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Tesla's Mass Firings Spread To SolarCity as Employees Say They Were Blindsided (cnbc.com)
Tesla has laid off over 200 employees from its SolarCity business for performance reasons, just over a week after firing hundreds more from its motor vehicle division. From a report: Employee dismissals at Tesla are continuing, according to six former and current employees, and have spread from its motor division to SolarCity offices across the U.S. Echoing reports from earlier this month, these SolarCity employees say they were surprised to be told they were fired for performance reasons, claiming Tesla had not conducted performance reviews since acquiring the solar energy business. Earlier this month, Tesla began firing hundreds of employees after it announced a recall of 11,000 Model X SUVs. Tesla had already announced plans to lay off 205 SolarCity employees at its Roseville, California, office by the end of October this year. However, SolarCity employees across the country have been fired in the last two weeks -- not just in California, but also in Nevada, Arizona, Utah and beyond, according to these employees.
I cannot see Tesla's long view in their reasons here. They are a high-profile set of companies (Solar City, Tesla, Boring Co. and SpaceX among others) and this news has hit major outlets - not just niche industry rags. It would be in their best interest to get out in front of this and provide some detail; but they have not. The arbitrariness of the reasons given for firing employees en masse is now what is in the history books for them, and this will surly dissuade talent from desiring to work for a Musk company in the future. Uber is another big-name entity that is walking this same line due to the narrative around its work environment.
I don't see why this is news. It is common for large companies to dump their bottom 5% of performers annually. Some even dump their bottom 10%. Of course, this is no fun if you are one of the ones impacted.
Not saying he didn't, but if you are trying to save a faltering company, culling the workforce of non vital positions and underperforming employees is a start.
200 people out of (according to Wikipedia) 15,000 (that's 1.33%) is in no way shape or form a *mass* firing?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Seriously, companies do this all the time and it doesn't cause any news at all. Just because it's Tesla (an interesting company from a nerd's point of view) does this make a splash. And really the firings weren't that big of a percentage of the work force
This is just business as usual.
you know what will fix this high demand issue... more firings.
Wasn't GE famous (or infamous) for doing this?
I always wondered if it achieved anything truly productive. 5% is a big enough number that it would seem to have a pretty negative effect on the company -- termination processing, new hires, training, and the general chaos on teams/departments when there's a bunch of change.
I can even see side effects, where people who do well in a job get management positions, become "low performers" and get canned. Sure, they've cut a low performer but they also lost someone good at their original job because, basically, they fired the original manager. Now they need two employees.
I would also think it created a pretty toxic atmosphere and a lot of just people trying to meet goals versus actual productivity.
In a very large corporation with a lot of dead weight morons, running such a program (properly) for a few years will clean up the mess and make the company more functional. However, such a program cannot be run in what is essential perpetuity as was the case with Jack Welch. You get to a point where every worker you have is good and you're not going to find better people consistently.
There comes a point where if a company is constantly firing 5% of its employees, the people that really need to be fired are the management for hiring the lousy workers in the first place. On that count, Welch deserved to have been fired after 5 or 10 years.
No, the union represents only it's members. The non-union members are free to attempt to negotiate the same deal the union negotiated, or try and get a better deal. The company is free to attempt to negotiate a deal that is better for the company. The union doesn't die unless the majority of employees feel they can do a better job negotiating than the union can.