141–150 of 185 posts
SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity: ponzi schemes that have a little tech behind them and pull on our heartstrings.
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Might be legally correct. Still gives the wrong impression because most people aren't lawyers. Should outline percentage, not absolute numbers, IMO.
If the unemployment rate increased 3.6% tomorrow, I guess you wouldn't think it's a big deal, right? After all, it's not even 4%! The lack of sympathy people show these days. Sheesh.
You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point.
- It's not mass firing. It's not even 4% of the workforce. - So, employees were "surprised". As most people who are fired, ever, in any company and epoch. How is this news at all? - Recalling 11,000 units might not at all be connected with layoffs. Implying otherwise is a cheap yellow press journalism. - "Citing fears of retaliation from Tesla". Yeah, because Tesla definitely is known for pursuing people like they're…
Most employees aren't surprised when they're fired. Thats indicative of terrible management. In a healthy organization managers let individual contributors know when they're falling behind, and give them the opportunity and guidance to get on track.
How does that debunk my criticism of that very amateur level of journalism showed in the article?
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If the unemployment rate increased 3.6% tomorrow, I guess you wouldn't think it's a big deal, right? After all, it's not even 4%! The lack of sympathy people show these days. Sheesh.
It's one company out of hundreds of thousands. You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point.
> You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point.
I'm not attempting to address whatever point you were trying to make.
I'm glad you replied the way you did, since that was my point.
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Would you say 3,6 % is that stringent though? I remember GE under Welch fired 10 % of the lowest performers every year, that seemed kind of stringent. But Tesla is fast-hiring and acquiring, so seem to have a larger need to fix hiring-errors than GE. At the end of 2015 they had only 14,000 employees! In light of that, 3,6 % seems completely reasonable to me. Low, even. Concerning the performance review: would expect…
When MS fired people for performance every year people hated them for it, and their culture was considered notoriously awful.
Any signs this is what tesla did? Lowest 2% is fine. Lowest 2% per team is not fine, means you need a scape goat for each team.
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Is there a difference in this case between "laid off" and "fired"?
"Fired" generally means terminated for cause, though not exclusively so. "Laid off" implies a general workforce reduction, and maybe some severance payment, job placement help, etc. Either way you're out of a job, so in that sense there's not much difference.
Laid off generally comes with a severance package that is consistent across the laid-off employees. The reason for the employee termination is (at least outwardly) the companies fault due to the company not having a use for that subset of employees - department closure, cashflow, product cancellation etc. In the UK a company must announce it is going to go through a lay-off some weeks before actually terminating employment contracts.
Firing someone puts the 'blame' on the employee. Generally the company has to document the reason for firing the employee. Even in places with 'at will' employment law a company will want documentation in place in order to defend against wrongful termination or discrimination claims.
Companies will often offer some cash sweetener to a fired employee in return for them signing a termination contract that makes future legal claims more difficult (or costly).
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It's one company out of hundreds of thousands. You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point.
> It's one company out of hundreds of thousands. > You did not address all of my criticisms of the article which are logically sound -- you only cherry-picked one emotional point. I'm not attempting to address whatever point you were trying to make. I'm glad you replied the way you did, since that was my point.
People lose jobs every day. Happened to me 20+ times in the last 10 years and was hard. I don't see value in comments like yours saying "you need to be more compassionate". What you are missing is that I am -- but that doesn't help anybody.
And, again, the article was of extremely low quality and it seemed to have been pushing an agenda.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layoff > "Mass layoff" is defined by the United States Department of Labor as 50 or more workers laid off from the same company around the same time.
By that definition, they could lay off only 0.15% of their workforce and still qualify. Likewise, bigger companies are probably in a perpetual state of "mass layoff." Context is important, though. The term can be simultaneously technically correct in the context of US Department of Labor terminology and misleading to a general audience. I think that is happening here.
Your "bigger company" example is just an example of scale, there's just lots of individual events.
Instead, here is SolarCity firing 1,200 employees on the same day and saying that it's all just coincidence on their individual performances, not a unified decision.
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> However, in the case of Musk's enterprises, where there is this larger goal that is finally seeming to become possible, I am torn. I feel that anyone that works at these places should know and be a zealot for the Cause... While critics often mock the “cult” of Musk, his defenders usually deny the characterization. You rarely see such an explicit acknowledgment and endorsement of it. The honesty is refreshing, I gue…
'Cult of Musk' suggests it is about Musk, and not about the cause (of going to Mars). I think we can all agree that some types of work are dangerous and poorly paid, but people choose to do it because they believe in a cause. For example, relief work in war-zones. I just tend to think of Space-X as a geeky way of doing that.