Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/13/4819750/

by fmihaila • 9 years ago

184 241 9 years ago

mc325• 9 years ago

Man, that's rough. I know there is good reason to get rid of dead weight, but two things:

1. I had no idea dead weight would be allowed to exist at Tesla.

2. I believe dead weight can be redeemable, if you put in the right effort --not the procedural PIP stuff (which is about improvement as much as incarceration is about rehabilitation) but I mean real effort to rehabilitate a worker. Maybe too much effort for a high flying co.

tedsanders2• 9 years ago

Not to waste time pointing out what you already know, but I think it's worth adding that you can be fired without being dead weight. Many firms (especially in law or consulting) have chosen to have pyramid structures with up-or-out policies that fire half the employees every two years. 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.

mc325• 9 years ago

My understanding was that tech (and I consider Tesla tech even if it's inherently auto) companies were getting away from the stack rank evaluations (save a few). So I'm a bit surprised Tesla is going in that direction.

High demand workers have more opportunities and those that can (the good ones) will find a diff job that does not play this kind of churn game. So I'd thought.

PhasmaFelis• 9 years ago

The system is not inherently good or bad, as long as all parties are aware of it.

There's a lot of problems with stack ranking, not least that it discourages cooperation and encourages direct or indirect sabotage (e.g. declining to hire new prospects who you suspect might be better than you). Wikipedia discusses many of the issues: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Vitality_curve

Analemma_• 9 years ago

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. It creates an atmosphere of paranoia, where people sabotage each other at great cost to the company instead of working together towards common goals. Worse, contra your claim that it weeds out the worst and lets the best rise to the top, what actually happens is the best quickly get sick of the bullshit and leave, while the ones rising to the top are the ones most adept at politics and gaming the system.

Stack ranking has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and if that's really what Tesla is doing it's enough alone to make me more bearish on them. It's that bad.

DigitalJack• 9 years ago

I suppose "dead weight" can be redeemable, however I would say that if you are "dead weight" you probably have the wrong job, and are very likely better off finding something different.

As we get older, that's less and less of an option, and often we have to put up with a job rather than enjoy a job.

mc325• 9 years ago

So if dead weight often is attributable to wrong job (rather than utter incompetence) isn't job redistribution.assignment a more or less manageable issue when you have 33 thousand emps?

camus23• 9 years ago

dead weight

Calling real people "dead weight" is insulting and dehumanizing.

mc325• 9 years ago

I'm not classifying them as dead weight, Tesla is. If they are firing them, they must in some way believe they are dead weight in some context. It's not an indictment on the employees, it's an indictment of Tesla.

On the other hand I believe these people are not dead weight and are redeemable with the right effort.

Dylan168075• 9 years ago

Any term for being awful at your job (either in skill or motivation) is going to be insulting. What would you suggest to avoid being dehumanizing?

caseysoftware2• 9 years ago

While 300-700 people sounds massive, it's out of 33,000 or about 1-2%. It's not hard to believe that 1-2% of a company were bad hires, couldn't/didn't deliver, or weren't a great match for the job anymore.

mc325• 9 years ago

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 workers. Make it work for everyone, in other words.

spectrum1234• 9 years ago

2 key sentences in the article say so much: "Several said Model X, Model S and former SolarCity operations seemed to be targeted." ... "The spokesman said most of the dismissals were administrative and sales positions, and outside of manufacturing."

This has little to do with performance or any conspiracies. If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain stable among all departments. I would guess if shifting a company's labor requirements was more politically correct, the shift would be much larger.

The average pundits head might just explode trying to rationalize the juxtaposition of a clean tech company increasing production rapidly yet 'firing' hundreds. The rational, however, applaud these efforts and the difficult decisions this requires.

Dylan168075• 9 years ago

If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain stable among all departments.

Among all departments, of course not. But the job of administration and sales for the old model of car is a tremendously close match to administration and sales for the new model. If they didn't have a sufficiently large desire to fire these people, they would transfer most or all of them over.

