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Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

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Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#31

Post by vannevar »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #17
vannevar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not the kind of cuts you make because you have a bad feeling. These are the kinds of cuts you make because you're seeing orders fall off a cliff. I suspect that in particular Tesla is seeing erosion in their Cybertruck pre-orders given that Ford and Rivian have beaten them to market and both those products are drawing rave reviews.

That doesn't even make any sense. Tesla doesn't even sell any CyberTrucks right now, so even if they lost all their pre orders it wouldn't affect revenue now. Ford and Rivian aren't even making vehicles in any sort of volume to be even a minor rival. And why do you think that orders are falling off of a cliff exactly? Tesla has grown incredibly fast, they have 100k employees, they have a terrific balance sheet and ar…

Tesla has grown incredibly fast, they have 100k employees, they have a terrific balance sheet and are at no risk of bankruptcy.

Tesla has grown incredibly quick, all while essentially having the electric car market to themselves. That is no longer true---their market share will inevitably shrink, because it has nowhere to go but down. If the overall market growth slows---say, because of inflation and a recession---then this could be a problem for a company that has been staffing for breakneck growth and now sees that growth flattening. I'm not saying Tesla is going bankrupt, but I do believe that having two major competitors beat it to market in a strategic segment like trucks is a problem for Tesla, they are seeing that problem play out in projected sales, and they are trimming the payroll to rightsize for more challenging conditions.

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#32

Post by dannyw »

cableshaft wrote: post #25
UkrainianJew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla P/E is at 94, Ford is at 4, so they are overvalued by quite a lot. The interest rates will likely reach 3% by the end of the year, and may need to go all the way to 8% to have a meaningful effect on the inflation. Every measurable economic metric suggests we are rolling full speed into a recession. And driving your old car for another year or two instead of upgrading to that nice luxury EV is one of the first t…

The Fed can't easily raise rates all the way up to 8%. The higher rates affect the government just as much as you buying a new home or taking out a loan, and the government has a shitload of debt it has to keep refinancing. "But with help from the Treasury and from Social Security’s actuaries, I’ve come up with a reasonable estimate of that added interest cost. By my math, the Fed’s higher rates will increase the fed…

The numbers you use to benchmark are arbitrary.

The annual budget is about $6 trillion.

They certainly can eat another $128B or even $500B.

After all, when inflation is higher than interest rates, the real yield is negative.

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#33

Post by ddmma »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #8
gwern wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, Karpathy during one of the Tesla AI talks addresses this and said that keeping data labeling in-house was an advantage because it could be integrated more tightly into their processes with better customization & turnaround etc. Firing most of their data-cleaning & labeling capacity isn't going to be good for their car efforts, but I suppose if things are that bad at Tesla now, it's better to fi…

The Tesla bull will say that Tesla’s ML has gotten so good that these top-shelf human curators are now unnecessary, and can be outsourced or dispensed with entirely. The Tesla bear will counter that this is merely to keep up appearances; it looks a hell of a lot better to fire data curators over machine learning engineers, even if the former are still just as (if not more!) necessary as the latter.

Not to mention the release of Tesla bots due to September event.

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#34

Post by ra7 »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #29
hotpotamus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if I buy a Ford and not a Tesla, then Ford will presumably make some money from me and Tesla won't make any. I'll give it to Tesla (and Musk really) that they really mainstreamed the electric car by making it a luxury/halo type product, but it looks to me like they're losing a lot of their first-mover advantages now and they'll probably be losing some margin. Also their CEO went kinda nuts which didn't help the…

You are a on the low end of buyers, and there are a lot of them. But it's also not the most profitable segment. Tesla has been selling cars as fast as they can build them, until that changes I'm not going to fear another competitor. Part of the reason Ford and others can even compete is that Tesla open sourced their patents. Ford and other's electric cars are being built on the house that Tesla built.

Hold on. No one is using Tesla's open patents because it would require them to open up all of their patents in return. What's your source Ford or others have used them?

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#36

Post by geoduck14 »

UkrainianJew wrote: post #15
lumost wrote: post #5

Does anyone know why Tesla is laying off so agressively? While they are likely overvalued post-pandemic... their financial position appears solid even if the stock fell by 50x. I doubt any cuts could yield the type of profitability that wall street expects at the current valuation.

Tesla P/E is at 94, Ford is at 4, so they are overvalued by quite a lot. The interest rates will likely reach 3% by the end of the year, and may need to go all the way to 8% to have a meaningful effect on the inflation. Every measurable economic metric suggests we are rolling full speed into a recession. And driving your old car for another year or two instead of upgrading to that nice luxury EV is one of the first t…

If inflation is going up, like you suggest, now is the time to buy the stuff that you want - before the price goes up

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#37

Post by naveen99 »

cableshaft wrote: post #25
UkrainianJew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla P/E is at 94, Ford is at 4, so they are overvalued by quite a lot. The interest rates will likely reach 3% by the end of the year, and may need to go all the way to 8% to have a meaningful effect on the inflation. Every measurable economic metric suggests we are rolling full speed into a recession. And driving your old car for another year or two instead of upgrading to that nice luxury EV is one of the first t…

The Fed can't easily raise rates all the way up to 8%. The higher rates affect the government just as much as you buying a new home or taking out a loan, and the government has a shitload of debt it has to keep refinancing. "But with help from the Treasury and from Social Security’s actuaries, I’ve come up with a reasonable estimate of that added interest cost. By my math, the Fed’s higher rates will increase the fed…

The fed can do qe just as easily at 8% interest rates. They just feed the interest right back to the treasury.

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#38

Post by user_named »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #20
MattRix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have a lot of human curators (Elon said they have over 1500 in a recent interview). I imagine that these cuts are for some category of labeling that has become redundant.

This is really the most realistic answer. As they get closer and closer to FSD (and it is quite close now), they will need fewer and fewer people.

How do you know its close?

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#39

Post by anarticle »

hotpotamus wrote: post #21
DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Tesla to Ford is just comical. Tesla has a completely different technology they work on, and has a massive lead on Ford in EV's. You don't even know what you are saying about Tesla. Take on more debt? Why would they do that? They have 17 billion dollars in cash on hand, and paid off a lot of their pre existing debt. Even if they want to build a new gigafactory they don't need any more funding. They smartly…

I don't really see why the comparison is comical. I need a box with wheels to get me from place to place like many Americans. Right now I've got a manual 2016 Chevy Cruze because I got a really good deal on it. I like the idea of my next car being electric so I'd probably be cross shopping a Bolt with a Model 3, but that idea made a lot more sense when the 3 was supposed to be $30K. Now the Bolt is going to be someth…

So far, many of the box on wheels from other manufacturers have had recalls for blowing up people's houses.

Hyundai is the lucky one so far.

Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut

#40

Post by 331c8c71 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #36
UkrainianJew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla P/E is at 94, Ford is at 4, so they are overvalued by quite a lot. The interest rates will likely reach 3% by the end of the year, and may need to go all the way to 8% to have a meaningful effect on the inflation. Every measurable economic metric suggests we are rolling full speed into a recession. And driving your old car for another year or two instead of upgrading to that nice luxury EV is one of the first t…

If inflation is going up, like you suggest, now is the time to buy the stuff that you want - before the price goes up

For many recession means a higher risk of being laid off.
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