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Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

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Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#151

Post by rz2k »

stevievee wrote: post #23

Tesla and SpaceX are businesses and I never understood the public fandom behind them and Elon Musk. 3,500+ people losing their jobs is pretty significant for a leader who touts altruism as one of his top motivators.

Elon Musk as manager of a firm or manager of a household?

There is social utility in the efficient allocation of labor. While there are plenty of justifications for devoting resources to help people find new jobs, and reduce frictional unemployment, keeping people in jobs where their compensation is not cost effective relative to their output impoverishes an economy and the people in it.

If on the other hand Elon Musk as a household were maximizing his personal return on equity in Tesla for the sake of purely wasteful personal consumption that would be another thing. However, he seems to invest almost all of his wealth into his companies.

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#152

Post by agumonkey »

cornholio wrote: post #142
agumonkey wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly the result of over performing fully roboticized factory.

If one of Musk's companies ever needs to train a deep learning sarcasm detector, these threads provide an excelent dataset.

We're here to contribute to human progress

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#153

Post by stevievee »

dalbasal wrote: post #135

Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team? Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing. Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing ris…

My problem has always been that he pushes these altruistic goals "green earth"/"space travel" and then executes it with the most extreme version of capitalism available. It's like an ad campaign to him.

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#155

Post by newman8r »

dalbasal wrote: post #135

Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team? Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing. Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing ris…

Apparently Musk really pissed off the media with his talks about creating a media ratings/fact-checking site. I'm actually following it closely because I'm also working on a fact-checking project.

Maybe the hate predates this incident and has little to do with it, but a few weeks of negative articles can do a lot to change some people's attitudes. At one point CNN had an opinion piece on the homepage titled "Elon Musk is Humiliating Himself" - that can't be helpful.

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#156

Post by corndoge »

stevievee wrote: post #153
dalbasal wrote: post #135

Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team? Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing. Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing ris…

My problem has always been that he pushes these altruistic goals "green earth"/"space travel" and then executes it with the most extreme version of capitalism available. It's like an ad campaign to him.

You must know him personally to make these assessments of his intentions, got any other stories to share?

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#157

Post by Fins »

dalbasal wrote: post #135

Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team? Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing. Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing ris…

Maybe there is that element that Tesla is risking not only their business (which would be totally fine) but also their customers' lives.

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#158

Post by StillBored »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
jonknee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was the case they definitely would have noted it. Musk said "In addition to this company-wide restructuring, we've decided not to renew". He then went on to say the majority will be given the opportunity to move to other Tesla retail locations. It reads more like the cuts don't include the Home Depot related staff (who surely work hourly + comission anyway, these are cuts to salaries positions).

As a Tesla investor, I'm very curious what the conversion rate is of Home Depot/Big Box customers vs Tesla stores. My guess would be it's much higher in Tesla stores. No one likes being bothered at Home Depot by sales staff when they've just popped in for a part.

The powerwall is next to the AC/insulation guy that seems like he is there about 50% of the time. He hooks people with "free home efficiency audits". I've seen a tesla rep there with lower frequency, but I'm having a hard time understanding how many they actually sell, because frankly where I live the only use case is going to be people with large enough solar installations to go off grid, as the power company doesn't do any kind of time based rate tiering (the tiering is entirely usage based, and the power company includes how much solar you consume in the equation).

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#159

Post by neves »

dalbasal wrote: post #135

Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team? Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing. Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing ris…

As far as I understand, Tesla is a cool and hyped company, and it also overexplores their workers, and their fabrics are unsafe: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/19/tesla-cal...

Their relation with journalists aren't also very good: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/elon-...

Re: Tesla is laying off ‘about 9%’ of its workforce as it ‘restructures’ the company

#160

Post by madeofpalk »

dalbasal wrote: post #135

Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team? Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing. Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing ris…

I think this crux of it comes down to:

1. People thinking Tesla is overhyped

2. People thinking Musk is overhyped

3. Failings of the two (autopilot, product/shipping delays, etc)

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