
Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week - petethomas
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-jobs/tesla-fired-hundreds-of-employees-in-past-week-idUSKBN1CJ00L
======
Nothorized
To give a scale, Tesla has more than 30 000 employees [1]. That is just a
little above 1%.

[1] [https://electrek.co/2017/06/01/tesla-elon-musk-employees-
har...](https://electrek.co/2017/06/01/tesla-elon-musk-employees-hardcore-
tesla-killers/)

~~~
lord_jim
I found that number surprising, although I also know very little about what it
takes to manufacture things. Any idea what the employee breakdown looks like
in terms of profession and area of focus (since they have solar city too)?

~~~
csours
No more than 3k would be working on the assembly operations, and maybe a good
deal less (based on knowledge of other automotive assembly operations).

That 3k would include line assembly workers, material delivery, quality
inspectors as well as skilled trades like electricians, pipe fitters, tool and
die makers (for stamping operations)

Another 1-2k assembly staff (IT, Quality Engineers, Controls Engineers,
Material Coordinators).

Tesla does a lot of in-house component manufacturing, so that may be another
3-10k (I'm including gigafactory in this estimate, but I have no real clue
here, as I don't know how much of this they actually do).

Then you have people like automotive designers, engineers, and buyers, no real
clue here, but almost certainly less than 2k.

Then you have corporate functions: accountants, hr, IT, other back office,
another 500?

Then you have the sales side - not sure how they structure this, but they have
a lot of show rooms with a good number of people working them - another 1k?

3 + 2 + 10 + 2 + .5 + 1 = 18,500

They're doing a lot of plant construction and equipment installation;
generally in the industry most or all of that is outsourced, but Tesla seems
to prefer strong vertical integration, so maybe those are straight Tesla
employees as well.

~~~
yellowapple
1k seems pretty low for sales staff if we really are including the showrooms.
I'm counting ~100-110 showrooms listed on Tesla's website, so that would
amount to 10 people per showroom. Doable, I guess, but still low.

Are janitorial/maintenance staff considered to be employees in this count? Or
are they contracted out?

~~~
csours
Janitorial would almost certainly be contracted out at any other automotive
company.

------
ProfessorLayton
It’s interesing that the company can just decide not to report this as a mass
layoff. While the performance reasons for letting someone go may be true, it
seems like an easily exploitable loophole.

Model 3 production rates were missed by a wide margin, so at least a few
people should have known that management would react.

~~~
Avshalom
Do public company actually have an obligation to report mass layoffs?

~~~
cbanek
Yes, it's the WARN act:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988)

California also has their own version:
[https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-
samples/hr-...](https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-
qa/pages/californiawarnact.aspx)

------
virtuabhi
"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." \-
Local paper
[http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/13/4819750/](http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/13/4819750/)

Edit: Added more lines from the preceding paragraph

~~~
dmitrygr
> _pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were
> targeted_

I hate sneakily-worded sentences like this.

Also among them, were women, hetrosexuals, and probably one or two Vietnam
veterans. Some believe they were targetted.

~~~
weirdstuff
How's it sneaky? Business management and shareholders routinely try to shut
down unionizing all the time throughout the last two centuries. My buddy is a
manager at a national retail chain and often comments on how _proactively_
anti-union they are, just like their competitors.

Other demographic groups like the ones you pointed out really don't have that
same collective effect on the bottom line for shareholders across industries
like those that unionize, whose only trait in common is that of a provider of
labor.

~~~
loeg
It's sneaky because it suggests that people were targeted because they were
pro-union, without going so far as to make a claim of fact (which would open
them to libel claims).

~~~
NegativeLatency
If the shoe fits.

~~~
loeg
Be bold. Make the claim, or don't make the claim. Half-heartedly making the
claim is shoddy journalism.

~~~
alexasmyths
"Be bold. Make the claim, or don't make the claim. Half-heartedly making the
claim is shoddy journalism."

No.

It would be impossible to verify and to say with certainty the fact that Tesla
was targeting Union folks - if this were true.

Second - the journo is communicating the opinions of others, not his/her own.

There would be Musk, and a very small handful of trusted lieutenants who would
have been behind it (if it happened).

But - one could look at the totality of those who are fired - and find that
'most of the vocal union bakers' were let go.

So what does this mean?

It doesn't prove anything - but it looks pretty bad, doesn't it?

So a journalist talks to some of the current or laid off workers, and they say
'off the record' \- that this has happened, and 'we think they did this to
kabosh the union agenda' \- well, then it's reasonable.

