Tesla Fires Hundreds after Company-Wide Performance Reviews

[Megalith]

Tesla fired hundreds of workers this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers, even as the company struggles to expand its manufacturing and product line. The company said this week’s dismissals were the result of a company-wide annual review, and insisted they were not layoffs. Some workers received promotions and bonuses, and the company expects to hire for the “vast majority” of new vacancies, a spokesman said.

In multiple interviews, former and current employees told this news organization little or no warning preceded the dismissals. The workers interviewed include trained engineers working on vehicle design and production, a supervisor and factory employees. Workers estimated between 400 and 700 employees have been fired. Tesla refused to say how many employees were let go, although the company expects employee turnover to be similar to last year’s attrition.

 

[Mut1ny]

Hmm...interesting. Makes you wonder if that many people were really just slacking in that sense.

 

[mullet]

H1B2

 

[viper1152012]

Probably complacency

 

[Slade]

When your wiper speed setting design is deep embedded on a tactile less screen which is tantamount to distracted driving and only 2 speeds, one can imagine that particular set of engineers responsible should be sacked.

 

[[21CW]killerofall]

When your wiper speed setting design is deep embedded on a tactile less screen which is tantamount to distracted driving and only 2 speeds, one can imagine that particular set of engineers responsible should be sacked.

Having everything on that center screen makes the Model 3 a no buy for me, just because of that one issue alone. I consider that to be a major engineering design blunder.

 

[jedijeb13]

I wonder if too many employees at Tesla think of it as a typical union auto manufacturing plant. I have several family members who work for one of the big three and say there is very little you can do to get fired there. I went there for an interview 20 years ago when I got out of college and I actually saw one employee sleeping in one of the vehicles next to the line, he was there for at least an hour.

 

[[21CW]killerofall]

I wonder if too many employees at Tesla think of it as a typical union auto manufacturing plant. I have several family members who work for one of the big three and say there is very little you can do to get fired there. I went there for an interview 20 years ago when I got out of college and I actually saw one employee sleeping in one of the vehicles next to the line, he was there for at least an hour.

And we wonder why companies hate unions? I was a member of a union once, never again. Fuck unions.

 

[vegeta535]

And we wonder why companies hate unions? I was a member of a union once, never again. Fuck unions.

Yep. I was also part of a union and only real way you get fired was if you got hurt on the job and failed the mandatory drug test you have to take afterwards.

 

[zalazin]

I retired from let's just say a Very Rich UNCLE and about the only way you got fired was violence on the job....

 

[Gigus Fire]

Unions need to be revamped a bit. I wouldn't mind if they got rid of seniority rules and instead allowed for performance to determine who gets promoted/bonuses and who gets kicked out.
Having set raises/salary steps isn't half bad. It's better than bargaining with management every year after a review.

 

[Mad Maxx]

Tesla exists only because we taxpayers are funding it. Throw in unions and you get one massive clusterfuck masquerading as an innovative tech company run by a flamboyant fraud from S. Africa.

 

[zalazin]

Whether unions or not there will always be the THE GOOD OLD BOY NETWORK.......

 

[Kdawg]

light a fire under their asses.

we need our model 3's.

lazy workers

 

[oldmanbal]

Young companies like this should shed the bad employees and laud the high performers. There are too many companies that string along terrible employees indefinitely regardless of their contributions. If you can't perform your job to expectation, maybe you're in the wrong field. (Unless they just fired 699 white men to make the diversity statistics more balanced. . .)

 

[Mchart]

When your wiper speed setting design is deep embedded on a tactile less screen which is tantamount to distracted driving and only 2 speeds, one can imagine that particular set of engineers responsible should be sacked.

My Volvo has a million buttons, almost one for every function. People complain that Volvo doesn’t have a updated infotainment system in their S/V60 but I’m not a fan of the recent trend to remove buttons and make me dig around on a stupid screen to make basic adjustments. I’ll take a bunch of seemingly ugly buttons/dials over the shit touchscreen.

