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

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321–330 of 396 posts

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

#321
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange statement. Why would a business guy be judged on firing people. Its not like he is running a charity. I like SpaceX because of what they do, not because they 'provide jobs to the community'.

"Given that Tesla has never made an annual profit in the almost 15 years since we have existed, profit is obviously not what motivates us." So they’re not a profitable business, and not a charity. What are they exactly?

Twitter has not produced a single year of profit in 12 years.

Are they a business or a charity or what?

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I would add to that concerns about the current state of their automated driving implementation, as well as the way they are marketing it. I think a lot of t…

I agree that there are concerns. I just don't think any of my concerns ever start with a news article. Every time I read an article like this, and think "Oh no, a legitimate concern" it ends up being overblown.

If this layoff article ends up being a legitimate source of concern, it'll be the first time out of like hundreds of articles a month.

And yeah, I'm with you on the state of driving implementation. I think the criticism that calling it auto-pilot is misleading is a legitimate concern, for example. I would call it co-pilot until it's fully automated, and call it auto-pilot once you can take your hands off the wheel. That would be consistent with the naming-scheme they have chosen, wouldn't diminish brand value, and would be more accurate.

But again, it's just every time I read one of these articles, the comments are saturated with anti-Tesla hate that is either coming from Russia, Big Oil, or some day-traders trying to bring the stock down $10 so they can buy a turn a quick profit for the day.

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I would add to that concerns about the current state of their automated driving implementation, as well as the way they are marketing it. I think a lot of t…

They have also been handling the response to the autopilot glitches pretty terribly. Someone should just tell Musk to shut up when someone dies in one of his cars and not immediately rush in to defend the technology. And especially don't twist the truth to make the dead guy look worse. Either suck it up and admit that the technology remains a work-in-progress, or ... perhaps a better choice ... say nothing at all bey…

His strategy is to fix the issue quick, and to prevent people from capitalizing on these opportunities to sink his company. You don't think Ford is throwing money at anyone who will bad-mouth Tesla?

NHTSA will spin their wheels for a year on an investigation, and accomplish absolutely nothing.

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

#324
post #39

> 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…

If that was the case they definitely would have noted it. Musk said "In addition to this company-wide restructuring, we've decided not to renew". He then went on to say the majority will be given the opportunity to move to other Tesla retail locations. It reads more like the cuts don't include the Home Depot related staff (who surely work hourly + comission anyway, these are cuts to salaries positions).

I'm not sure if this already took place, but didn't Musk say they were going to layoff loads of inefficient contractors a month or two back? Could that be the "restructuring" that is being referred to?

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/fina…

> Tesla has $28.6 billion in assets, according to NASDAQ[0], yet their market cap is nearly twice that. Is that a normal ratio? No. Ford has $257 billion in assets for example but a smaller market cap than Tesla. One could argue that "Market cap" is a poor metric of size and that "Enterprise Value" is better. Teslas numbers move in the right direction if you're looking at Enterprise Value, but its still kinda bad in…

Ford also has $222 billion in liabilities

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

#326

I wonder if some of this is finalizing the digestion of solar city. How many accountants, tech, and office workers did the combine company have that were redundant? Have there been layoffs from the merger (if there were I missed them) - I'm curious to see if this is the end result of that combination.

The classic solar sales and installation company business model isn't shaping up very well. Operating margins aren't the best due to the need for local assets in frequently changing markets as incentives come and go. It's definitely more profitable to sell batteries/panels/etc to the solar installers than to run the operation itself.

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

#327
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Tesla had no marketing dept?

Where do people get this from? Their filings clearly state they spend millions a quarter on marketing.

Probably from half-remembered Tesla marketing spiel, at a guess.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. 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. The Tesla deaths per mile statistics are not that much better than overall US statistics and that involves all sorts of weather and road conditions that Autopilot does not. In addition, the death statistics also include older and or…

How about comparing Teslas before Autopilot to Teslas after Autopilot? > ODI analyzed mileage and airbag deployment data supplied by Tesla for all MY 2014 through 2016 Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Technology Package... The data show that the Tesla vehicles crash rate dropped by almost 40 percent after Autosteer installation. https://www.scribd.com/document/337008436/NHTSA-Full-Report-…

Those stats aren't for autosteer (which is the point of contention) alone, and include AEB which no doubt saves lives.

This brings me to a crucial point. Nobody doubts that assistive technology save lives. Not just automatic emergency braking, but even lane keeping assists. What Tesla does is however take lane keeping assist and give it more responsibility of actively driving the car. It's not clear if that is safe. Even if it's safe, it's not clear if it's safer. You shouldn't be comparing autosteer to just a human, but a human with lane keeping assist. The difference is between the human driving actively, and the car driving itself actively.

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

#329
post #21

"Given that Tesla has never made an annual profit in the almost 15 years since we have existed, profit is obviously not what motivates us."

Quotes taken out of context are really powerful, aren't they?

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. 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. The Tesla deaths per mile statistics are not that much better than overall US statistics and that involves all sorts of weather and road conditions that Autopilot does not. In addition, the death statistics also include older and or…

How about comparing Teslas before Autopilot to Teslas after Autopilot? > ODI analyzed mileage and airbag deployment data supplied by Tesla for all MY 2014 through 2016 Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Technology Package... The data show that the Tesla vehicles crash rate dropped by almost 40 percent after Autosteer installation. https://www.scribd.com/document/337008436/NHTSA-Full-Report-…

Because that data isn't limited to just Autosteer but also includes Autobreaking and the other safety features which are more likely to have played a role in the accident reduction. There's no evidence that Autosteer has saved any lives, but there is evidence that it's taken at least 4.
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