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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

#201

Post by icelancer »

jfoutz wrote: post #146
icelancer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The problem with your standard of saying nothing is illegal till a court rules on it, is we require someone accuse another to trigger the court determination of fact. As someone who is involved in multiple IP lawsuits and one other major civil matter, this is exactly how it works. I don't claim people are doing illegal things. I am filing lawsuits against them alleging improper behavior and I let the courts do the…

> involved in multiple IP lawsuits and one other major civil matter sounds like breach of contract, not crimes though. shrug

If it was purely civil, I would have said that. It's not.

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

#202

Post by rayiner »

lutorm wrote: post #195
rayiner wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I see this from the exact opposite view. I'm surprised it's taken this long for the rubber to meet the road. Tesla sells the most electric vehicles, but it's hardly the sort of delta you describe ("extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do"). Nissan and Tesla both hit the 300,000 car mark in January/February of 2018. And let's not forget the recent NTSB report, which revealed that "A…

the Saturn V developed by Boeing/NAA/Douglas in the 1960s could hurl three times as much weight to the moon as the Falcon Heavy True. At more than an order of magnitude higher cost.

Achieving an order of magnitude cost reduction for proven technology is impressive, even given the intervening half century of progress. But similar achievements are routinely made in other industries. It doesn’t justify the breathless fanboyism Space X engenders.

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

#203

Post by dalbasal »

rayiner wrote: post #181
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…

Interestingly, I see this from the exact opposite view. I'm surprised it's taken this long for the rubber to meet the road. Tesla sells the most electric vehicles, but it's hardly the sort of delta you describe ("extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do"). Nissan and Tesla both hit the 300,000 car mark in January/February of 2018. And let's not forget the recent NTSB report, which revealed that "A…

I guess we see things differently.

Contractors are not some naturally occurring mineral, a side effect of some budget. They are companies, people. At present, they are companies comfortably using their existing operations to keep doing what they've been doing since the 70s. I think that it matters who that company is, what their future strategy is. It matters that they care about reusability, creating technology that scales to larger missions... basically, people matter.

In any case, I don't think you can compare Nissan to Tesla. You can always reduce things to parity along some metric, but in this case I just don't think 2018 sales volume is most of the story.

Thanks for the answer though.

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

#204

Post by Spooky23 »

craig1f wrote: post #145
Spooky23 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it misleading? They purged contractors not long ago and are now laying off lots of people. Those are facts. They reported that "production associates" are unaffected by the layoffs -- which doesn't mean that people working in production aren't impacted. It just means that they aren't laying off hourly employees in production. The editorial at the bottom of the article rationalizes the decision and reflects tha…

Misleading in that, when you hear layoffs, you immediately think "financial trouble" because that's usually the context that you hear about layoffs. These articles you hear about Tesla are sometimes factual, but they're not published because they're factual. They're published to do damage and affect stock prices in a way that make specific people rich. It's the equivalent of playing poker, and affecting your neighbor…

You think "financial trouble" in this case because there is plenty of it. Tesla is a company with 6 months to either get cash or become insolvent.

Elon Musk is an amazing innovator and amazing PR guy. Few people can turn an idea into reality as well. But... he's running a high risk business whose rich valuation can go poof at any time. Because his personal name is inseparable from the firm, he's going to get heat for it.

The financial press has an obligation to talk about this stuff. Investors deserve to be informed.

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

#205

Post by chasely »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #57
stephengillie wrote: post #14

> It means that Tesla could let go over 3,000 employees in this round of layoffs. > The CEO also confirmed that Tesla didn’t renew its contract with Home Depot to sell its energy products at their stores. Tesla energy advisors were supposed to be at 800 Home Depots across the US earlier this year. If they had 3.5 employees per store, and a team of 200 managing the entire effort, these layoffs could be attributed enti…

I wasn't even aware they HAD a contract. My local Home Depot has zero mention of any product Tesla makes.

I was approached by a Tesla contractor in Home Depot on a few days ago. It was honestly not a good experience.

For one, I was approached cold. I too had no idea that they had this agreement, so I was looking at something when someone came up and asked me something like "what type of project are you working on?" So I naturally just described what I was doing and before realizing this was not a HD employee.

He asks me if I thought about solar and whatever, but it wasn't relevant to my situation (roof slope orients E/W at the 45th latitude, so not great for solar). He goes on his way.

It was just a weird experience. I wasn't in a department related to electricity or solar, and they had no displays indicating a partnership with Tesla or that you may be cold-approached by a Tesla employee.

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

#206

Post by darpa_escapee »

craig1f wrote: post #192
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…

The problem is that most unbiased news sources have been corrupted. Reddit has fallen, and hackernews is about all that's left. That means that the trolls have begun showing up here. Trolls have gotten more skilled, and are able to convert new trolls without people realizing they have become trolls. You just have to get people angry a few times, and they'll do anything you want. Once they've calmed down, they'll cont…

There are legitimate criticisms of Tesla that shouldn't be hand-waved away as trolling.

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

#207

Post by fmihaila »

jonknee wrote: post #112
adventured wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't keep up with demand and their sales look like this over time: $4 billion -> $7 billion -> $11.7 billion -> ~$17 billion How is 4x growth in three fiscal years anything other than running hot?

Their losses look like this over time: $889m -> $675m -> $2b -> ??? (a cool $710m in the 1Q so annualized like you did with revenue would be ~$3b). They have ~$2.8b in the bank, so that's about a year if things continue like they have been, less if they hit a snag. Which is why Elon is firing people left and right.

> They have ~$2.8b in the bank, so that's about a year if things continue like they have been, less if they hit a snag.

More if they succeed in ramping up the Model 3 production.

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

#208

Post by compiler-guy »

vkou wrote: post #40
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.

It also speaks of a colossal failure in management. Either they were way off the mark in their hiring, or in performance management, or they have unreasonable expectations of their employees. If you are smart at hiring good people, there no way that 9% of them are producing negative value.

Or the world changed around them in unpredictable ways. Or you took a risk that didn't pan out, but if it had, you needed these people.

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

#209

Post by jacquesm »

icelancer wrote: post #48
jfoutz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it imprecise? I can make claims about my worldview. I say the sky is blue. you say the sky is white (cloudy). we can argue about it, but there's no reason for either of us to change our opinion till we look out the window and see what color the sky is. The problem with your standard of saying nothing is illegal till a court rules on it, is we require someone accuse another to trigger the court determination of fac…

>> The problem with your standard of saying nothing is illegal till a court rules on it, is we require someone accuse another to trigger the court determination of fact. As someone who is involved in multiple IP lawsuits and one other major civil matter, this is exactly how it works. I don't claim people are doing illegal things. I am filing lawsuits against them alleging improper behavior and I let the courts do the…

But this is an online forum, not a court.

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

#210

Post by joejerryronnie »

Alwaysbanned wrote: post #119
Abekkus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contract was for 800 Home Depot locations out of ~2,000 total locations. Our location has People watching the entrance of the store as well as combing the aisles to pitch customers. Valuable products don't need a hard sell.

> Valuable products don't need a hard sell Is your claim that Tesla products are doing such good business at Home Depot that they no longer need salespeople? Is anything ever bad news for this company? They are bleeding red ink, haven't ever made production goals, claim to be growing exponentially, and yet are laying off employees because business is so good ? I'm with the poster down thread: the Fandom is hard to co…

But, but . . . Elon Musk! Sports Cars and Electricity and Space and stuff! What's there not to like?!!
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