 

[sfsuphysics]

The company said this week’s dismissals were the result of a company-wide annual review, and insisted they were not layoffs

ok I've been re-reading this line over and over again and I still don't get it.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

I preface this by stating that Tesla is a corporation like any other and as such these actions are not unusual.

I'll bet good money that these workers were probably the lowest performers, but performance was likely not the driving force here. This is most likely a case where processes have been refined and perfected and now they can hire someone with a fraction of the qualifications to perform the position at a fraction of the salary. I would further bet that those hires will nearly all be certain Visa types or diversity hires. I base this bet on decades of experience of watching the same thing happen over and over and over it quickly growing companies.

 

[ThisMonsterLives]

I used to work for a company that laid off good employees and kept horrible ones. There was a guy who forged his time sheets, was caught with porn on this computer, and routinely failed to perform the most basic of his duties. Naturally, he got a promotion.

 

[Private_Ops]

And we wonder why companies hate unions? I was a member of a union once, never again. Fuck unions.

I'm currently a member of the UTU (railroad). Atleast in my experience, our union at the local level is ok (my local anyway). Problem is, it seems the higher you go you end up with former "company" men who are still "company" men now in a union position. It wreaks havoc on everything.

This is just my experience though, I'm not sure of other unions. Seems the Auto Workers union(s) always gets a lot of shit.

 

[Mohonri]

Tesla has something like 33,000 workers. 700 workers being fired is about 2%. That's really nothing to get excited about.

 

[RayderR6]

And we wonder why companies hate unions? I was a member of a union once, never again. Fuck unions.

You're living in the wrong time, 100 years ago, you would have been screaming for a union because of company abuse, but like all things created for good purposes, corruption finds its way in and we have the unions of the past several decades.

Careful what you wish for, if all unions go the way of the dodo, how do you think the companies will behave. Sure, you'll just think you will get on twitter to voice frustration and start a movement (a union movement ), but twitter will just ban your account, because after all, they are a company.

 

[nightfly]

Tesla has something like 33,000 workers. 700 workers being fired is about 2%. That's really nothing to get excited about.

Written like a true manager. You'd think differently if you were one of that 2%.

I've been on both sides of the union problem, and understand that there will always be those on each that feel the other is the worst option. However; as a manager, my life wasn't going to be permanently screwed by the union.

As an employee, the only thing preventing me from being screwed, was the union. A manager just didn't like me, I knew it the very first half hour after he started working. A coworker who worked with him previously, said he hated anyone who was taller than he was. Whether that was the only reason, I'll never know, but it would explain his animosity towards me in the first ten minutes after he arrived in our company. Over the coming years, he would use absolutely anything he could to try to get me fired. His poor research into what went on, he used problems which I wasn't involved in, in an effort to make it appear that I was incompetent. Fortunately during HR reviews, and discussions with the union rep, I was able to prove that it was just a witch hunt. Three years later, his team was terminated, and seven years after that, I was still there.

Without a union to represent me, they could have let me go for any reason they wanted.

This is what employees have to deal with. And this is why we have unions: Terrible, evil managers.

Bad managers created the need for unions. Business schools and business practices where ethics have no place, is why we still need unions. Hate them as much as you want, but your own hatred for organizations that were created to protect people from the evils of their bosses, shows that your feelings that your employees are your adversaries, just might very well be the reason YOUR company needs a union in place.
Employees understand when a company is having problems and must lay off some people. What they don't accept, is that THEY have to be the only ones who lose, as they watch the brass get promotions and bonuses for firing them. When the company has problems, it's a direct result of the decisions made at the top, not from the decisions of the line workers. Yes, there will always be a few problem employees. But making it appear that all are that way, denies the general success of the American businesses.

 

[Exavior]

Yep. I was also part of a union and only real way you get fired was if you got hurt on the job and failed the mandatory drug test you have to take afterwards.

Ha, some won't even fire you for that. Know somebody that works for a union factory, his product line partner is also high on something. They just look the other way and come up with whatever excuse they can. That's ok that he is on 18 pain meds but had no prescription. He is just in pain and accidently over self prescribed by getting some pills from friends and family, happen to all of us.

