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Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

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Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#381

Post by tmyenzi »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #109
chasd00 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem to me any time a 10% layoff is announced you can expect another 10% to leave over the next year. Smart people will see the writing on the wall and they always have a couple recruiters in their back pocket. Employers would want to layoff the bottom 10% obviously but they're going to shed serious talent too as they get the full court press from recruiters.

What is the writing on the wall, specifically, for Tesla though? They're ramping up two new factories and have a massive product lineup outlook. Electric is the future and, while this recession will last a couple years, will be the winning strategy long term. It's hard not to be long Tesla and take this financial turbulence as that, turbulence.

The long term issue I see with Tesla is that, while I agree that electric is the future, multiple manufacturers are now starting to enter the space Tesla currently occupies. Up until recently, you didn't have much choice aside from Tesla for premium electric vehicles. By 2024, however, it seems like most of the current major automobile manufacturers will be offering electric options, and a few additional startups are attempting to squeeze into this space as well.

Tesla has some solid engineering to their credit, but they also have a reputation for poor quality control (in fit and finish in particular). It would be one thing if Elon Musk showed some initiative in addressing these QC issues. The recent Twitter diversion however along with other erratic behavior by Musk seems to indicate a lack of focus, at a time where a strong focus at Tesla is sorely needed. Tesla can no longer coast in the EV market, they will be far from the only player in the future.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#382

Post by mjr00 »

akudha wrote: post #314
mjr00 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? Telling all of your employees "hey we're thinking about layoffs that may or may not happen, and we don't know who will be affected" would be a massive morale hit and make people leave. Until the final decision is made -- and this is a hard decision that everyone, including upper management, wants to avoid making until absolutely necessary -- it's best to keep it close to the chest. Just becaus…

this is a hard decision that everyone, including upper management I call bullshit on the inclusion of "upper management". To think upper management cares about anything other than short term profits (and their own bonuses) is just naive. When COVID hit, the company I worked for laid off 40 people (we were just a couple of hundred employees in total). You know how they laid them off? One morning they simply asked the…

I'm not going to pretend that layoffs are harder on upper management than employees or anything. Getting laid off sucks ass and there's no sugarcoating it.

But thinking that being a C-level automatically means you're a Patrick Bateman style sociopath treating people like furniture is an immature take, especially for a forum like this, where so many people are entrepreneurs and upper management themselves. They're still people.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#383

Post by hedora »

Any idea why Tesla is laying people off? I figure it has to be systemic supply chain / logistics failures, or maybe lack of confidence in their product moving forward.

The article says "super bad feeling about the economy", and that their Shanghai factory hasn't been able to reopen. The former sounds like BS.

Then it talks about inflation concerns, but that's not a good reason to get rid of employees that will be locked into pre-inflation salaries for the next N years.

Other than "we're not fixing the factory any time soon", the only thing I can think of is that they're looking at early market share info, and expect to be steam rolled by the existing auto manufacturers in the next few years (to the point where they can make more cars than they can sell, which is currently unthinkable!)

[Edit: A sibling comment says this won't touch the manufacturing parts of the company. So, they're laying off sales, management and engineering, I guess? That's a better fit with Elon's ego. I guess the plan is to just coast for a few years during the downturn? If so, that's a textbook mistake big companies make during recessions -- when the economy recovers, they're surprised that they're not competitive anymore!]

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#384

Post by Uehreka »

Seriomino wrote: post #316
ericbarrett wrote: post #16

A couple of days ago somebody posted this Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/v2lpdw/e... "Tesla expanded massively during Covid, as of now half of the dev team(including me) don’t have parking space or desk. It’s physically impossible for everyone to return to office. "Should I ignore the email, or should I drive to the office and sit under the stairs?" Commenters' general feeling was…

Smart right? Should be enough time to evaluate whom to keep and not offending anyone directly by stating economic issues

Well, except for the part where there are news articles with him talking about doing a layoff because the economy is super bad. But maybe Tesla’s workers have drank the “all journalism is clickbait” kool-aid and don’t read the news. In which case this becomes smart again.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#385

Post by numair »

lupire wrote: post #342
flutas wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we can assume pretty slimy tactics from Musk. I personally think we can assume slimy tactics from everyone involved. Did Musk do what he was accused of? Knowing his attitude most likely. Did someone also have very large shorts opened on Tesla right before the story dropped, to expire a day later? Yep. https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/152743945535046860...

