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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

#301

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've become increasingly annoyed by Musk's personality, ego, Twitter tantrums and his deceptive statements. I used to be a big fan and follower of anything Elon-related. Still a fan of SpaceX. Having said that, I think they make well-designed, innovative and inspiring products. Build quality and financials are terrible though. > A fund manager can be as risky as she likes This is off-topic but... am I the only one th…

FWIW, I'm a woman and I'm a big fan of singular they.

It is also possible to avoid pronouns altogether at times. It's more work to both do that and not sound stilted and weird. I have made my peace with occasionally sounding stilted, such as A fund manager can be as risky as a fund manager likes.

When I had a corporate job, some training examples advocated finding ways to rewrite the sentence to sanitize it of gender rather than using awkward constructions like he or she. It's more work, but if you do it habitually it gets easier.

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

#302
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you can just invest based on simple metrics like that it would be very easy to make money in the market.

I'm not saying "invest in simple metrics". I'm explaining how a typical evaluation is done. The original poster's evaluation is fundamentally nonsense. > If you do a quick math let's say they sold 400,000 Tesla (which they haven't yet) at an average of $100,000 each (which is probably lower) its net worth comes around $44B. This line just doesn't make sense at all. There's no metric I'm aware of that matches this met…

The original poster appears to be confusing revenue and profit. Also, the math is imprecise or incorrect - 400,000 cars sold at $100,000 each would be $40 billion.

In lieu of profits, is there any way to use revenue to estimate a company's valuation?

Tesla has $28.6 billion in assets, according to NASDAQ[0], yet their market cap is nearly twice that. Is that a normal ratio?

[0] https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/financials?query=balance-...

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't believe retail establishments think it's a good idea to degrade the customer experience by letting third-party salespeople rove their stores. I know Home Depot et al are making money from it, but I can't imagine there are many customers coming away with positive feelings from these come-ons.

Is this a regional thing? I've never seen any 3rd-party sales staff in a Home Depot here in Chicago, or anything like this in any other big box store I frequent.

Perhaps it's a sun thing?

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

#304
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But similar achievements are routinely made in other industries.

You're applying generalizations to specifics. It is true that other industries have seen order-of-magnitude cost reductions. The companies that bring those innovations are frequently (and correctly) celebrated (see Henry Ford, et al.). SpaceX is that company in this industry, which has otherwise been stagnant for generations. Add to this the fact that space exploration has been aspirational and charismatic as a industry, and you have your justification.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still can't believe retail establishments think it's a good idea to degrade the customer experience by letting third-party salespeople rove their stores. I know Home Depot et al are making money from it, but I can't imagine there are many customers coming away with positive feelings from these come-ons.

Costco has been doing this with Direct TV recently. Its a very bad experience imo.

You walk in the door and sometimes there's someone saying: "I can save you money on your TV service"

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's few things that turn me off faster from a store than roving third-party salespeople soliciting like that.

Their salespeople were super-aggressive in every setting I've seen them. I remember my girlfriend got hounded by one of their sales people and we had to avoid that part of the store.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe they aren't needed at all? Most people I know that want a Tesla have wanted one forever and weren't really coerced into it by sales and marketing.

Ah, but marketing isn’t simply coercion or persuasion. For instance, if you’re gathering requirements from customers before, during and after the development of a product you’re doing marketing whether you realise it or not.

All other things being equal, the more compelling the product, the less you need to market it to achieve a given level of interest. Tesla cars are SUPER compelling on a lot of levels. I would be surprised to hear that they need the same level of marketing effort as weaker entrants from other car companies.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly an aversion to seeing con men succeed at the con.

Con man? Really? What's the con?

Several days before Tesla raised cash he said there's "zero concern, and I mean zero" about 10k/week by the end of 2018.

According to documents from some lawsuit by ex-employees, he was told repeatedly that 5k/week is impossible by the end of 2017, but despite that knowledge, he publicly stated that as Tesla's guidance.

After Tesla got fired from NTHSA investigation, he issued a press release stating they decided to leave the investigation. After that, NTHSA had to clarify what really happened.

Etc.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't believe retail establishments think it's a good idea to degrade the customer experience by letting third-party salespeople rove their stores. I know Home Depot et al are making money from it, but I can't imagine there are many customers coming away with positive feelings from these come-ons.

Is this a regional thing? I've never seen any 3rd-party sales staff in a Home Depot here in Chicago, or anything like this in any other big box store I frequent.

I’ve seen it here in Ohio. Sams Club and also Menards. Usually some guy at a aisle or back of the store trying to sell satellite tv. It is annoying...

Just shopping for whatever you needed and some random guy asks what you have for television.

Also seen a woman trying to sell perfume and wanted to spray some on people at another store, kinda pushy near where the cash registers are. Aren’t some people allergic to that stuff? I think it would be better to have samples next to the actual perfume for when someone is actually shopping for that.

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

#310

> 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 can guarantee that they didn't have 3.5 per store and an extra 200.
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