If the journalist is just 'making it up'\- that would be a deep dereliction of
their duty.

But if 'some were actually saying' this, in this journalists interviews, then
it's fair for them to say.

And it would be irresponsible for the journalist to say 'Musk specifically
targeted Union advocates' unless they had some pretty good evidence that this
were true. Which would be very hard.

~~~
loeg
> But - one could look at the totality of those who are fired - and find that
> 'most of the vocal union bakers' were let go.

I don't object to statements like that. Your proposal actually make some
attempt to quantify proportionality. The article did no such thing: "pro-union
workers were among those fired this week." It doesn't say "mostly pro-union
workers were fired" or "most vocal pro-union workers were fired." It isn't
reflecting someone else's opinion. It's just an attempt to fit a narrative
around zero evidence. If they had interesting evidence, they would report that
instead!

> It doesn't prove anything - but it looks pretty bad, doesn't it?

No! Because they didn't actually make any interesting statements of fact. Just
that _some_ pro-union employees happen to be among the 1% of fired employees,
like you would expect in a population of hundreds.

> And it would be irresponsible for the journalist to say 'Musk specifically
> targeted Union advocates' unless they had some pretty good evidence that
> this were true. Which would be very hard.

But they are suggesting it anyways. I think that is similarly irresponsible.

Probably they don't want to spend the time gathering statistics before they
rush to be the first to publish on this story, but in preliminary reporting
like this, I think they should be hesitant to suggest a narrative they haven't
made any attempt to confirm.

~~~
alexasmyths
Journalism is hard.

They're not paid a lot, and they have to churn out stories.

They don't have the resources to hire PI's and do interviews, follow people
around.

It's just a dude (or dudette) who might have time to ask a few questions, and
then put out a story.

So that's it.

I wish it could be more, but what they've done is within reason, so long as
it's valid and they're not making it up.

------
m52go
> Though Tesla cited performance as the reason for the firings, the source
> told Reuters he was fired in spite of never having been given a bad review.

Highly odd for a company that's just starting production of its highest-volume
product ever.

Is there something about Tesla beyond the hype we should know? If I were an
investor, this news would have me quite concerned.

You would think they can't hire fast enough.

~~~
throwingerman
I would bet it is related to the mismanagement of the German automation plant
that Tesla acquired about a year ago (on mobile, too hard to post links, maybe
someone wants to help).

The plan as I understand it was to use the technology at this company to speed
up production but it hasn't been going as planned, in large part due to
misunderstanding of cultural differences i.e. No one is going to be happy here
in Germany if you start changing the terms of contracts that were supposed to
last for the next few years and people in general don't respect abusive
bosses. Unemployment rate is 3%, no need to (and lower for highly skilled
workers). And you can't just tell people to not take vacation because
production is behind, you'll get laughed at.

~~~
dom0
Grohmann Engineering.

And yes, this has happened a few times now - American corp buys some German
corp and replaces managers with American ones (or American-styled ones) and a
few years later no one in the industry wants to work for them any more.

------
baddox
What’s the general impression of what it’s like to work for Tesla? I’ve always
gotten the impression that they work their employees quite hard, and that they
can afford to do so since there are a lot of talented people who are intrigued
by their specific mission. That sounds similar to what I’ve heard about video
game development. I’m sure it’s a crude oversimplification, and my only
anecdata is one acquaintance who worked in accounting at Tesla and had worked
straight through Christmas two years in a row.

------
dredmorbius
WARN Act:

 _[A] US labor law which protects employees, their families, and communities
by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-
day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees, as
defined in the Act. In 2001, there were about 2,000 mass layoffs and plant
closures which were subject to WARN advance notice requirements and which
affected about 660,000 employees._

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrai...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988)

~~~
KGIII
Your link indicates they aren't covered by the WARN act. It is fewer than 499
employees and less than 33% at a single facility.

~~~
dredmorbius
Ah, good eyes. I wasn't sure quite what the threshold was.

I've seen companies get spanked for a pattern of layoffs which stay just below
the threshold, so there's that. If there's a plausible case that this is
targeted at union organisers / organisation, there's that as well, though
prosecution at the national level strikes me as unlikely, even with Musk's
testy relationship with the Trump administration.