The solarcity firings would possibly represent a shift in labor requirements, but even then they are strongly denying it with the claims of performance-based firings and not layoffs.

mankash666• 9 years ago

Flawed assumption being presented as logic here. The only logical reason for firing would be if the model S,X skills were completely irrelevant to whatever the new model is - which is unlikely.

extrapickles• 9 years ago

It seems to me that the firings were probably more in the sales side. They have had problems with sales people who refused to do things the ‘Tesla Way’ by either being pushy, or by offering discounts to make their numbers look better.

erdle• 9 years ago

SolarCity is an albatross of debt around their neck... no surprises. They have to raise debt for a long time just to get financing these obligations. No dog and pony shows, just paper to pay off paper.

emodendroket4• 9 years ago

If you are right then the talk about performance is just subterfuge to circumvent the law, and also it starts to look like they also illegally targeted workers talking about a union (which certainly looks bad if you've just been in the news for having too many workers injured on the job).

rdlecler1• 9 years ago

Hiring managers are going to remember this. I hope that it was performance related and that Tesla wasn’t just trying to save face with investors.

throwingerman3• 9 years ago

Interesting comments can also be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15470314

tbabb3• 9 years ago

The high estimate was 700 fired. Out of 33,000, that's 2%. Culling the bottom 2% performers seems like a reasonable (even healthy) thing to do; not really an upheaval.

tbabb3• 9 years ago

EDIT: Not healthy, though, if that 2% is a quota, rather than the happenstance fraction of people who fall below the performance bar at evaluation time.

wpietri5• 9 years ago

Do other companies do this? Unless this is GE-style force ranking, I've never heard of it.

If somebody isn't performing well, I have no idea why I'd wait up to a year to deal with it. And it seems terrible for morale (and PR) to have a regular event where a bunch of people will be let go in one block.

lafar6502• 9 years ago

No plan, just some dictatorship in action. They see trouble coming and make some random moves

Cookingboy• 9 years ago

Do other companies do this? Unless this is GE-style force ranking, I've never heard of it.

Probably not right during the ramp up of the most critical product in company's history...

emodendroket4• 9 years ago

Tesla said the performance-based departures were not considered layoffs and not subject to state notifications. It also said the moves have generally boosted worker morale, as high-performing employees have been rewarded.

Maybe I'm just paranoid but this part kind of smells to me.

Iv• 9 years ago

If your employer who apparently fires people randomly asked you in a survey if you are happy about your company, would you answer honestly?

brianwawok4• 9 years ago

One of my best momemts at bigco was a useless middle manager getting fired. Bad and toxic employees do kill morale for your team.

LoSboccacc• 9 years ago

most large IT company do, including amazon google and ibm

icebraining• 9 years ago

[citation needed]

sumeno• 9 years ago

Google doesn't do this.

aslkdjaslkdj• 9 years ago

Amazon and Google both do PIPs before firing low performing employees. That means several months (usually 6 or more) of pay and time to find a new job. It also means your employer isn't in the news with "Everyone who left in October is a low performer you shouldn't hire."

azernik2• 9 years ago

Note the bit at the end:

Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature. Tesla denied the accusations.
Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted.
The company denied union activities played a role in the dismissals.

There are dynamics in blue-collar labor and generally manufacturing that are not relevant to software companies.

Steeeve5• 9 years ago

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 Musk on a pedestal. Personally, I've always been (and always will be) leery of a company run by a PayPal founder.

lacker• 9 years ago

What style - firing 2% of your employees in a given year? That is not a very high rate for a large company. It's only news because everything Tesla is news.

Steeeve5• 9 years ago

2% turnover over the course of a year might not seem high. Firing 2% of your workforce in a single day is.

tbabb3• 9 years ago

Do they set a "quota" for 2%? Or is it that they do it every year, and 2% is about the number that falls out?

