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

electrek.co

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

#71

Post by nkristoffersen »

Jasper_ wrote: post #61
nraynaud wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tesla is a public company founded in 2003, not a startup. It's a year older than Facebook.

While it definitely depends once your definition of startup... I bet most people in the automotive industry consider it a “startup”. Especially considering the age of the competition, Tesla is a brand new startup company with hyper growth in its plans.

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

#72

Post by KajMagnus »

bch wrote: post #59
_9vpl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would surely have a hiring manager that could explain... This is a big assumption

Is it? Seems plain to me, but 1) I honestly don’t know what the org structure is at Tesla 2) assuming there are hiring managers, if they’re hiring people they wouldn’t vouch for (to boost their dept size (again not knowing the org chart)), then managers are gaming Tesla, and that’s another problem

Maybe the person who hired the web server admin, has since left to work with something else. And there's a new boss / hiring manager, who is a bit clueless.

I suppose this scenario is unlikely to happen, but still, in a really large company, then, low risk, times many many people = maybe shouldn't be ignored.

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

#73

Post by shoo »

KajMagnus wrote: post #72
bch wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Seems plain to me, but 1) I honestly don’t know what the org structure is at Tesla 2) assuming there are hiring managers, if they’re hiring people they wouldn’t vouch for (to boost their dept size (again not knowing the org chart)), then managers are gaming Tesla, and that’s another problem

Maybe the person who hired the web server admin, has since left to work with something else. And there's a new boss / hiring manager, who is a bit clueless. I suppose this scenario is unlikely to happen, but still, in a really large company, then, low risk, times many many people = maybe shouldn't be ignored.

> Maybe the person who hired the web server admin, has since left to work with something else. And there's a new boss / hiring manager

yup, i've observed this happen.

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

#74

Post by ralusek »

olliej wrote: post #31

The bigger concern I have is that it encourages extreme nepotism — people vouch for people from their schools and prior jobs, and so risks introducing systemic bias against people from different backgrounds. Obviously gender and race are heavily represented in this kind of thing, but even basic stuff like west coast vs east university nonsense can start happening.

You are basing this off of...what, exactly? Employees vouching for contractors are able to do so along any metric, but given that they are sticking their neck out professionally on their behalf, I assume that the criteria they care about the most is the exact criteria that will later be used to determine if the contractor was actually a good egg.

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

#75

Post by l0b0 »

Is this meant to be shocking? When I was a consultant at a big European telecom company the department got a new manager who started by saying that there should be no multi-year consulting contracts - within a few months of hiring a consultant the position should be either inhoused or outsourced. I remember thinking “about f-ing time” even though my job would probably be one of the first on the chopping block. The financial incentives are so screwed up I can't believe consulting is still such a big business.

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

#76

Post by aplummer »

l0b0 wrote: post #75

Is this meant to be shocking? When I was a consultant at a big European telecom company the department got a new manager who started by saying that there should be no multi-year consulting contracts - within a few months of hiring a consultant the position should be either inhoused or outsourced. I remember thinking “about f-ing time” even though my job would probably be one of the first on the chopping block. The fi…

Without even factoring in work culture, the cost of a FT employee is really really high in a place like Australia where you basically can’t fire people. Want a 6 month project done, makes more sense to pay for a consultant team than try spin up new employees. They come in for a set period, fixed deliverables and accountability, then they go. Effect multiplies when it’s something like IT and the business is completely unrelated to IT.

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

#77

Post by fsloth »

doikor wrote: post #66
nitrogen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of driving experience, most Ford cars I've driven (Contour, Focus, and Taurus, probably all from early 2000s; they are probably better now) handle like boats; turning radius comparable to an oil tanker, unresponsive brakes and gas, etc. So there are tradeoffs among all makes and models within those makes.

All the things you mentioned are design decisions not build quality related.

Weeelll... given that a modern car is a complex dynamic system I would presume it's not to trivial to state where exactly design constraints concerning build quality end and dynamics and handling start.

For the end user they both affect the 'feel' of the product - how it behaves on the detail level when in use. "I have a door I have a hard time closing" and "the dynamics feel a bit clumsy" deal with totally different things on the engineering level, but end users (generally) are not buying engineering but holistic products.

Namely, concerning this comment: Are there compromises made on the design of the handling to facilitate the build quality? And if there are, then those are not two different things, but systems which interact - hence, it's relevant to offer commentary on one while discussing the other.

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

#78

Post by lsc »

bitwize wrote: post #39
lsc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My perception is that as an employee you are expected more to act in the best interest of the company. As an employee, if you object to something your boss is really on board with, you can expect to be fired. It is, in general, a career limiting move to tell anyone above you that what they're asking you to do is stupid. Maybe if you're a God-tier management consultant, you can propose changes and expect to have the…

>It is, in general, a career limiting move to tell anyone above you that what they're asking you to do is stupid.

My experience? unless you have like a bottom quintile boss, you can tell him/her almost anything, if you do it verbally, with the door closed.

I mean, in most cases, yeah, I'm technically more skilled than the boss... and the boss knows it, that's why I was hired. The fact that the boss hires people who are more technically skilled than they are means that the boss is good at their job.

Now, of course, there might be other issues related to the business or to other systems that I don't know about... the boss might not take my advice, but only a terrible boss won't listen to the advice of a technical individual contributor that they hired.

the places where I've seen people get in trouble for arguing with the boss is when they do it angrily and publicly, and when they don't get over it after the boss explains why it has to be another way.

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

#79

Post by ryguytilidie »

sjwright wrote: post #22
WalterSear wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that something is seriously wrong if you can't get at least one employee to vouch for you. The corollary to that is that if you get to the point where you need to check on the vouchsafety of all your contractors - en masse - something is seriously wrong with your company.

I think Elon was pretty clear that he considers the situation to be seriously wrong, hence the extreme approach. It's a refreshing attitude; this sort of problem is common in most large companies.

Yeah, a startup founder seeing a problem and having a clumsy, heavy handed, poorly thought out reaction is super refreshing. Hadn't been this refreshed since like, Friday.

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

#80

Post by historylurker »

mikeash wrote: post #43
rhino369 wrote: post #32

Earlier 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.

Are you comparing a $100k Tesla to a $100k GM car?
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