There's also California law to contend with. Same article:

 _California requires advance notice for plant closings, layoffs, and
relocations of 50 or more employees regardless of percentage of workforce,
that is, without the federal "one-third" rule for mass layoffs of fewer than
500 employees. Also, the California law applies to employers with 75 or more
employees, counting both full-time and part-time employees._

~~~
KGIII
I am entirely unfamiliar with California's regulations.

But, unless the penalty is insignificant, it seems unlikely that they'd
flagrantly violate the law. It seems very likely that they were advised by
legal council and followed those recommendations. The visibility of Tesla
makes me suspect they are very likely to be aware of both optics and law.

Disclosure: I am invested in Tesla and have been since the early days.
However, I've made every effort to remain objective,

~~~
dredmorbius
I don't know if Tesla did or didn't follow legal requirements.

I am, however, pointing out that there are in fact legal notice and procedural
requirements to be followed.

------
bitL
Gaming industry style? Milestone reached, instead of thank you, get off my
lawn?

~~~
fjsolwmv
What milestone? Tesla is a growing company

~~~
KirinDave
The Model 3 is a pretty important part of their auto strategy. Especially
given how badly GM beat them to the bunch and how aggressively Toyota is
moving on them.

------
jefferson123
Is anyone else being redirected to a “congratulations you won” type website
hosted on cloudfront.net? I’m using Safari, iPhone 6s, iOS 11.0.2, T Mobile,
in NYC (only happens on LTE, doesn’t happen on wifi network)

~~~
dredmorbius
Check your DNS provider. Google seems better (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4), OpenDNS
possibly.

I used to get those every so often. Since I've been massively firewalling
sketchy domains, not so much.

(About 33k entries, mostly based on uBlock and other blocklists.)

~~~
jefferson123
Any way to do this for LTE on a non jail broken phone?

~~~
dredmorbius
Not off the top of my head.

I've discovered that Android _does_ seem to have dnsmasq installed by default
in explorations of my own non-jailbroken phone. Though I've not configured it.

Most of this I deal with at the router, using wifi.

AT&T in particular are _exceptionally_ bad about this based on my exploration.

------
idlewords
And yet they failed to fire the worst-performing employee of them all.

~~~
chmaynard
Amen.

------
projectant
Maybe it's about cutting costs for new project ramp up, or maybe they are
trying to get rid of leakers / security threats / bad eggs, or both.

------
xfour
Wow love to here the inside scoop on this. Anyone from Tesla want to comment.
Accountability for late shipments?

~~~
jandrese
Or it could just be trimming some fat.

~~~
Molkar
"Trimming fat" is a funny euphemism for sending people into unemployment.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Not all people add value to an organization, and they might stop adding value
too. Unfortunately, it's not possible to know this for sure prior to hiring,
so the only realistic way to maintain the organization is with constant
pruning.

~~~
mulmen
I think this is a bit of a fallacy. You don't have to always be firing some
percentage of your workforce. While hiring the best is not easy and you may
need to let people go you also shouldn't just constantly be on the hunt for
the next head to chop. I have seen the effects of stack ranking and it's not
pretty.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I don't mean to suggest that there needs to be a set percentage that must be
fired at some set time interval, but I do think that new hires don't always
work out, and people can change from being a value adder to a value detractor,
especially once you get to the huge numbers of employees that some companies
have.

The process of evaluating the people that make up the organization should be
under constant improvement though, and again, simply because of dealing with
large numbers, there might be a few false positives, but on the whole as an
organization, management should be on the lookout for who isn't performing.

~~~
mulmen
I disagree with the adversarial approach to management you seem to advocate at
the end of your comment. I think it can create a toxic environment where
management focuses on failures and ignores success. If someone has to be let
go that is a failure at the management level or at the recruiting level and
the goal should be to minimize it.

------
grandalf
It's important to keep in mind that Tesla (like Walmart, Whole Foods, and
Amazon) has been targeted by big labor for infiltration and union formation
[1] [2]

This is not necessarily because working conditions make workers feel that they
would prefer the tradeoffs of unionization, but simply because Tesla is much
more competitive without its workforce unionized, and so labor groups that are
entrenched in legacy car manufacturing wish to prevent Tesla from accelerating
those companies' decline.

In many states labor unions have significant power granted by favorable laws
that far exceed the market power they derive simply from organizing labor and
leveling the playing field a bit. [3] [4]

So while I strongly support organized labor in abstract [5], it's difficult to
blame Tesla for wishing to make its workforce less vulnerable to attack from
big labor. Like many interest groups, big labor is mostly concerned with its
own survival [6] and growth, and is not really about the workers at all.

