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Tesla's Mass Firings Spread To SolarCity as Employees Say They Were Blindsided (cnbc.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tough-road-ahead dept.

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.

16 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Happened to me by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am one of those affected. Anyone have a $50,000 per year job for me in Silicon Valley in IT?

    1. Re:Happened to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Right-to-work" is about union busting.

      It is about having the choice to belong to a union or not.

    2. Re:Happened to me by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Funny

      Anyone have a $50,000 per year job for me in Silicon Valley in IT?

      Does it have to be in IT . . . ? Otherwise $50,000 per year is what a good housekeeper in Silicon Valley expects.

      Your experience at Tesla will be a big plus, since potential employers will think that you are capable of washing their model S . . .

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Happened to me by tattood · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am betting it has more to do with the company image than anything to do with employess rights. Saying they were firing people for performance reasons instead of laying them off due to financial reasons makes you think the company is still doing well financially.

      --
      WTB [sig], PST!!!
    4. Re:Happened to me by swb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Happened to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Happened to me by pastafazou · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Not a surprise Tesla is winding down SolarCity by fozzy1015 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    SolarCity was well on its way to bankruptcy. The only reason Musk bought SolarCity was to save his cousins and the SolarCity bonds he owned - at the expense of Tesla shareholders. And all it took was a lame presentation showing fake solar tiles to convince them.

    1. Re:Not a surprise Tesla is winding down SolarCity by oic0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Not a surprise Tesla is winding down SolarCity by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But surely Musk is going to get us all to Mars and build a colony there? He promised.

    3. Re:Not a surprise Tesla is winding down SolarCity by zlives · · Score: 4, Insightful

      you know what will fix this high demand issue... more firings.

  3. How To Make Your Company Toxic 101 by E-Lad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:How To Make Your Company Toxic 101 by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's interesting how few people are buying the "low performer" claims. The claims don't really make sense on their face; why would Tesla suddenly discover that its ranks are shot through with masses of people who need to be *immediately fired*? How could things have got so out of hand to require such a drastic immediate step? And how would those management culture problems suddenly be found in completely separate organizations that had been acquired a year ago?

      Here's my theory: Tesla has figured out that sometime in the not-quite-near future cash is going to get tight because of its portfolio of buck rogers projects. How far in the future? Well, far enough that an outsider wouldn't see it in the quarterly SEC filings but near enough that they can see it coming. In business cash is like your air supply. If I cut off your air supply you'll be in distress in one minute and unconscious in three. If a business runs out of liquidity to meet current demands it starts coming apart in a month and is unable to operate after a quarter. This can happen even if the business is making a profit; meeting immediate cash demands has surprisingly little to do with turning a profit.

      So what you do when you discover cash is going to be tight is look for cash outflows you can trim, and almost always payroll is going to be the biggest one. You start looking for people you can manage without. Low performers are an obvious choice, but if you've been doing your job all along you don't have a lot of those heads to chop. So you also look for people who simply pull down the larger salaries than others doing the same job. If my hypothesis is true, both Tesla's claims and the fired employees counterclaims could have a kernel of truth in them.

      But why not simply tell people that this is what they're doing? I think because a lot of Tesla's value is based on an aura of invincibility it has cultivated -- despite or perhaps even because of its past missteps, people believe in this company; they think it will succeed and they want it to succeed. But again if this is what's going on it's risky to in effect libel thousands of workers you've let go for financial reasons.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  4. When did the definition of "mass" change? by Nutria · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  5. Not sure if they were all really blindsided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have an acquaintance that worked for Solar City in the Roseville area, who had been told this was coming and was offered either a severance package or a job at Tesla in NV. This person isn't someone with a super unique skill set either and seemed to speak like it was common knowledge this was coming soon.

  6. Really, not that newsworthy. by djbckr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.