I do agree that a "firing quota" is backwards; it should be a standard of performance. But even in a healthy, high-performing company, 1 (or maybe 2) out of 100 people being a drag/net-negative contributor doesn't sound far too off. Ultimately I think it helps the other 98 people to ask those two to leave as soon as it's clear they're not going to become a net positive. If that assessment comes at a specific time of year, so be it; if it's "Okay, we have /n/ heads to chop off, where are they coming from??"... then yeah, not so much.

dunkelheit• 9 years ago

The problem is that a true company-wide firing of bottom 2% of performers is impossible - you would have to somehow compare and rank people with vastly different roles to pull it off. So the way to do it is to first choose unlucky departments and set a quota for each department, then choose unlucky managers and let those managers choose unlucky employees. Which makes it a lot more similar to a layoff than the company likes to admit. These employees may be perfectly solid workers but now they have to bear a stigma of being fired for "performance" reasons.

I had a manager friend whose company went through a "not-layoff" when approx. 2% of the workforce were let go. His group was among the unfortunate ones so he was told to choose one victim among his subordinates - but there was no one with unsatisfactory performance in his opinion. Still he had to choose. Didn't improve his morale that much - he quit shortly afterwards.

ianai• 9 years ago

I know Tesla seems to hold a special place for many people. But I don’t see how these business practices result in them disrupting the automotive industry.

jfoster2• 9 years ago

Some of their employees are not good. Some of them disrupt the others. Some of them are negative. They make the other talented employees not want to work at the company. So you remove them. The remainder of the company is then happier and produces better results.

staunch4• 9 years ago

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 have ambitions as big as Elon Musk's but haven't lucked upon an easy $160M cash. He's the proof of what's possible when the right kind of person does.

orbifold• 9 years ago

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.

noitsnot4• 9 years ago

From Wikipedia, he was the CEO after the merger who decided to shut down online banking and focus solely on PayPal. It sounds like he had a lot to do with it.

sjwright3• 9 years ago

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.

mcpherrinm• 9 years ago

I've heard of tales from Cisco where managers tried to get internal transfers of bad employees to their team so they'd have somebody extra around to fire when cutting time comes.

throwawayknecht3• 9 years ago

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?

watwut2• 9 years ago

It is difference between solving problem of low performance employee and searching for employee to be fired as you believe someone has to go.

throwingerman3• 9 years ago

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.

leereeves2• 9 years ago

[Musk] also joked to employees they would be going through “production hell” to meet demand for the new car.

It sounds like taking sick days, vacation days, and going home at 5pm is exactly what Musk doesn't want from employees.

Germans are fortunate to have those benefits guaranteed by law (and culture).

spatulon• 9 years ago

Presumably one bit of Tesla culture they can't bring to Germany is firing low performers.

I worked for a German company for over a decade. I don't know if it was due to their culture or their laws, but I never saw anyone get fired for poor performance (except for failing the initial 6-month probation after joining). And it's not like we didn't have low performers — once I got into management it became quite clear that there were a handful of people who were borderline useless, but it was just accepted that they were employees, that the company should look after them just the same, and find work for them to do.

wheels• 9 years ago

It's true that if you have 30 days of vacation that that comes from your contract, but that's a pretty standard perk with large-ish companies. The legal minimum is 24 days though [1], so that's as low as it can go. Usually after a couple years of working for a German company, you have a permanent contract, which can only be changed or revoked under cases that are also regulated by law (e.g. layoffs because of cash shortage or continued, documented underperformance).

[1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/burlg/__3.html

fmueller• 9 years ago

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

pjmlp• 9 years ago

Sure, because everyone has enough money in the bank, no running expenses, no health issues, and a new job just around the corner.

stuaxo• 9 years ago

Leaving at the same time as a whole bunch of your colleagues are dumped on the job market makes it more difficult to find a job.

Having news stories that you are in an underperforming two percent won't help either.

This is a pretty callous move and no surprise it has affected morale.

Steeeve5• 9 years ago

Most people, even well paid engineers, live paycheck to paycheck.

Sizable companies take a month to bring in a new employee in the best case.

Most hiring managers are skeptical of people fired in a mass "underperformance" firing.

Toss in the fact that most people have never been fired and it's a massive blow to the ego. And also that it's terrible to communicate to your spouse and children that you've been fired for doing a bad job at work. That's a recipe for depression. Which makes it even harder to find work again. Which exacerbates the depression. And you're living on credit. And the bills are piling up. And you are starting to get phone calls.

