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Tesla Employees Detail How They Were Fired, Claim Dismissals Were Not Performance Related (cnbc.com)
New submitter joshtops shares a CNBC report: Tesla is trying to disguise layoffs by calling the widespread terminations performance related, allege several current and former employees. On Friday, the San Jose Mercury News first reported that Tesla had dismissed an estimated 400 to 700 employees. That number represents between 1 and 2 percent of its entire workforce. But one former employee, citing internal information shared by a manager, said the total number fired is higher than 700 at this point. Most of the people let go from Tesla so far have been from its motors business, said people familiar with the matter. They were not from other initiatives like Tesla Powerwall, which is helping restore electricity to the residents of Puerto Rico now. The mass firings, which affected Tesla employees across the U.S., had begun by the weekend of Oct. 7 and continued even after the initial news report, sources said. Among those whose jobs were terminated in this phase, some were given severance packages quickly while others are still waiting on separation agreements. Some terminated employees told CNBC they were informed via email or a phone call "without warning," and told not to come into work the next day. The company also dismissed other employees without specifying a given performance issue, according to these people. "Seems like performance has nothing to do with it," one Tesla employee told CNBC under the condition of anonymity. "Those terminated were generally the highest paid in their position," this person said, suggesting that the firings were driven by cost-cutting. That assessment was echoed by several others, including three employees fired from Tesla during this latest wave.
Illusory superiority is something we probably all have mentally: We all think we're above average employees, when obviously that's impossible.
One thing I've noticed working at a few major companies is that nobody ever really gets bad performance reviews: Instead, they all range from satisfactory to excellent. But in reality, those who get satisfactory are getting bad reviews, it's just more polite to NOT say "you stink".
I highly doubt they'll ever have one. People have been totally brainwashed against unions. Companies tout over and over again how everyone needs to come together and be buddies. Prima donna rockstar IT guys and developers loudly proclaim that they would never stoop to the level of their peers. And people wonder why there's no job security.
Things are going to have to get REALLY bad for unions to make a comeback. Bad enough for the average people to tune out the propaganda, like 50% unemployment bad. I personally have zero issues with seniority-based job security as long as the person is performing at an acceptable level. Too many people I know are getting thrown out of the IT field in their 40s and 50s, and it's nearly impossible to get rehired due to age discrimination. I think my next career move is going to have to be "cashing in my chips" and taking a lower-paying stable job.
Meanwhile, Tesla has 2484 open jobs on its website. A rather curious strategy if they're trying to "disguise a layoff". Let's lay off "up to 700 people" and then hire 2484 new people to.... cut back on the workforce?
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Complete non sequitur.
Ayn Rand argued in favor of those who produce. She argued that wealth is not a zero-sum game (such as the poker analogy); that wealth is created. And, if it is created, we ought to respect the creators of said wealth.
The creators are more valuable to society than the redistributors - especially if the distributors end up shackling or killing the creators.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I used to work at GE, they did occasionally try to fire someone for poor performance. It was always a major hassle documenting the reasons, discussing the problem with the employee, etc. But it did happen once in a while when the person was truly a non-performer and sometimes resulted in a lawsuit against the company.
Much more common was a RIF - Reduction In Force. Those involved a large number of people (like this one at Tesla) and usually effected older employees, poor performers, and people with the misfortune to be in a poor performing business group. Yea, it's illegal to layoff older employees in order to cut salaries so they always threw in a few younger employees to make it look like a mix.
There were usually a few really poor performers around before a RIF. We called them "canaries", because like a canary in a coal mine, as long as they were around you knew you were safe.
The truth is that the Big Three automakers were (and are) unable to respond to competitive stresses caused by places with lower wages being able to export into the US market. The lame management was a given - though there were only three things the management could do:
1) Cut costs sufficiently to compete - I rate this as nigh-impossible as a practical matter, as things like transport, raw materials, and infrastructure cost more here, too, and the automakers couldn't remake the whole economy all on their own. That said, this is where unions hurt the most.
Unions are rather shortsighted beasts and they cause more harm to manufacturing workers in the long run than they help. If you take a year-long or five year view, they are great. Look over a career's length, and the evidence is equivocal. Over 100 years, the union will kill any manufacturing business dead. The objective of the union is to maximize return for the union members and to control/limit access to the labor market in that industry in the interest of maintaining scarcity toward maximizing union member return. This is rarely congruent with the interests of the manufacturer, most obviously in times of competitive stress. Unions are great at getting workers stuff when the going is good, but when it is rough, they are unwilling to give anything back. Unions most typically force the manufacturer to reach the edge of bankruptcy and total dissolution before the union is willing to negotiate in good faith and with urgency, and by then it is much too late.
You need only look at what happened to US Steel, if the automakers aren't convincing enough.
2) Diversify - which was done, but was insufficent to stop the bleeding. Think, say, investments in Mazda by Ford, or in Isuzu/Suzuki by GM (Geo line).
3) Push their political masters to restrict trade to protect their market. This is what was ultimately done. You didn't think all those foreign car makers built plants in the US for their health, did you? They were compelled to. All that free trade talk is bullshit once your ox starts getting gored.
So, those who blame the unions and blame the management have lots of details to pick from to support their view. My view is that we should just accept that free trade is a phantom and stop pretending that we don't have a corporatist, protectionist regime. It's the only way the old-fashioned US economy works on a macroscopic level. Even the internet companies are starting to feel the pinch and are going to become part of this old school economy before long.
Why is so much of politics today pretending we don't believe in what we actually do believe in?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.