For example, when Borders Books employees went on strike, it was the big labor
groups that sponsored ruffians to join the employees on the picket line and
make the strike much more aggressive. Similarly, whenever you see an
inflatable rat alongside striking workers, chances are that rat was brought in
by big labor to help dramatize the strike effort. [7] They also help name and
shame fellow employees who aren't enthusiastic about the union to exert social
pressure to make it form.

1\. [https://groundswell.org/whole-foods-employees-move-to-
unioni...](https://groundswell.org/whole-foods-employees-move-to-unionize-but-
im-conflicted-about-it-heres-why/)

2\. [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Union-Organizers-
Targ...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Union-Organizers-Target-
Amazon-com-Labor-hoping-2695088.php)

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_labor_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_labor_law)

4\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-charged-uaw-
employees-s...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-charged-uaw-employees-
supressing-unionization-efforts-2017-4)

5\. While labor laws came to exist for good reason and helped improve living
standards quite a bit, they went too far and tried to address too many issues
via labor laws. Many things that are given to workers via labor laws should be
given to all citizens, whether employed or not. Labor laws should not create
an incentive for firms to eliminate unions, and should not act to correct
social inequality. If such measure are needed they should happen via other
laws.

6\.
[https://www.unionfacts.com/employee/Air_Line_Pilots/TIMOTHY/...](https://www.unionfacts.com/employee/Air_Line_Pilots/TIMOTHY/CANOLL/)

7\. [http://mentalfloss.com/article/28466/story-behind-giant-
infl...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/28466/story-behind-giant-inflatable-
union-rat)

~~~
blue232
> significant power granted by favorable laws that far exceed the market power
> they derive simply from organizing labor

That is the whole point of unions, yes.

Union membership/power has been steadily decreasing over the past 50 years. To
me, it seems disingenuous to refer to "big labor" as if they're some sort of
powerhouse given the way that corporate interests have been chipping away at
them.

Also, not that I have any proof that they are, but firing employees for being
pro-union is illegal.

~~~
grandalf
> Union membership/power has been steadily decreasing over the past 50 years.
> To me, it seems disingenuous to refer to "big labor" as if they're some sort
> of powerhouse given the way that corporate interests have been chipping away
> at them.

Some states have passed less union-friendly laws, and firms have located to
those states and have massively invested in robotics and automation simply to
avoid the morass associated with having a unionized labor force.

When unions are too strong (such as they have been in the past) they take too
much for their own members at the expense of the health of the firm, and the
firm dies.

In the case of the automakers and the auto worker pensions, the pensions were
negotiated as defined benefit plans and backed by the PBGC. Lawmakers failed
to require firms to pay adequate PBGC premiums, and so when the companies
failed taxpayers are left holding the bag.

Workers need to have power, but unions are on the decline because they got too
greedy and resulted in massive (and inefficient) economic shifts to route
around them. Thus they are less relevant now than in years past, but
significant harm has been done. This is not just the fault of the unions, but
of the politicians and firms that colluded to make the pension deals possible
and who refuse to let dying firms simply die.

Unless we want to go back to a world where everyone aspires to become a
"lifer" at a firm and retire after holding one job for his/her whole working
life, unions really can't offer much. The economy shifts much more rapidly now
and I'd be shocked if skills that are highly marketable this year are still
marketable in 10 years.

~~~
in_cahoots
I'm sorry, but as someone who's reflexively pro-union and admittedly not
versed in the issues you're talking about, you'll need to provide some better
references for me to understand what you're talking about specifically. The
citations you've provided don't back up your claims at all -- I don't doubt
that Tesla and the like are targeted by unions, but you'll need to reference
more than the US labor law and one guy's salary to convince me that they do
more harm than good.

------
Molkar
Paid Tesla actors are gaming the comments.

Hacker News is influential. Votes can easily be gamed. Fake accounts are easy
to make and hard to track.

Noise is added to mix good info with misinformation to confuse and frustrate
people sifting through comments trying to make sense of things.

These people will make weaker arguments against Tesla's actions so those
arguments can be easily discredited. People making stronger arguments against
Tesla will be clumped with them.

Trolling increases noise and frustration. It makes people not want to read or
post adversarial comments.

Denigrate, dismiss, discredit.

Sort comments by old.

One of the top 3 upvoted comment is usually gamed, because it makes the most
lucid argument (it was pre-written; look at timestamp) and is seen as the most
solid piece of info amid the noise.

~~~
mjcl
They're not alone. I spent about five hours (across several meetings) trying
to convince a CFO that giving an employee no annual increase was a negative
signal. I think he only gave in when he realized I wasn't going to let it go.

~~~
mulmen
Is a complete lack of empathy required in order to reach that level?

