Fired Tesla Employees Claim Dismissals Were Not Performance Related

Megalith

Megalith

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The San Jose Mercury News first reported that Tesla had dismissed an estimated 400 to 700 employees, but one former employee, citing internal information shared by a manager, said the total number fired is higher than 700 at this point. Other workers say that those terminated were generally the highest paid in their position, 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. Tesla rates employees on a scale from 1 to 5. Two laid-off employees had achieved scores at or above 4 in past performance reviews with their managers, they said. During the performance review period before the mass firings, former employees said Tesla's general manager of services and operations, Karim Bousta, sent out a notice saying reviews had been delayed so employees could focus on ensuring a successful rollout of the Model 3.
 
I bet most of these people were convinced their job security was going to be a non-factor upon on-boarding. Why would a company as fast growing and successful as Tesla need to downsize right? Since most of these individuals have worked for the company for a short time (few years max), How many new mortgages just got blown up? Corporate America at its finest.

Tesla has done great things for electronic vehicles, but it won't be a $30k+ EV that's going to change the earth.
 
Startups, which they still are, don't do mass layoffs or firings for any reason, the goal is rapid growth more than profitability. Get huge and clean up when things stabilize. Not a great sign for their motor department.

In any case, I've been saying all along that creating cars at scale is something they will struggle at. It's a hell of a lot easier to make a few thousand great cars than a million mediocre ones.
 
I suspected as much. Layoffs require engagement with regulators. "Firing" does not. The numbers let go and the fact that they seem concentrated (IE: sales, Solar City) implies this was not perf related.

Layoffs to cut costs and then re-hire into the same position at lower wages tends to being The Man. This could really blow up in Tesla's face if these folks retain lawyers.

And LOL @ the 1-5 thing. Holy crap, did they hire some MSFT HR reject from 1998?
 
oldmanbal said:
I bet most of these people were convinced their job security was going to be a non-factor upon on-boarding. Why would a company as fast growing and successful as Tesla need to downsize right? Since most of these individuals have worked for the company for a short time (few years max), How many new mortgages just got blown up? Corporate America at its finest.

Tesla has done great things for electronic vehicles, but it won't be a $30k+ EV that's going to change the earth.
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Corporate america has long since lost it's desire to get employee loyalty. It's all about the numbers. If dumping veterans with high pay for lower wage earners who are starting out reduces cost, they'll do it in a heart beat.

It's been this way since the 80s if not longer. Always treat your employment on a day to day basis and always be looking out for yourself and your future employment elsewhere.
 
oldmanbal said:
I bet most of these people were convinced their job security was going to be a non-factor upon on-boarding. Why would a company as fast growing and successful as Tesla need to downsize right? Since most of these individuals have worked for the company for a short time (few years max), How many new mortgages just got blown up? Corporate America at its finest.

Tesla has done great things for electronic vehicles, but it won't be a $30k+ EV that's going to change the earth.
Click to expand...

Further proof that corporations view employees as disposable commodities. It's so short sighted. Offloading talent can make the balance sheet look good to your shareholders, but it's a cost shifting game that can cost more in the long run.

Tesla has pushed the industry forward, but the Tesla buyers need to remember that their vehicles are only as clean as the power plants feeding their charge points. If you're charging off a coal fired plant, it's worse than burning gasoline, added to the fact that EV drivers aren't paying gas taxes and are freeloading on road repairs (not their fault, but it really needs to be addressed). I live near a wealthy east coast town, and you can't drive anywhere around here without seeing at least one Model S. The drivers are so smug about how clean their cars are, but they don't seem to be viewing the whole picture. Again, I'm glad that the technology is moving forward, but these people are like Bush with the "mission accomplished" sign for Iraq.
 
Gigus Fire said:
Corporate america has long since lost it's desire to get employee loyalty. It's all about the numbers. If dumping veterans with high pay for lower wage earners who are starting out reduces cost, they'll do it in a heart beat.