If you can't jump right into a new job, it's a hard situation to be in, no question about it.

flexie• 9 years ago

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.

colechristensen• 9 years ago

When you mass fire people like this, it can only seem like your plan was to fire a large set of people and you made it a goal to find them. You're quite likely to find people to fire that are down on their luck for some reason or another.

You're also quite likely to alienate or scare a sizable portion of your workforce. Anxiety about getting fired will drive a lot of people to perform worse. Conversely, a feeling that your company will support you during rough times can make those rough times shorter and help productivity.

It's also about diversity. Diversity of life situations, diversity of mental health status, diversity of motivations, etc. etc.

ThomPete• 9 years ago

It's the Jack Welsh management style.

https://www.manager-tools.com/forums/jack-welchs-20-70-10

tyingq4• 9 years ago

Culling the bottom 10%, every year, is a big step beyond this.

This one seems off, especially noting that some of the fired say they never received a bad review. But it's not yet in that league.

ZenoArrow• 9 years ago

I'm not a fan of this style of management either, but at this moment in time we need a standard bearer for electric cars, and Tesla is best placed to fill that role at the moment.

After the (hopefully successful) release of the Model 3, assuming this drives other companies to push forward electic cars, we won't need Tesla to be successful anymore, so I'd expect more people to be critical after that.

maxerickson3• 9 years ago

How does the Bolt fit into that framework?

AsyncAwait3• 9 years ago

People always seem to put Musk on a pedestal. Personally, I've always been (and always will be) leery of a company run by a PayPal founder.

Bingo! I never quite got the Musk hype train, between how he treats his employees, doesn't respect work life balance, has unrealistic expectations and talks about people not wanting to work for him as less talented, promotes the idea of American exceptionalism etc., I don't see the appeal.

As for his 'accomplishments', he seems to talk a lot and constantly over promise/under deliver. I guess his appeal is that his companies at least approach the exciting territory, which is quite a difference from another 'food delivery startup' of the Valley, but lets not make an average (if electric) car made by Tesla, with plenty of its own, documented QC problems something it is not, just because Musk is involved.

omilu• 9 years ago

He risked everything to make a rocket company from nothing, if ever there was a person that earned the hype, this is the person.

Nokinside3• 9 years ago

Musk is many things.

* As an investor I would not invest money in Musk's business. It's too risky and ego driven. He finances his endeavors just as creatively as he does technology and takes lots of risk. He is clearly not after money. Money is just tool for him. It's either Mars or bust. Inspiring but not good thing from investor point of view.

* From a technological point of view I admire what Musk has accomplished. His single mindedness has moved space technology forward. He should be admired for what he has done. He has deserved his hype. He has knack of getting things done while stretching everything very close to failure. Even if his businesses fails and he loses everything, that technology is there and others buy it.

* From a humanistic point of view, I understand that Musk will throw people under the bus if they are in the way of his goals. I would not want to be dependent on him any way.

Musk is very typical driven tech industry titan. You have to prioritize. If personal ambition is high, all other issues must come second. Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates all have documented mean streaks towards other people and workers. We should understand that highest level of accomplished very often comes with high human cost. There is a choice.

This is where government regulations should come in.

Musk is not treating people badly because he is malevolent. It's just means to the end. If mistreatment of workers can't be used to gain competitive edge, it stops.

hyperpape3• 9 years ago

Podcast on Netflix's practices: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/28/435583328/episo...

They're pretty brutal. In one case a woman works herself to the point of chronic back pain. They tell her to take as much time as she needs to recover. But when she comes back, her job is gone (they didn't hire someone else, they just eliminated it).

Animats2• 9 years ago

High-level executives at Tesla are bailing out. Back when Musk announced his overoptimistic production schedule for the Model 3, his two top production executives quit.[1] Nine more high-level executives have left so far this year.[2]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/two-tesla... [2] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/08/02/tesla-ts...

sien• 9 years ago

That's really interesting. The Economist ran a story earlier about how aggressive Musk's finances are and how there was weird finance going on and that Musk was simultaneously trying to keep things afloat, keep on a super aggressive schedule and keep control.

