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Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

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Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#91

Post by et-al »

tedsanders wrote: post #40
Analemma_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the fired employees are good, this keeps everyone motivated and allows you to churn through employees to find the really excellent ones worth developing. The system is not inherently good or bad, as long as all parties are aware of it. Everything about these statements is wrong. Take it from someone who worked at Microsoft before and after they finally smartened up and ditched stack ranking: it's horrible.…

The top three management consulting firms are ranked #1, #3, and #11 on Glassdoor's best places to work. Clearly their up-or-out policies aren't seen as horrible by their own employees. And as a consultant who works at one of those firms, I've never seen anyone sabotage someone else's performance, not once. In fact, you are probably rated best when you help support those around you. Certainly the policy causes stress…

These Best Places to Work awards don't really tell me if a place is actually a good place to work. It is, however, a pretty good indicator of how strong the kool-aid is at a company.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#92

Post by dmitriid »

thereisnospork wrote: post #88
dmode wrote: post #49

I know someone who just got fired in this round at Tesla. His manager never communicated to him that he was a bad performer. He was not on a PIP or any performance plans. He was also working on Model 3. One fine morning his manager called him and said this would be his last day. He is a single income earner and was so shocked by this news that he is getting borderline depressed. They offered only 2 weeks of severance…

without commenting on the unfairness -- as an employee, if you aren't prepared for this to happen to you, then you are doing yourself a disservice and are improperly managing your finances. Any and all of us can, and some will be, 'fired' for less with less.

If you are an employee in the States, that is.

There’s a mandatory three-month notice period in Sweden, so that the person who is fired (or sho leaves) has the time to find a new job

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#93

Post by throwingerman »

Steeeve wrote: post #37

I'm not a fan of this style of management at all. I won't knowingly go to work for a company that behaves in this manner. I've read that Netflix does it, and I've seen inferences that they acquired the practice from Disney. If you have a low performing employee that you want to get rid of, fine. Arbitrarily destroying the lives of a percentage of your workforce in an annual purge is not OK. People always seem to put…

And it is exactly this style of management that is causing problems at the German automation plant he aquired (see my comment in the duplicate thread). It is probably a reason why production of the Model 3 is behind -- the company he acquired builds the factory robots needed for advanced automation. Smart move to acquire it then and it explains why the timing is now off.

You can't run a German plant like an American one, people will take the 30 day vacations that have been written into their contracts since before he arrived (just because you have a new boss doesn't mean the old contract is invalid), take sick days if they need them (unlimited sick days by law, they don't come out of your vacation time), and go home at 5pm because they value their home/family/free time. Last I checked the factory had at least dozens of positions open that they can't fill because no one here wants to work for them.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#94

Post by dmode »

thereisnospork wrote: post #88
dmode wrote: post #49

I know someone who just got fired in this round at Tesla. His manager never communicated to him that he was a bad performer. He was not on a PIP or any performance plans. He was also working on Model 3. One fine morning his manager called him and said this would be his last day. He is a single income earner and was so shocked by this news that he is getting borderline depressed. They offered only 2 weeks of severance…

without commenting on the unfairness -- as an employee, if you aren't prepared for this to happen to you, then you are doing yourself a disservice and are improperly managing your finances. Any and all of us can, and some will be, 'fired' for less with less.

Often it is not about financial preparedness. It is about uncertainty. When will I get my next job? 6 months? Which means I will burn through my savings. If you are on a visa then things become exponentially complicated - you don't get unemployment insurance, benefits. What about healthcare ? COBRA is prohibitively expensive. How about the fact that the company announced to the entire world that you are a low performer? This is not even taking into account the emotional impact of getting fired cold.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#95

Post by kryptiskt »

dmitriid wrote: post #92
thereisnospork wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without commenting on the unfairness -- as an employee, if you aren't prepared for this to happen to you, then you are doing yourself a disservice and are improperly managing your finances. Any and all of us can, and some will be, 'fired' for less with less.

If you are an employee in the States, that is. There’s a mandatory three-month notice period in Sweden, so that the person who is fired (or sho leaves) has the time to find a new job

That three month notice period when leaving is a hassle for employees, being a lame duck is no fun.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#96

Post by throwawayknecht »

sjwright wrote: post #74
Steeeve wrote: post #37

I'm not a fan of this style of management at all. I won't knowingly go to work for a company that behaves in this manner. I've read that Netflix does it, and I've seen inferences that they acquired the practice from Disney. If you have a low performing employee that you want to get rid of, fine. Arbitrarily destroying the lives of a percentage of your workforce in an annual purge is not OK. People always seem to put…

How is an "annual purge" of low performing employees any different ethically to a day-to-day purge of low performing employees? The only difference is HR strategy. Perhaps they want to signal to the labor market that they're not shy about ridding themselves of second-rate colleagues? I don't like working with second-rate colleagues; it certainly makes me want to work for Tesla.