It's been this way since the 80s if not longer. Always treat your employment on a day to day basis and always be looking out for yourself and your future employment elsewhere.
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It's the same thing with product quality and investing in your business. Lets churn out tons of crap to save some pennies for Wall Street while investing the bare minimum and expect huge growth every year or be disappointed. :rolleyes:
 
Hah, guess it's just how you look at performance. Is someone who gets paid twice as much or more performing as someone who gets paid half as much or less? Fired on performance. Performance is just how much work per dollar they get, not how well you do it.
 
Taco said:
It's a hell of a lot easier to make a few thousand great cars than a million mediocre ones.
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I dunno, Chevy's been pretty good at that for years.


/Trigger warning, I'm jk. I hate all car manufacturers equally.
 
Gigus Fire said:
Corporate america has long since lost it's desire to get employee loyalty. It's all about the numbers. If dumping veterans with high pay for lower wage earners who are starting out reduces cost, they'll do it in a heart beat.

It's been this way since the 80s if not longer. Always treat your employment on a day to day basis and always be looking out for yourself and your future employment elsewhere.
Click to expand...

I mostly agree with you but I'd add a twist.

I'd say that much of the professional services corporate world sees and pursues loyalty from it's employees, but when push comes to shove, it only goes so far.
 
nutzo said:
Pay does not equal productivity.
They appear to have fired higher paid employees who where not productive enough to justify the higher pay.
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Perhaps, but I bet there are a lot of anomalies when you cut 700 peeps. Some didn't get the review score they deserved, some got more than they deserved, some were perhaps fired just because they were being paid more than the company is now willing to pay. I bet some fucked up on Facebook, just saying. When you have to cut 700 people and are looking for ways to select your losers, it can get pretty ugly and feel pretty unfair.
 
lcpiper said:
I mostly agree with you but I'd add a twist.

I'd say that much of the professional services corporate world sees and pursues loyalty from it's employees, but when push comes to shove, it only goes so far.
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Well yes of course. You have to act like you're loyal all the time and are willing to do anything, but on the side be always mindful of employment elsewhere and have a resume ready to go and contacts who you have already approached on the subject of future employment.

Once your current employer pushes beyond your bottom line get ready to bail. Look for signs like bad reviews (when you're doing other people's work), or changes in management, new/stricter policies being enforced, extra "crunch time" hours being dumped on you, extra responsibilities without extra pay, etc. There's a whole list of things to look out for. Never get too comfortable because most places are at will employment and can terminate you if you even voice the wrong opinion.
 
Willing to bet a good majority were from competitors with lots of experience. Reeled them in with fat pay - stole their ideas and engineering and utilized them - then immediately hung them out to dry once they had what they needed from them.
 
Wow, fired ... sorry not fired "laid off" employee claims he wasn't fired due to being a poor worker, it was that #@&*( manager who always had coffee and gave him !@&*!
 
I recently read an article where pay raises are less than inflation on average even for tech workers.

After the company I worked for was sold on the idea of SAFE (Scaled Agile) because SAFE would make us happier workers. And during day 1 of SAFE training they told us "SAFE will save you money because workers care less about pay when they are happy about their jobs" After SAFE we went to 2% or less pay raises.

For the longest time I was working my tail off till I realized I wasn't happier. I was just working more hours to make the sprint even if the work was more organized. So I was like "I put my 40 in. I'm not going 1 second over."

If they try that pay raise bull on me again this year, I'm leaving. I am not worth less every year I'm here.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
I recently read an article where pay raises are less than inflation on average even for tech workers.

After the company I worked for was sold on the idea of SAFE (Scaled Agile) because SAFE would make us happier workers. And during day 1 of SAFE training they told us "SAFE will save you money because workers care less about pay when they are happy about their jobs" After SAFE we went to 2% or less pay raises.
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I don't see how a software design methodology can possibly affect the happiness of an individual considering that everyone is different. It definitely made the management happier since they had to pay less over time.
 
Gigus Fire said:
... Look for signs like bad reviews (when you're doing other people's work), or changes in management, new/stricter policies being enforced, extra "crunch time" hours being dumped on you, extra responsibilities without extra pay, etc. There's a whole list of things to look out for. Never get too comfortable because most places are at will employment and can terminate you if you even voice the wrong opinion.
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That describes every place I've worked at the past 25 years.
 