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21709061-entrepreneu...

Perhaps the wheels are starting to come off. Even if they do, it's been amazing what has been achieved.

agumonkey• 9 years ago

From afar, it seems that's just how musk did about everything. SpaceX was a potential catastrophy, but they passed the tipping point successfully. Everything Musk does is "adventure" like, which is unsurprisingly good for employee stability. It's a bit like Jobs at Apple. You're gonna suffer, maybe get fire but you worked on "that" project.

Animats2• 9 years ago

Space-X has the advantage of competing with high-cost producers. Tesla is trying to move downmarket, where they have to compete with Chevy. Tesla should be able to make a good car. The question is whether they can make money on the Model 3.

In reality, Tesla's pricing strategy is to charge $50K-$60K for the Model 3.[1] This is BMW / Mercedes-Benz territory.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/06/surprise-the-real-...

simonsarris3• 9 years ago

I'm not sure you can read into these three you linked.

Josh Ensign left to become COO at a different company and his stint at Tesla was the longest in his list of experience: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-ensign-3604431/

Greg Reichow worked at Tesla for 5.5 years and switched jobs to become an investor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregreichow/

Kurt Kelty was at Panasonic for 14 years and Tesla for 11.5. As far as we know from LinkedIn he hasn't got a new job, which you could see as fine (left for personal reasons or simply burnt out) or bad (left because he saw doom ahead, even though he didn't have another job lined up). https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-kelty-5604bb/

What is so bad about these departures? Simply the timing?

evek• 9 years ago

I may be conservative, but I don't consider burnout to be on a "fine" side of things.

dmode6• 9 years ago

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.

viraptor• 9 years ago

Do you know if the severance was based on time worked so far, or 2 weeks for everybody?

But yeah, this is terrible. If you don't expect you're going to be fired for bad performance, that's a company's failure, not yours.

dmode6• 9 years ago

He worked for 2 years. I am not sure what severance is based on. Also, with this article, Tesla pretty much trashed every employee they fired by publicly saying they are bad performers. Imagine finding a job now that you have been labelled a poor performer

metaphor• 9 years ago

I know someone who just got fired in this round at Tesla. ... They offered only 2 weeks of severance.

Fired or layed off? I've never experienced either, but I always thought severance pay was exclusive to the latter.

dmode6• 9 years ago

I am not sure of the difference between firing and laying off. Manager basically said that today is last day, bring in your equipment etc

ehnto• 9 years ago

I thing the difference you are thinking of is when someone is being made redundant versus being fired. Being fired implies the employee failed in some way. Being made redundant implies the company changed in such a way that the employee is no longer needed.

Being made redundant tends to be the situation that attracts a severance package of any significance. Depending entirely on the country and state of course.

analog312• 9 years ago

If you're fired for doing something bad, then you become ineligible for unemployment compensation (which is something you earned) and some other benefits. This creates a perverse incentive to claim a cause for termination. On the other hand, it also creates an incentive for the fired employee to sue, especially if they think that the employer didn't have an utterly bulletproof paper trail and discipline procedures.

For this reason, it's sometimes more practical for a company to terminate someone without cause, and just pay out the benefits as a cost of doing business. They can wait for a slow season, when they would normally shed some workers, and terminate the lowest performers.

Companies avoid the term "layoff" because it has connotations, such as eligibility to be re-hired when conditions improve. So they use "reduction in force" instead. The people who are fired are "impacted," and so forth.

The terminology used doesn't mean anything... what matters is whether someone was terminated "with cause" or not.

acomjean• 9 years ago

At least in my state (MA) a while ago being fired with cause means not eligible for unemployment[1]. I knew this from someone (last century) being fired for being overheard quoting "office space" the movie on the phone, and therefor suspected of being dangerous. He was not given a chance to defend himself, but hated the job anyway.

"PETER Boy. I tell ya, one of these days... One of these days it's gonna be like

He mimics a machine gun. Brian, a waiter, does it too, in Peter's face."

