He's probably talking about consultants. I'm sure Accenture, Deloitte, and McKinsey (among others) infections have run rampant in just about all departments. Consultants are great when they're great but almost unimaginably inept and expensive when they're not.
Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
41–50 of 106 posts
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#42Wish the US government would do the same thing!
You're being downvoted but my work with a state government frightened me. It was amazing how many contractors are building castles of crap and then protecting them so that they can make an exorbitant living off of the teat of the taxpayer - and I'm about as liberal as one gets - AND this was at the state level.
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something is seriously wrong with most large companies, and most of them simply ignore that. Good to see Tesla being different in that regard.
I dunno, GM and Ford build a fuck-ton more cars and have better build quality (which is shitty by int'l standards). Seems like Teslas's problem is bigger.
Having owned both a GM and a Tesla, I'm amused by the idea that GM's build quality is better. I actually liked my GM a lot, but quality was lacking to say the least.
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#44Sounds 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 con…
> 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. That sounds reasonable, although I could see a need for some exceptions. For example, I could see a company using a contractor for its front end web development and another contractor for running the web server. The first contrac…
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Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#45Sounds 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 con…
> 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. That sounds reasonable, although I could see a need for some exceptions. For example, I could see a company using a contractor for its front end web development and another contractor for running the web server. The first contrac…
The second contractor would surely have a hiring manager that could explain what’s what to upper management.
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#46Sounds 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 con…
Elon is addressing the "barnacle upon barnacle" problem with Contractors.
Sure, the Contractor on the front lines actually doing work may be "liked".
It's the middle manager/Contractor's boss sitting in an office 1,000 miles away that Elon wants to get rid of.
Employees can apparently hire/manage Contractors directly, but Contractors can't outsource the work they were hired to do.
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#47Being a hard ass CEO isn't sexy, but it's what so many successful CEO's are. > Often, it is like a Russian nesting doll of contractor, subcontractor, sub-subcontractor, etc. before you finally find someone doing actual work. I'd also argue that these multi-level contractor setups are a major security concern. Ideally they should make it policy to have no more than one additional level between Tesla and the contractor…
It really makes me wonder: Isn't using contractors super inefficient? Why do companies, when they could do it in house, use them?
There were a few good reasons I saw over my years as a contractor:
1. You can get a functioning team much more quickly.
2. It's a lot easier for someone unfamiliar with the field in question to evaluate the quality of a consulting company than to evaluate a prospective hire.
3. It's a lot easier to get rid of them once you don't need them anymore.
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#48Wish the US government would do the same thing!
While I largely agree with your sentiment, quite a bit of the problems with contracting that the US government has is because they don't do contracting well. Specifically, they are understaffing many offices, and they are putting not-so-qualified people in lead roles. Writing a good contract is hard. It's harder when the right staff are not in place to do it -- this is the current state of most US government contracting.
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno, GM and Ford build a fuck-ton more cars and have better build quality (which is shitty by int'l standards). Seems like Teslas's problem is bigger.
Having owned both a GM and a Tesla, I'm amused by the idea that GM's build quality is better. I actually liked my GM a lot, but quality was lacking to say the least.
year make and model?
I only ask, because honestly, I bought ( ordered and customized online really ) a new 2015 GMC Canyon and I love this truck like I've never loved another vehicle in my lifetime... and literally NOTHING has gone wrong with it, not even a loose screw... or burnt-out light bulb...
Re: Tesla reviewing contractors, firing everyone not vouched for by an employee
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something is seriously wrong with most large companies, and most of them simply ignore that. Good to see Tesla being different in that regard.
I dunno, GM and Ford build a fuck-ton more cars and have better build quality (which is shitty by int'l standards). Seems like Teslas's problem is bigger.
Yes, but startups are shitty and wavy by nature, it stabilizes with time. While culling the contractors, they might lose sight of something important and get into the next crisis. I don’t think there is any other way around. Sometimes it’s even external factors like wars and financial crises like the dinosaurs of the automobile industry had.