Gigus Fire said:
I don't see how a software design methodology can possibly affect the happiness of an individual considering that everyone is different. It definitely made the management happier since they had to pay less over time.
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The general idea is if the employees are actually assigned more control over their own work, they are more engaged in the creativity process and therefore happier with their job.

SAFE really hasn't improved my personal engagement. What it did for us is pin marketing down to deliver quality specs to us and have them agree to time tables before we did work, which made it better organized. But if anything, I waste more time in meetings on a weekly basis. After sprint demos and daily meetings organized around safe, and additional paperwork, I would say 25% of my day is wasted keeping the paper pushers happy.
 
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This isn't too surprising. A lot of companies have stacked rankings, and sometimes those rankings are based on salary. As others have mentioned, if you're being paid 200k instead of 100k of a new employee, and you're not twice as productive, well, you're underperforming. We just call them silent layoffs.
 
Nytegard said:
This isn't too surprising. A lot of companies have stacked rankings, and sometimes those rankings are based on salary. As others have mentioned, if you're being paid 200k instead of 100k of a new employee, and you're not twice as productive, well, you're underperforming. We just call them silent layoffs.
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Sometimes it doesn't work that way. If you have a unique skill that no one else, or few have, then you don't have to be twice as productive if you are one of the few who can get the job done.

We had an 80 year old employee who had degrees in programming and a very specific engineering discipline. FORTRAN was his specialty. I don't want to tell you what we paid him. But I'll give you a hint...His HOURLY RATE was well into 3 figures.

As they say, "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king"

Any way, this does thicken the plot a little. It looks more and more like this might blow up in Tesla's face.
 
Gigus Fire said:
Corporate america has long since lost it's desire to get employee loyalty. It's all about the numbers. If dumping veterans with high pay for lower wage earners who are starting out reduces cost, they'll do it in a heart beat.

It's been this way since the 80s if not longer. Always treat your employment on a day to day basis and always be looking out for yourself and your future employment elsewhere.
Click to expand...

I agree, my father worked for IBM since 1980 until his plant got bought out by global foundries a year or two ago. He had to retire and then get hired by GF to make the transition appropriately. Out of over 500 people that worked in his department in Asics testing from 1994, only 3 of the original members were left for the transition to GF. The rest were either laid off, or forced into early retirement in place of being laid off. The millions in profit made from his division could have payed for hundreds of employees, but they just kept gutting it.

MarkVI said:
Further proof that corporations view employees as disposable commodities. It's so short sighted. Offloading talent can make the balance sheet look good to your shareholders, but it's a cost shifting game that can cost more in the long run.

Tesla has pushed the industry forward, but the Tesla buyers need to remember that their vehicles are only as clean as the power plants feeding their charge points. If you're charging off a coal fired plant, it's worse than burning gasoline, added to the fact that EV drivers aren't paying gas taxes and are freeloading on road repairs (not their fault, but it really needs to be addressed). I live near a wealthy east coast town, and you can't drive anywhere around here without seeing at least one Model S. The drivers are so smug about how clean their cars are, but they don't seem to be viewing the whole picture. Again, I'm glad that the technology is moving forward, but these people are like Bush with the "mission accomplished" sign for Iraq.
Click to expand...

I've been concerned with Tesla the automaker for awhile now. The artificial market value is astronomical based off their sales, and I feel like they are shifting more and more of the business to batteries as a seque into solar. I wouldn't be surprised if they just don't get the sales volumes expected when more manufacturers start pumping out well made sub 20K$ electrics after rebates in the next few years. IBM made a lot of these 'tactical' layoffs in the late 90s and early 2000s before they killed off more than half of their business sectors, and sold many of the others. Even though Tesla makes very few products, I wouldn't be surprised if even that becomes more limited that expected in the future.
 
ianken said:
And LOL @ the 1-5 thing. Holy crap, did they hire some MSFT HR reject from 1998?
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Many large corporate entities do the same thing. When layoffs happen, they get rid of sub-4's, higher paid workers and the most recently hired employees first. One place I worked for had a practice of forcing managers to give employees 3's or lower evaulations and wouldn't tolerate any manager giving their whole department 4's and 5's even if all their workers deserved it.
 