He went to hearing to get his unemployment, and won because the layer from bigco, sent to the hearing from out of state literally wouldn't answer any questions.

http://www.masslegalhelp.org/employment-unemployment/ui-if-f...

jwdunne• 9 years ago

I think firing without giving warnings and opportunity to improve is sick. These people don't even know they were doing badly. I can't tell if they've been told where they screwed up. These people could be spending a lot of time figuring out what went wrong when everything seemed to be going fine. They don't deserve that, regardless of performance.

They are people, they have lives and it wasn't anything like gross misconduct.

I think Mr Musk has a lot to answer for.

walterbell• 9 years ago

Some countries have laws requiring notice and time for a performance improvement period, before final termination of employment.

AsyncAwait3• 9 years ago

Musk seems to think that somebody like Chris Lattner is not good enough for Tesla, so his definition of a 'low performer' definitely seems a bit off. I just hope that the applies the same evaluative metrics to himself.

WillReplyfFood2• 9 years ago

The intention is not to improve performance by removing useless people- the intention is to improve performance and dissent-less quotas on those who stay.

stock_toaster• 9 years ago

I worked at a bigco during a RIF (reduction in force), and underperforming /teams/ or even /sections/ had their management told, “your team underperformed — fire X number of lowest performers”. Then the manager was effectively forced to just pick people to let go.

Shitty, but par for the course for many bigco places (outside tech), from what I have heard over the years.

tyingq4• 9 years ago

It's often not underperformers. Just "pick x% of your team"

WillReplyfFood2• 9 years ago

So its, pick the least social performers, false friends and in-efficient co worker backstabbers.

wpietri5• 9 years ago

I was consulting once for a large company when one of those came down. A manager I was working with really cared about his team, and it bothered him that he had to lay off one person for basically no good reason besides corporate politicking. He pushed against it for a while, but when they wouldn't relent, he laid himself off.

That didn't totally make sense, as they still had to find a manager for his team. But since the whole layoff was arbitrary, it didn't have to make sense. His whole team stayed.

I always thought it was a baller move. And looking at LinkedIn, he's had a solid career since, so it clearly didn't hurt him any.

simonsarris3• 9 years ago

What kind of role was the person in? Were they former SolarCity or Tesla Motors? Can you give us any other details?

thereisnospork• 9 years ago

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.

dmitriid3• 9 years ago

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

dmode6• 9 years ago

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.

nextlevelwizard2• 9 years ago

They offered only 2 weeks of severance.

It sucks for him, but I hope he learns in future not to sign bad contracts. A day's notice and 2 weeks severance is super bad and I would not have signed it unless the pay was extremely good, as in so good I wouldn't have to worry about getting another job straight away.

EDIT: based on the downvotes many people here could use this advice: DO NOT SIGN BAD CONTRACTS!

dmode6• 9 years ago

The downvotes are probably due to the fact that there are no contracts in the states. It is at will employment

tyingq4• 9 years ago

Not everyone is in a position to negotiate terms. Very few in the US would have that kind of leverage.

throwingerman3• 9 years ago

I don't know if this helps your friend but I know BMW in Munich is hiring. A lot of departments are fine with English speakers. I found a couple of examples for him if they are useful:

https://recruiting.bmwgroup.de/ibs/Servlets/ibs/controller/s...

I'm sure Mercedes and Audi would also have similar openings.

inferiorhuman• 9 years ago

From the article, some folks are claiming that the firings were around attempts at organizing a union:

Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted.

dmode6• 9 years ago

He works in a white collar job. So, unlikely to be "pro union".

danmaz742• 9 years ago

No notice and 2 weeks severance? Moreover, I guess, no health insurance while looking for work? Wow, I don't think any other rich country could find this acceptable.

SeanDav• 9 years ago

This sort of behaviour is quite common in companies, so I can't help wondering if it is true that studies have shown a significant percentage of Silicon Valley CEO's and company executives are psychopaths.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/21/apparently-psychopaths-make-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/15/silicon-v...

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201...

