
Tesla employees reveal how they were fired - uladzislau
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-how-they-were-fired-2018-6
======
prawn
Some of this seems like they're trying to find criticism where it's barely
warranted. When are you supposed to notify someone of a meeting in which
they'll be fired? Too late and it seems like it's last minute. Too soon and
they might anxiously stew on it for a week.

Not enough indication of what the meeting is about, and they'll be surprised.
Give them too much indication and their anxiety will balloon.

I've been on the receiving end of this as an employer in a really small
business. e.g., a keystone employee was leaving and with awkward timing.
There's no brilliant way to do it.

~~~
majewsky
What about this part?

> A third employee, an engineer who still works at Tesla and asked not to be
> identified by name, said he discovered his manager had been fired after the
> manager didn't show up for a meeting on Tuesday. When a colleague of his
> attempted to email the manager, the email bounced back.

Seems very odd not to notify employees when their _manager_ gets fired.

~~~
prawn
What day were they fired? Given that's one case, could it have been overlooked
by another manager or by HR dealing with bigger fallout?

Are these types of stories written for every round of layoffs at every other
automotive company? It strikes me that the media is quick to find drama when
it's Tesla.

------
ggm
If you leave voluntarily, I can see your contract could plausibly deny you
points on sales completed after you walked.

If you are on commission and the tail payment is not paid because they sacked
you without cause, I would be surprised if the payment was not still due. It
feels like its a part of the conditions of employment you can't avoid by
firing somebody simply to downsize.

Doubtless some truly shitty employment law loophole means this assumptive,
pathetic "but thats unreasonable" idea is wrong, but thats what I'd assume:
the work was done for payment on completion, how can it not be paid, if the
customer completes? If this was true, then the history of commission selling
would be littered with lawsuits leading to some law to clarify.

If its clearly at-risk payment subject to retained employment, thats a huge
rip-off, which makes me glad I have never, ever worked on commission.

~~~
lovich
You can only bring a lawsuit if you have the money for a lawyer in the first
place. If your employer is not paying you, then you are already out a lot of
money you could have used to defend your rights

~~~
everdev
Some lawyers will take a strong case for a percentage of the settlement.

~~~
dagw
Most of these sorts of cases are too small to be worth it for a lawyer on an
individual basis. Losing out on $3000 of commission you are owed and where
expecting can be terrible for an individual, but a chance of winning 30% of a
$3000 settlement isn't worth getting out of bed for if you're a lawyer. That's
why these sorts of cases only make sense as a class action.

~~~
wombatpm
Small claims court is your friend. Judges take a dim view of employers not
paying money owed.

------
vezycash
This is how clueless but innocent individuals suffer for (whimsical) promises
/ decisions of leaders.

Musk promises profitability - sale's not picking up, production is far behind,
cost of production isn't reducing... the low hanging fruit - employees.

I am waiting for how the employees would respond to the increased pressure. If
I worked there, I'd have already blasted my resumes months ago.

~~~
candiodari
The counterpoint of course is that without whimsical promises / decisions of
leaders many jobs wouldn't exist for them to lose.

Which isn't to say they don't go too far on occasion.

I've always found the self-interested "safe" leaders to be the worse kind.
They're also 99% of them.

------
XorNot
This has been coming for a while. In public Elon has been using "eccentric
millionaire" to dodge Tesla finance questions which is a sure sign the numbers
look bad.

Given they'll need to refinance and I'd bet the Model 3 sales after
reservations are low due to the cheap one not being available yet, the company
must've been looking at a financing crunch for a while now.

This is very much a move to clean house so they can do another round.

------
cornholio
_I don 't think there will be enough business for the staff levels that they
have," she said. "I would be scared to lose my job if I still had one._

This seems consistent with the company's statements that they are
restructuring to boost profitability, as opposed to a frantic move to conserve
a dwindling cash reserve.

------
jillesvangurp
This is how big layoff rounds work. Tesla just fired 9% of its people in a
hurry. That means somebody had to come up with a huge list of people and make
tough choices based on cost, budgets and spreading the pain across
departments, etc. Usually that involves quite a bit of bartering between
departments, quotas, etc. The main reason here is cutting cost; not
performance of the individuals.

Looks like a job well done to me. Minimum amount of fuss and the they got it
over with in a day or so. Most people did not see it coming, which means they
contained the chaos nicely. Having disgruntled employees panicking ahead of
this kind of stuff is very bad for morale. And once it is done, you basically
want these people out of your building ASAP. Tesla is not a charity and
dragging this out for weeks or months while they went department by department
would have been very bad.

------
ummonk
>The company broke promises more than once, she said, adding that she was not
reimbursed for mileage, as promised

Isn't this a good example of something that merits an NLRB complaint?

~~~
everdev
> Musk said in an email on Monday that the company was laying off people now
> so that it would never have to do it again.

Sounds like another promise waiting to be broken. Never is a long time.

------
xivzgrev
Sounds like the company is suffering from poor management. They can develop a
product people love but sounds like everything (mfg, delivery, sales) after is
chaos.

------
gaius
There’s no good way to do a layoff, but a good severance package goes a long
way towards “doing the right thing”. 1 month per year or part year of service,
plus notice period, is fair. Statutory minimum, in the U.K. at least, is a
sick joke. That’s all that IBM offers.

------
lafar6502
Dont give up on Tesla, America, hand them some public money instead

------
ww520
Is this why the TSLA stock has been going up and up this week?

~~~
Jdam
Yes and because Elon artificially inflated the price this week with buying
stock with his own money.

------
TekMol
My vote for a 'convert submitted amp links to normal links' automatism on HN.
Or simply a block like 'You are trying to submit the amp version of a page.
Please submit the original'.

By the way, shouldnt amp versions automatically have a 'Go to the real page'
link on the top or something?

I see a totally absurd version of the page on my 30" monitor. With no obvious
way to go to the normal page.

Not even the url has a clear indication where the normal version is. Guess you
have to read it from the rel="canonical" link in the source code.

~~~
AYBABTME
AMP pages load faster on suboptimal internet. I'm pretty ok with OP having
used this.

~~~
pasta
From The Netherlands:

Original [1]: 585.51KB, load: 1.31s

AMP: 918.44KB, load: 1.56s

[1] [http://www.thisisinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-how-
they...](http://www.thisisinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-how-they-were-
fired-2018-6)

~~~
bartread
Thanks for posting that - the non-AMP original is significantly easier to read
on my monitor due to its layout more suitable for larger screens.

------
JonRB
Actual Link: [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tesla-employees-reveal-
ho...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tesla-employees-reveal-how-they-
were-fired-2018-6)

------
lucb1e
Without proxy: [http://www.thisisinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-how-
they...](http://www.thisisinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-how-they-were-
fired-2018-6)

~~~
_Microft
Thanks!

------
omeid2
"font-weight: 400;"> is proofreading not a thing anymore?

~~~
Rjevski
Probably an bug of the AMP auto-conversion. I bet the full version of the page
displays fine.

~~~
lukeqsee
It doesn’t. This is also in the full version.