How would it be different if a hospital murdered X% of their worst-prognosis patients every January 1st, rather than letting X% die over the course of the year regardless of interventions?

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#97

Post by fmueller »

Steeeve wrote: post #37

I'm not a fan of this style of management at all. I won't knowingly go to work for a company that behaves in this manner. I've read that Netflix does it, and I've seen inferences that they acquired the practice from Disney. If you have a low performing employee that you want to get rid of, fine. Arbitrarily destroying the lives of a percentage of your workforce in an annual purge is not OK. People always seem to put…

Firing a person should not destroy their life. Something else is really wrong if this is the case.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#98

Post by staunch »

orbifold wrote: post #89
staunch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, he didn't really found PayPal or have much of anything to do with it one way or the other. He founded X.com, which merged with PayPal. He left after not doing much beyond arguing with Max Levchin about Windows vs FreeBSD. IIRC. Most people considered him kind of a joke before Tesla and SpaceX were mainstream successes. He's done amazing things with that PayPal money though. I bet a few dozen people on HN…

Wikipedia says that he founded X.com, which merged with Confinity, initially he became CEO and later Peter Thiel the founder of Confinity took over and the company was renamed to PayPal.

Yes, it's a bit confusing. Confinity created PayPal (roughly as we know it) before merging with X.com. X.com was a failed online bank and not really doing anything like PayPal's eBay stuff.

> Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal, in late 1999.[1] Confinity merged with X.com, founded by Elon Musk, in March 2000. The merged company became known as X.com because this was thought to be a name with broader long-term potential than Confinity or PayPal. However, surveys showed that a majority of consumers considered the name X.com vague and potentially pornographic and preferred that the company simply be called PayPal. After a corporate restructuring, the company adopted the name PayPal Inc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#99

Post by flexie »

Steeeve wrote: post #37

I'm not a fan of this style of management at all. I won't knowingly go to work for a company that behaves in this manner. I've read that Netflix does it, and I've seen inferences that they acquired the practice from Disney. If you have a low performing employee that you want to get rid of, fine. Arbitrarily destroying the lives of a percentage of your workforce in an annual purge is not OK. People always seem to put…

Any company, whether it's our pet tech company or a boring bank, will have to let go of what they believe is under performing staff at some point. Some companies manage to do little by little so no-one notices, some do it in bulk once a year and it becomes news.

I'm not sure what is better for the employees but often middle managers tend to keep their staff until forced by top management to let someone go.

As for "destroying" lives, I suggest we don't let ourselves get carried away by this. A job is a job; a means to make money. There are other ways to make money, including by taking another job or by starting your own company, which is very realistic for former Tesla engineers.

Just like you are not obliged to buy a Tesla model 3 although you might have bought a Tesla model S beforehand, Tesla is not obliged to buy your services as employees forever and ever. A job is not till death do us part.

As for comment about "arbitrarily" firing people; there is nothing that supports that Tesla did that. Why would they fire people arbitrarily? They are scaling up. The last thing they would do is to fire for the sake of it.

Re: Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

#100

Post by Udik »

closeparen wrote: post #63
mc32 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly it's a small fraction. To me, while not a communist by any means, I do think that cos. often simply think about he employee-employer relationship as unidirectional: the employee owes the employer but I see more and the company owes society at large to support its workers, where it can. Not saying they should carry inept unqualified workers, but that they should make some effort to place mal-assigned worker…

Projecting responsibility for societal well-being onto for-profit employers is crazy. If we think everyone deserves something, we need to provision it directly as a society. Corporations are poor stewards of our welfare, and trying to coerce them into this role (i.e. minimum wage, healthcare mandate, obligation to hold on to unneeded workers like you propose here) has the nasty side-effect of inhibiting potentially b…

I completely agree. It's the single responsibility principle, applied to society. In Italy, for example, the mistake of not following the SRP has produced such an entanglement of the responsibilities of businesses with those of the State that the result is a mess of spaghetti code with exceptions layered upon exceptions, almost impossible to reform and still not providing everyone with the same basic stuff (as an unemployment benefit, for instance).
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