Dan_D said:
Many large corporate entities do the same thing. When layoffs happen, they get rid of sub-4's, higher paid workers and the most recently hired employees first. One place I worked for had a practice of forcing managers to give employees 3's or lower evaulations and wouldn't tolerate any manager giving their whole department 4's and 5's even if all their workers deserved it.
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My company gives 1-5 ratings, with a 5 being next to impossible to get. I got all 4's last review (they are all year end) and just got a promotion because of it (I was already doing the next level work, they just decided to finally pay me for it).
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
My company gives 1-5 ratings, with a 5 being next to impossible to get. I got all 4's last review (they are all year end) and just got a promotion because of it (I was already doing the next level work, they just decided to finally pay me for it).
Click to expand...

Count yourself lucky. I've been a contractor for over 10 years. Even when my employers want to hire me, they can't because some fucking bean counter at the top doesn't give a shit about loyalty, or even talent.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
I recently read an article where pay raises are less than inflation on average even for tech workers.

After the company I worked for was sold on the idea of SAFE (Scaled Agile) because SAFE would make us happier workers. And during day 1 of SAFE training they told us "SAFE will save you money because workers care less about pay when they are happy about their jobs" After SAFE we went to 2% or less pay raises.

For the longest time I was working my tail off till I realized I wasn't happier. I was just working more hours to make the sprint even if the work was more organized. So I was like "I put my 40 in. I'm not going 1 second over."

If they try that pay raise bull on me again this year, I'm leaving. I am not worth less every year I'm here.
Click to expand...

Same here. I moved from a job that gave out regular small pay raises (1 - 2% every 6 months, and a 5% every other year) to a job that gives no raises. Combine that with increasing health insurance costs, and i'm actually making less money now than I was when I was hired. Yay.
 
The problem stems in part from the division in large companies where accounting is almost parted out from the rest of the function. they spend most of their time saving money, not making it. The part of the company to them making money is just a loss item they woudl like to gut. They don't care if they leave that part of the company dysfunctional. However, they tend to be the ones whose culture ends up taking over the company and they take their attitude with them.
 
next thing you will hear will be KPI's that are near impossible to achieve. why are such goals sets? Cause we need to push ourselves for greatness , of course. heh
 
So what your saying is Tesla is concerned with how much its workforce is making and cut the biggest earners to move the pay ceiling down like other mnufactures have done time and again..... So its NOT A SUPERNATURAL COMPANY?

Took bad we don't know how much they were making.
 
Out with expensive Americans
In with the H1-B Indians

Wanna bet?
 
No one brought up the union insider angle yet, there's been talk about one of those laid off walking around with a union shirt and putting union stickers on their bottles for example. Wonder if this was union cleanup, one conspiracy theory I've seen out there.

That said, 2 percent of the workforce is not out of ordinary, they employ around 33,000 people, and they got job postings for over 2000 more positions, including the ones terminated.
 
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I have not once seen a person who was "fired" from their job admit that it was their own fault for getting fired. It is never because the employee isn't of good value for the company. It's always because of management, poor training, unreasonable expectations, etc.
 
Almost all of these layoffs were from marketing and sales and yet everyone is talking about it like they fired engineers. How many sales people do you need to sell a product that sells itself???
 
No product sells itself. At the very least what you describe is a huge success by the marketing group.
 
Last I checked there was a waiting list for all Tesla production lines from cars to batteries. Why keep paying sales to add to an ever growing wait list?
 
DigitalisAkujin said:
Last I checked there was a waiting list for all Tesla production lines from cars to batteries. Why keep paying sales to add to an ever growing wait list?
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Cause it is good for business. My company has something like a 6 year backlog on orders yet we are still making sales.
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
Cause it is good for business. My company has something like a 6 year backlog on orders yet we are still making sales.
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How is a 6 year wait time good for business? That's a great way to lose customers to competitors, we have stolen so many customers from competition by saying "hey we can do the same thing for the same price and have it to you twice as fast". Unless your making some very special thing only you can make that's a terrible problem to have.
 
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