Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee

Sounds shocking... but having worked as a contractor for a goodly portion of my career, I'd argue that something is seriously wrong if you can't get at least one employee to vouch for you.

Really, every place I've worked, you could say this happens every month; almost always I've needed an employee to sign off on my hours, either the person I report to or the person they report to. I always took that as a vote of confidence, personally.

(I mean, obviously, even if I get fired, I expect to get paid for hours worked, but point being, the guy just signed off on spending $15k-$20K, depending on the body shop cut, for a month of my work, I'd assume that would trigger at least a few minutes of "what did Luke do for me this month?" and a phone call letting me know not to come in Monday if the answer was "Not much".)

As a contractor myself, this sounds like a great idea. If there aren't multiple people at an organization that can vouch for you, there's a good chance you're dead weight - or at any rate, there are no checks in place to prevent you from becoming so.

I'm a regular employee, and I don't see it being any different. Figuratively speaking, my boss has to sign my paycheck every two weeks. If they don't like me, they can fire me.

see, I think there is a big cultural difference. Like, I always had that attitude as an employee, but I think that as an employee, it holds me back.

I think the key is that as an employee, you are expected to act in the interest of the company in ways that are different from what you are expected to do as a contractor.

My perception and experience is that as a contractor, I'm supposed to do what you tell me to do. If you tell me to do something stupid, I'm supposed to tell you it's stupid, and to explain why, but if you say do it anyhow, well, that's my job. It has more to do with task-based work.

My perception is that as an employee you are expected more to act in the best interest of the company.

I personally have a hard time seeing the difference between the two, because I'm not omniscient, I am sometimes wrong, and if the boss has heard my arguments for why the way they asked me to do a thing is stupid and still wants me to do it that way, well, maybe the boss knows something I don't know, right? The company, by making them the boss, has said that the company thinks the boss knows more than I do, so maybe the right thing to do is to go along with it?

(I'm mostly talking of "the right way to do it" in the sense of "the most efficient or correct way to do it" - I think of ethical dilemmas in a different sort of way.)

Having an employee vouch for you... does this not imply they don't even know where their money is going as a company and who is valuable and who is not? I agree, that having the line worker / employee using the part's blessing is important, but surely there are more holistic top-down ways of evaluating this?