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Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

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Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue with that approach is that you basically also lay off all of your good workers who prefer remote. Maybe it's worth the cost for employers. Idk. We're remote-first and hiring. Looking forward to chatting with these employees once companies try and implement their in-office policies.

How true is the claim that a hybrid WFH/in-person setup is worse than either pure WFH or pure in-person? I’ve seen many claim that it causes a cultural disconnect. I’ve wanted to defend the hybrid scenario, and yet I’ve also seen many problems with communication in a hybrid setup.

Personally, I think all three are equal. Each have merits and pros and cons. What we should do is leave people to decide what arrangement works best for them. Though companies can also decide what they think works best for their organization, in which case employees may have to leave or join new organizations depending on their work preferences or their options.

All this to say here in response that I'm increasingly irritated at the, what's the right word? Polarization? Radicalization? Politicization? Of work options and how those options are creating new tribes and battlegrounds.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#602
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depend on which profit margin you’re using, but gross profit margin is revenue from a sale compared to COGS and wouldn’t include R&D

My point was, if the company is getting $10k extra per sale but actually for example spending a total of $12k per sale, then arguing with these sales seems pointless if they're actually worsening the company's situation. At this point it seems far from certain that this is a net benefit for the company, other than perhaps as an investment in its future (but long-term investments in your future don't prop up your curr…

> but long-term investments in your future don't prop up your current profits

This is exactly why gross profit margin typically excludes R&D, because the measure is usually used to see “is this business profitable on a per-unit basis”. That is, would you make profit if you decided to stop the long term investment.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yet not one of the doomers can articulate how a financial meltdown will happen with cascading failures. 2008 was a feedback loop of house values falling which caused banks to fail which caused people to liquidate housing supply which lowered values. What happens this time?

> What happens this time?

Unless you're deep in the financial industry you couldn't have possibly known the details of what was coming in 2008 in 2007. However you easily could tell, if you were paying attention, that something wasn't right in 2007.

Plenty of analysts and economists much smarter and more informed than me have been worried about the massive credit bubble we're in and the consequences of that popping.

While I agree, it would be far more interesting to know exactly what is going to cause the system to snap, it doesn't mean that observations that something is deeply wrong and we are very likely in for a lot of trouble are invalid "doomerism".

Additionally, what's your evidence that this will be less severe than 2008?

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#604
post #250
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this may be true from the perspective of upper management, it is a very shitty way to treat the people who work for you, or would like to.

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…

Well, one alternative is not to get into that situation in the first place.

> Isn't it a lot better to have a single all-hands meeting where you announce layoffs, the people who are affected will be contacted by their manager with severance information, and the plan going forward?

Well, maybe. But if my employer announced layoffs, I would be looking for a new job the next day regardless of whether I was included. For one thing, 10% layoffs is unlikely to correspond to 10% reduction in total work, so my workload just grew by 10%, and somehow I doubt I'm getting a 10% raise to compensate. For another, the company has now lost its ability to attract top-tier talent, for several years if not forever.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#605

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I don't think it's possible to be altruistic and be a billionaire. That part of your brain has to be dysfunctional in order to amass infinite money while exploiting everyone around you.

People voluntarily bought the Tesla cars, shareholders voluntarily bought the shares. That's Elon's wealth. He didn't steal it from anyone else.

He didn't steal, he exploited. Think about how 1 person at a company can be worth $100+ billion, and the other 100k employees are worth less than that combined. Can you imagine that there systemic exploitation there? Every day he lives and consciously decides to hoard that wealth. Just because it happened legally doesn't mean it's not evil/exploitation.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People voluntarily bought the Tesla cars, shareholders voluntarily bought the shares. That's Elon's wealth. He didn't steal it from anyone else.

He didn't steal, he exploited. Think about how 1 person at a company can be worth $100+ billion, and the other 100k employees are worth less than that combined. Can you imagine that there systemic exploitation there? Every day he lives and consciously decides to hoard that wealth. Just because it happened legally doesn't mean it's not evil/exploitation.

He made many millionaires at Tesla. This is absolutely abhorrent mischaracterization of any billionaire, let alone Elon Musk. Wealth is not stolen from anyone, it is created from providing value to millions of people.

No one is exploiting anyone. It is at-will employment. Provides a living wage to thousands of employees to raise their families.

If wealth was stolen, then we'd not have any growth in GDP. 90% people lived in poverty in the 19th century. Capitalism improved lives of millions of people. Every single person is better off today than in 18th century.

You simply cannot become a billionaire without providing value to millions. Exceptions are inheritance and crony capitalists (often in bed with Gov).

Sergey Brin is rightfully a billionaire. He made the world better and so did pretty much any billionaire. I feel like media has been feeding people "Billionaire bad, socialism good" and people have stopped thinking for themselves.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#607
post #549

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…

if they desire sympathy for being forced to sit under stairs, maybe they should first be forced to sit under stairs before offering self-serving excuses.

ooohkay Elon.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a situation where you would not expect the dirt of the rich and famous to be reported on? Where journalists collectively, ALL OF THEM, right-wing nutjobs and useless centrists alike, would say let's not? This whole attitude of expect political attacks on me is disingenuous at best. Anybody with power should always expect their personal faults to be reported, whatever their political colour.

You seem to completely ignore the possibility of false or exaggerated accusations?

We're talking about professional journalists working for mainstream publications publishing unflattering facts about the richest man in the world; I err on the side of caution, but I do not fall in the trap of believing journalists should be treated by the sole measure that everything they do is bad.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is strange to use charged words such as "crazy", "evil" and "satan" in a comment and then complain of vitriol on the forum.

I've been around here long enough to realize that when discussions are leaning one way, I become extremely skeptical of the situation. Not going to address your ad-hominem slant, but I hope you can empathize with where my skepticism comes from. This forum tends to usually have a great discussion between opposing viewpoints, except here.

Where was the ad-hominem slant? More straw-men and an appeal to authority! I'm convinced you're playing logical fallacy bingo at this point.

Re: Tesla to Cut 10% of Jobs

#610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far from economist, but I kinda agree. Finance is like 6x larger than real economy hence it really rules the world. That said, wonder what's going to happen with cost of living and property market going thru the roof everywhere. Riots? Ain't got time for that when you need to feed yourself.

> Finance is like 6x larger than real economy How are you measuring this? By conventional metrics, it's less than 10% [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPFI

Unsure - I've heard it over Odd Lots podcast. Could've been sixth?
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