Not everyone , but yes a convicted securities fraudster (Henry Blodget) runs a news site that has now published two sexual harassment stories about two different companies, on two different dates (respectively), that both had unusually large shorts expiring.

The Elon / TSLA fanboys need to update their conspiracy theory. Blodget doesn’t even own BI, which everyone knows.

I think Elon himself helped to spread this conspiracy, when he would be fully aware it’s complete BS. This demonstrates to me that he is willing to engage in the dangerous game of pushing fake news on his blind followers to get them to go after his enemies, even if it makes no sense. These are the exact sort of people who should not have any power, because they’ll happily abuse it to cause societal harm.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/29/axel-springer-...

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#386

Post by rdl »

is0tope wrote: post #288
grogenaut wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Elon read https://www.richardkmorgan.com/writing/market-forces/ and thought it was a good time to implement capitalism 2.0. He's got the cars, the engineers, open roads in Texas, and the vision, he can make it happen!

Like the Market Forces plug :)

That is one of my favorite sci fi novels!

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#387

Post by NoGravitas »

pfraze wrote: post #66
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, Tesla isn't a Coinbase. Tesla is now a giant manufacturing company that makes a lot of things, brings in revenue, and has some really solid engineering. I don't like their cars from a UX standpoint, but the engineering in their motors and battery packs are solid good products. Move fast and break things might have been fine in the early days. Seems to me like the company needs to 'grow up' and demonstra…

The EV market is becoming extremely competitive. Not only are they not going to be the only game in town, they probably won’t have the best product. Tesla’s valuation has to come back from the moon at some point.

Yeah. Tesla knows how to make motors and battery packs, but they don't really know how to make cars. Established automakers are liable to eat their lunch once they catch up technologically. In fact, they don't even have to catch up; just be good enough.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#388

Post by PheonixPharts »

xxs wrote: post #33
that_guy_iain wrote: post #10

Everyone has a super bad feeling about the economy. I think most large companies are going to be announcing back to office then followed by layoffs.

It won't be 2007-2008 bad, but there will be a recession. First lay offs tend to be the R&D.

> It won't be 2007-2008 bad

It will be far worse since we're still in the unresolved credit bubble that created that crash. We never actually solved the core problems that created that crisis.

What we're seeing now is the beginning of what we have avoided for over a decade, and narrowly dodged during the pandemic, start to finally unravel.

Is it just bias from such a long, fun ride that tech has had that make people unable to see this? Back in 2019 there were plenty of people deeply worried about our credit system and the fragility of our global economy. Our actions to avoid catastrophe in 2020 only allowed the issue to become worse.

We've been living in a fantasy economy so long people have started to believe that nothing is real (just a few days ago there was a post claiming that "natural resources" don't exist and everything is fantasy). But a variety of factors are coming together that so that we'll see the revenge of reality. I don't think it's going to be pretty.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#389

Post by [deleted] »

Isinlor wrote: post #159
bitwize wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact remains that Musk is the techbro Kanye West, and shareholders should sideline him.

Find me another person that has his expertise in business, finances, marketing, mass manufacturing and aerospace industry. Find me another car executive that would have been bold enough to do something like Tesla Giga Castings before Elon decided to go for it. There are 4 entities to date that delivered people to Earth orbit: - Russia - USA - China - SpaceX There is only one entity that made rocket reuability profita…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#390

Post by redisman »

datalopers wrote: post #63
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #6

Uh,ok... Two days ago the "Who is hiring" thread here had something like 20+ software engineering positions for Tesla. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31585021 More erratic decision making from Mr Musk. Like, I dunno, the time he told Twitter he was taking Tesla private while tripping on LSD. He needs to step aside from Tesla at this point.

Companies are instituting freezes but keeping jobs posted. It creates an outside illusion of success and growth.

I don’t think Tesla needs any illusion though. Their product Sells like hotcakes. Of course the stock is still crazy valued so it’s not sustainable to keep this valuation
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