship with the Trump administration. There's al…

I am entirely unfamiliar with California's regulations. But, unless the penalty is insignificant, it seems unlikely that they'd flagrantly violate the law. It seems very likely that they were advised by legal council and followed those recommendations. The visibility of Tesla makes me suspect they are very likely to be aware of both optics and law. Disclosure: I am invested in Tesla and have been since the early days…

I don't know if Tesla did or didn't follow legal requirements.

I am, however, pointing out that there are in fact legal notice and procedural requirements to be followed.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#150

Post by dom0 »

throwingerman wrote: post #87
m52go wrote: post #11

> Though Tesla cited performance as the reason for the firings, the source told Reuters he was fired in spite of never having been given a bad review. Highly odd for a company that's just starting production of its highest-volume product ever. Is there something about Tesla beyond the hype we should know? If I were an investor, this news would have me quite concerned. You would think they can't hire fast enough.

I would bet it is related to the mismanagement of the German automation plant that Tesla acquired about a year ago (on mobile, too hard to post links, maybe someone wants to help). The plan as I understand it was to use the technology at this company to speed up production but it hasn't been going as planned, in large part due to misunderstanding of cultural differences i.e. No one is going to be happy here in German…

Grohmann Engineering.

And yes, this has happened a few times now - American corp buys some German corp and replaces managers with American ones (or American-styled ones) and a few years later no one in the industry wants to work for them any more.

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