JabavuAdams2• 9 years ago

Why would they have to be psychopaths to justify such behaviour? A belief that the project > people suffices. Can you not think of any project that is more important than the individual workers making it happen?

Also, I suspect they would react differently if e.g. the mass-laid-off committed mass suicide, whereas I doubt a psychopath would.

xedarius• 9 years ago

It's quite common in investment banking. A bunch of them do it.

https://www.quora.com/Could-Goldman-Sachs-strategy-of-firing...

I think Barclays also used to do it.

It's shitty thing to do to people. But you don't need me to tell you they're shitty companies.

ape4• 9 years ago

Its like the "Survivor" TV show. Or "The Apprentice" - hey who was the host of that?

carlossilva33• 9 years ago

Wouldn't be surprised if this is to distract people from bad publicity such as production delays and handmaking of parts https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-teslas-production-delays...

nstj• 9 years ago

There seems to be some confusion/ambiguity around whether these layoffs were focused on the Fremont Tesla factory or company wide.

If they were focused on 1 factory that would be weird - if they were company wide that would be within the bounds of normalcy.

Can anyone illuminate?

praulv• 9 years ago

I used to be of the opinion that a company should have full right to drop dead weight as and when it chooses fit. The thing we forget is we, citizens, pay extortionate taxes to run a government which provides favourable incentives for companies to form and provide employment. They should, in return, be obliged to demonstrate some level of mutual benefit to employees, rather than purely incentivising shareholders' and directors' bonuses.

nopzor2• 9 years ago

So companies should follow the law? I think you're really arguing for better employee protection in the USA ?

penguinUzer• 9 years ago

I interpreted the post as meaning when a company is given millions of dollars in tax breaks, i.e., build your new factory here and your income tax is abated for X years, then they should be on the hook for when they let go of employees.

In theory I agree and the company should be on the hook to provide training or assistance.

CrLf• 9 years ago

The Romans called this style of management "decimation." It's unfortunate that it's still fashionable in the 21st century.

Also, this sounds straight out of the Ministry of Peace:

"It also said the moves have generally boosted worker morale"

jaclaz• 9 years ago

The Romans called this style of management "decimation."

To be fair to the Romans, decimation was a (correct, if the adjective can be used in this case) random process and was limited to the army.

The idea was that when a large group (a cohort or 480 people) severely underperformed (it happened in case of rebellion/mutiny or blatant cowardy), AFTER having executed on the spot those that led the rebellion or that were manifestly coward or leading the mutiny, the remaining were divided in groups of ten, then in each group one was selected by drawing lots, and was executed by the remaining 9 comrades.

This had two advantages (in the eye of the Roman leaders), the army would not have been exterminated (unlike in more "traditional" repression of rebellions) and the 9/10 remaining would have been motivated to contribute to the group.

So, there was not an evaluation of the performance (or non-performance) of the single, the responsability was attributed to the group as a whole, and then out of the 10 people subset the 1 to be killed was chosen by Fate.

kryptiskt3• 9 years ago

The unforgivable action here is the badmouthing of the workers that they fired, gloating about increased morale. Not even Uber would sink that low.

This crap from management shouldn't be tolerated, much less celebrated.

TStowe• 9 years ago

That tends to be one cheap option to keep psychologically tied to the company.

I'm not for or against it, but I imagine being one of those workers it would suck.

Still, I'm all for automating as much as possible, and in the case of workforce reductions, gloating over the fact that things move so much more quickly and accurately.

I do like Elon Musks's attitude toward people wasting time. And this is head and shoulders above what goes on in China, India factory conditions. Not saying no one should whine and bitch and moan about it, but truly, it's not all that bad.

thegayngler5• 9 years ago

So basically what you have is Musk over promising and under delivering but it's the worker's fault he could not meet unrealistic deadlines he set himself ignoring all reality.

Musk set Tesla up for failure and now the non-management people have to suffer as a result. The fact that this is even being talked about right now may hurt Tesla's chances of hiring great future employees...especially with that scathing article basically saying they were being fired for bad performance and not laid off.

Can you still get unemployment if you are fired for unsatisfactory performance?

Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory

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