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Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

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Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#151

Post by tavert »

Bartweiss wrote: post #34
mtgx wrote: post #11

If there was one division at Tesla that deserved lay-offs, surely it was SolarCity? I remember how everyone was talking about what a bad move Tesla made in acquiring SolarCity, because the company was a mess and unprofitable. I've also heard stories about how aggressive and pushy SolarCity's sales people were with customers, which ended-up giving the company an increasingly worse reputation.

This seems at minimum possible. The general consensus at the time of the SolarCity acquisition was something like "that's a failing venture, but the products and manufacturing capacity are relevant to Tesla". And now we've seen Powerwall synced up with SolarCity tech, but no major leaps forward for SolarCity itself. Would it be all that surprising if this was a move to quietly wind down SolarCity as a separate concer…

Not very quietly, SolarCity as a separate brand has been wound down already, it's marketed as Tesla Energy now.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#152

Post by phil21 »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #22
mtgx wrote: post #11

If there was one division at Tesla that deserved lay-offs, surely it was SolarCity? I remember how everyone was talking about what a bad move Tesla made in acquiring SolarCity, because the company was a mess and unprofitable. I've also heard stories about how aggressive and pushy SolarCity's sales people were with customers, which ended-up giving the company an increasingly worse reputation.

Solar City was doing fantastic here in Las Vegas. There sales people were BY FAR the best when they came door to door. But Warren Buffet's power company changed the laws last year and basically screwed everyone who had solar. We have completely disincentivized putting solar panels up. Now the company doesn't do well, and no sales people come door to door from any company. If you are putting up solar in Las Vegas this…

Penalty?

It's much more like no more free money from folks who can't afford solar subsidizing rich folks who can.

Net-metering is a regressive tax. Rich folks with rooftop solar already get a huge massive benefit in the free battery the grid supplies them overnight - reducing their install costs by 5 figures - and they continue to demand horrible policy like net metering. It's been decades now, it's time to end the practice.

Folks with solar were not "screwed" - they simply stopped having non-solar customers subsidize their power usage as much as they were before.

Personally I plan on putting up my own solar/battery install so I can live off grid as needed during power outages. I would find it immoral to then demand the power company pay me retail rates for any excess power I generate. I find it problematic for me to even be connected to the grid for my "emergency use" as it's clearly a highly subsidized backup power source for me at that point.

Edit: I'm okay with an ends-justify-the-means approach to net metering. However, it absolutely cannot be a long term policy as it's exceedingly regressive in nature. Using it as a short-term subsidy to bootstrap an industry is fine. That goal has been accomplished, and it's time to end these transfer payments.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#153

Post by moduspol »

FireBeyond wrote: post #149
moduspol wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition, they could lay off only 0.15% of their workforce and still qualify. Likewise, bigger companies are probably in a perpetual state of "mass layoff." Context is important, though. The term can be simultaneously technically correct in the context of US Department of Labor terminology and misleading to a general audience. I think that is happening here.

If the layoff is part of one event, then why shouldn't it qualify? Your "bigger company" example is just an example of scale, there's just lots of individual events. Instead, here is SolarCity firing 1,200 employees on the same day and saying that it's all just coincidence on their individual performances, not a unified decision.

> If the layoff is part of one event, then why shouldn't it qualify?

It does qualify. My argument is that the statement out of context is misleading.

> Your "bigger company" example is just an example of scale, there's just lots of individual events.

Yes. It's an example of how using the term "mass firing" to describe "any 50 employees of a company being terminated around the same time" as the headline has done is misleading.

> Instead, here is SolarCity firing 1,200 employees on the same day and saying that it's all just coincidence on their individual performances, not a unified decision.

No, former employees estimate Tesla is firing a total of 1,200 employees, some of which are SolarCity employees. And there was no statement it was a coincidence or not part of a coordinated effort (of course it was). That's not mutually exclusive with legitimately culling your low performers.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#154

Post by jdavis703 »

Posibyte wrote: post #135
jdavis703 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so easy to hire bad apples. I've been through three rounds of layoffs at two separate companies: each time most of the people who were let go were poor performers, they either were bad salespeople or bad coders. The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5, and taking frequent time off for silly reasons like "my rabbit is sick." As long as you're cutting less than 10% of staff you're cutting fat, not muscle (…

> The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5 I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?

