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

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

#241

Post by craig1f » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

darpa_escapee wrote: post #206

craig1f wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Few and far between. Whenever I hear this, it's always "oh, they take subsidies".

The only ones I've heard that haven't been trolling are concerns about their financial reports, which are always "concerns about financial reports" with no additional information.

Ok, go ahead and be concerned that the stock is inflated. It's not a real conversation.

Like, for example, look at what happened last week. We were bombarded by an avalanche of negative Elon/Tesla articles. It was consistent. "Tesla Factory is HELL". Like, I must have read "HELL" 3 or 4 times last week. This followed by a failed coup attempt to oust him from the board of directors. Turns out that there were billions of dollars invested in shorts that Tesla stock would plummet.

There was a coordinated effort to tank Tesla and oust him as CEO last week that failed. The result was that stock spiked and the short-sellers lost like 1.5B.

This is the kind of shit that goes on week after week with Tesla.

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

#242

Post by readhn » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

astrodev wrote: post #138

IBM wrote: post #19

This is definitely the move of a company in the process of scaling up production of their mass market vehicle that their valuation hinges on. Definitely not about managing cash flow.

Go, short the stock. You will make a killing.

Even if this was correct thesis you could still lose money on a solid trade idea.

Trading is not easy. Plenty of folks were correct on a 2007 market top ... they still managed to lose money ... because they were too early among other things.

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

#243

Post by slg » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

entee wrote: post #172

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…

Personally I don't disagree with the notion of taking huge risks and going all out. Tesla and SpaceX have made the world a better place in my view, and they've definitely made the world more interesting. That said, the overhyping, recklessness and hubris at this stage on the Tesla front seems like instead of helping achieve the wildly ambitious goal, they're making it more likely to fail. If Tesla was slightly more r…

>That said, the overhyping, recklessness and hubris at this stage on the Tesla front seems like instead of helping achieve the wildly ambitious goal, they're making it more likely to fail. If Tesla was slightly more reasonable, and extended their timelines out a bit, it's entirely likely they'd be selling more, better cars.

I think Musk and Tesla are in the middle of a real life trolley problem. It is certainly true that people have died as a result of Autopilot. It is also certainly true that lives have been saved by Autopilot. There is no statistics to tell which group is larger, but Musk and Tesla obviously think the second group is larger. If that is true, everything that further delays progress is something that is causing people to die on net. They are instead flipping that switch and possibly killing people, but overall they are saving lives. Thousands of philosophers would have a better take on the ethics of that decision than I would, but that is clearly where the motivation for Musk's aggressiveness is coming from.

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

#244

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #230

rayiner wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe because people think space is cool and there's been close to zero progress for decades before they came along? Or maybe because the goal is something more than just making money, something that clearly set them apart from the other entities in the field, at least when they started.

>Or maybe because the goal is something more than just making money

Maybe they view their payoff date in a longer term fashion, maybe the way they will make their money is 'cool' but Space X isn't more charitable than any other company.

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

#245

Post by tway2888888 » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

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…

>Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing.

He's selling things that he can't produce now, and possibly won't ever be able to produce. If you think this is simply about missing a few deadlines, you aren't following along close enough.

Telling people profits are around the corner for years on end, that self-driving is around the corner for years on end, that you'll build a mass-market $35,000 car for years on end, all the while collecting money to do so. Being very coy about disclosures. Playing the Trump "fake news" card (every negative article is fake!).

I remember coming to HackerNews and reading about Theranos, and anyone who claimed it wouldn't work was sexist or couldn't dream big enough. We are lazy bums, and these people are changing the world! Who are we to criticize?

>If Tesla disappears, this could set back electric cars by 5yrs

Five whole years of setback? Versus the hundreds of thousands of jobs related to GM, as well as their world class self-driving tech and decent EV programs? Maybe you need to reassess what you "care" about.

>Why doesn't Elon get this amount of rope?

If he didn't want to be accountable to shareholders, he should have kept the company private. Why is it that HackerNews acts like companies go public as a favour to the rest of us poor schlubs?

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

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Post by Analemma_ » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #73

jonknee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they running hot? They're in serious financial trouble and have been unable to meet self-imposed production levels. Now they're laying off thousands of people.

They are not in financial trouble. Most people are only skeptical if they can do it without raising capital. However everybody agrees that they both have many costumers waiting and would be able to raise capital. Nobody believes that Tesla is in real real serious troupe.

> They are not in financial trouble. Most people are only skeptical if they can do it without raising capital.

Take a few minutes and read https://priceonomics.com/porsche-the-hedge-fund-that-also-ma.... The moral of that story was, if you're "fine as long as you can raise capital", then you're actually in a very precarious position. And it was even another luxury car company to boot!

Not that Tesla is making the same speculative financial shenanigans that Porsche was, but the point is, access to capital has a tendency to dry up right when you need it most. If there's a recession in the next 18-24 months (which, glancing at yield curves, is looking increasingly likely) and lending tightens up, Tesla might not find it as easy as you think to raise capital right when they need it to avoid running out of money.

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

#247

Post by notabee » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:18 PM UTC

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 want you to run with this thought wherever it takes you:

1. Tesla is heavily shorted. 2. Tesla and SpaceX are disrupting heavily entrenched industries (and we could argue a lot about how much or how effectively, but let's not). 3. It's become apparently easy to mobilize armies of artificial opinion on the internet, who in turn mobilize real people due to groupthink and the human love for picking sides and shouting about it.

I am not suggesting in any way that there isn't anything valid to criticize or that anyone who does so is a sockpuppet, but if there aren't any such campaigns by moneyed interests to tarnish those brands online I would be extremely shocked.

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

#248

Post by apalmer » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

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…

They are literally laying off 9% of their employees. Saying that they are laying off people is not "bias", it is stating facts. The fact that Tesla is taking steps that typically are associated with "financial trouble" is just what the reality of the situation is.

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

#249

Post by siidooloo » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #180

madeofpalk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I dunno... I'm beginning to think HN sees this as hype=overhype. On failing... thats unconsciounable. Of any place, this should be the site where we don't hate on failure. Failure is a definitive property of risk. Risk is the one thing that makes Musk unique, at the scale he's acting on. He puts everything on the line for a chance at an ambitious goal. This is exactly the ethic I come to this site for.

If you’re building a web app you can fail upwards until you find success. If you’re building a car and you fail people die.

Its like the difference between any random saas and Theranos.

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

#250

Post by hindsightbias » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

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…

Actually, defense contractors haven't designed any new rockets and found themselves dependent on a Russian design (which were arguably better).

They contractually had the option to build their own derivative but punted and then found themselves with a Senate banning future imports. Now they want $5B to design a new rocket, or maybe use Bezos' design.

The SLS is nothing more than a patched up space shuttle launch system with a capsule on top. Except that it will cost a lot more to launch. Not much new ground there.