If you're an exempt employee (you're exempt if you're not an hourly employee or making over ~$23,000 USD in the USA), means that you're not qualified for overtime. When other team members are putting in over time, but a few people aren't they're effectively freeloading on the people putting in more effort.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#155

Post by rtpg »

SRasch wrote: post #109
Bartweiss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that If the lack of promised performance reviews is accurate, that's the obvious issue - it implies a labor force decision disguised as a performance decision. This is a pretty common move in e.g. game development, so it certainly isn't unthinkable. The point about total workforce size is well taken, though; this still seems like it could be as simple as "times…

Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even. Concerning the performance review: would expect…

I thought the concensus now was that Welch's leadership under GE was not good.

There's been a lot of rants about the utility of stack ranking and this sort of "fire the worst performers because everyone else is better" attitude. Namely wrong incentives.

You have John Carmack and a clone of John Carmack working on your game engine. You have stack ranking. Which one should you let go during review season? Should you hire some extra people to protect your good people?

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#156

Post by robbies »

jdavis703 wrote: post #154
Posibyte wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5 I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?

If you're an exempt employee (you're exempt if you're not an hourly employee or making over ~$23,000 USD in the USA), means that you're not qualified for overtime. When other team members are putting in over time, but a few people aren't they're effectively freeloading on the people putting in more effort.

If there's more work to do than what the current employee set can do in 40 hrs/wk, then the team didn't hire enough employees. I realize that rare is the team that is fully staffed, but the employee shouldn't be obliged to make up the delta because management didn't hire appropriately.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#157

Post by lawnchair_larry »

SRasch wrote: post #109
Bartweiss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see evidence that Tesla is doing any more than that If the lack of promised performance reviews is accurate, that's the obvious issue - it implies a labor force decision disguised as a performance decision. This is a pretty common move in e.g. game development, so it certainly isn't unthinkable. The point about total workforce size is well taken, though; this still seems like it could be as simple as "times…

Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even. Concerning the performance review: would expect…

That isn't what happened though. You are just assuming they might have fired the bottom. If they did, that might be reasonable.

I'm not able to provide evidence, so my assertion that their firings were a lot of bullshit isn't going to carry much weight. I'm ok with that. But likewise, you might want to consider waiting for evidence that they did in fact cut underperformers, because I don't think you will see that either.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#158

Post by lawnchair_larry »

jdavis703 wrote: post #154
Posibyte wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5 I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?

If you're an exempt employee (you're exempt if you're not an hourly employee or making over ~$23,000 USD in the USA), means that you're not qualified for overtime. When other team members are putting in over time, but a few people aren't they're effectively freeloading on the people putting in more effort.

No, and that is a hilarious assertion. You are the fool for setting a precedent of free labor in that case. Most figure this out pretty quickly.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#159

Post by jdavis703 »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #158
jdavis703 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're an exempt employee (you're exempt if you're not an hourly employee or making over ~$23,000 USD in the USA), means that you're not qualified for overtime. When other team members are putting in over time, but a few people aren't they're effectively freeloading on the people putting in more effort.

No, and that is a hilarious assertion. You are the fool for setting a precedent of free labor in that case. Most figure this out pretty quickly.

When did ad-hominem attacks become accepted on Hacker News? I might look back a decade from now and realize that all those 12 to 14-hour days were wasted time that I could've been using to live "the good life," but I'm not sure that makes me, or anyone else who puts in long hours for a sustained period of time, a fool.

Re: Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity

#160

Post by chrisbennet »

jdavis703 wrote: post #154
Posibyte wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other ones were just lazy, working only 9-5 I completely understand the latter issue about taking off randomly for wild reasons, but why is working agreed-upon hours a bad thing?

If you're an exempt employee (you're exempt if you're not an hourly employee or making over ~$23,000 USD in the USA), means that you're not qualified for overtime. When other team members are putting in over time, but a few people aren't they're effectively freeloading on the people putting in more effort.

So , the company tries to extract free labor but the person who doesn’t let them get away with it is the person you blame???
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