I'm currently a member of the UTU (railroad). Atleast in my experience, our union at the local level is ok (my local anyway). Problem is, it seems the higher you go you end up with former "company" men who are still "company" men now in a union position. It wreaks havoc on everything.

This is just my experience though, I'm not sure of other unions. Seems the Auto Workers union(s) always gets a lot of shit.

Personally from the outside I have not seen a lot of good unions. However I also don't know what you define as ok and also don't know what you define as company men. So things that some of us view as issues you might see a perfectly acceptable and view our stance as being company men.

One thing I see all the time are the huge rats and people protesting at any construction job site for a job being done by a non union shop, they throw rocks at the construction workers coming into work, harass customers if the business is adding on telling them that they shouldn't support a business that doesn't use union contractors. Had them throw stuff at me before when I told them to go fuck off and find an actual job to do instead of harassing people over bids that they lost. To which the non union shops being protested were not that much worse than the union shops. Pay per hour might have been a tad lower per hour, plus you had to pay some toward health insurance but the amounts they pay seemed to be on par with any other private company of that size. (single person paying $75 - $100 / month), and they might have worked 5 - 10 hours a week more. In most cases the workers had the same amount of vacation time. In the case of one of the non union shops they actually had better pay and benefits than the union guys. Also know of union shops that close down to party of the year due to weather, while the non union shop lines up jobs all year around and just selects jobs for the winter that are weather valid. So during the winter you do inside remodeling jobs. Now, as an employee maybe you few being laid off for the winter and not having to suffer any cool / cold weather jobs as the better choice and that being forced to work like that is a horrible thing. Don't know. I also know of stories at factories like somebody stated above of workers sleeping. At a steal mill they actually put in a room with beds and you could sleep up to 3/4th of your shift if you felt tired. One of those things that probably started off with good reason, want to make sure if somebody starts to feel a tad off that they aren't trying to run the machines, however somebody probably decided that if John could take a 1 hour nap I should be able to also. Then probably just kept pushing that bar as well 1 hour isn't always good enough, I need 2, then 3... As a result the shop was always struggling to actually have enough people on the floor to get work done as over 1/2 the people were taking their allowed breaks. So if they need 50 guys on the floor at full production they would put 75 on the schedule in hopes that they could have at least 30 keeping the machines going to some degree at any given time. That is until the place had to shut down as they were not able to meet any of their orders in a timely manner and so their parent company moved everything over seas to a factory that was able to keep up with their work and then some.

At the same time even if a union does "good" by its workers the average can still see that as bad. In the case of auto workers that is where part of their being shit on comes from. Companies aren't going to hurt their profit lines to make the demands of unions happen. So if a union demands full coverage of health insurance for all then the company will raise what they charge their customers to make up that difference. If the union demands more people be hired so that everyone gets 8 weeks vacation then again company increases prices. In the case of cars, the auto workers get many benefits which is good for them, but increases the cost of the car then for the person buying it. One of the reason that "American" brands are more since the "foreign" brands don't have the unions and all the benefits. That is also the reason some of the construction companies in my area have more guys at job sites with rats at times than they do actually working is because since they get some more benefits their bids are higher for jobs so they get passed over for non union companies that can do a job 10+% cheaper. Which is good for the consumer, and not so good from the employee standpoint. However that doesn't equal bad. Getting ok benefits and being slave labor are two different levels. Everything comes at a cost and the one that the end customer sees is the only one that they care about. If they have to pay an extra $5 for a widget because the makers of the widget decided to give everyone half the day off on Friday and still pay them for the hours they would have worked they are going to be pissed because they now have to pay more for the same thing they paid less for the week before and the people that make it are getting rewarded with something that they aren't. So nobody is going to view that as good for those guys, they are getting more paid time off, they are going to be pissed at those workers for making them pay more.

 

[vegeta535]

Ha, some won't even fire you for that. Know somebody that works for a union factory, his product line partner is also high on something. They just look the other way and come up with whatever excuse they can. That's ok that he is on 18 pain meds but had no prescription. He is just in pain and accidently over self prescribed by getting some pills from friends and family, happen to all of us.



Personally from the outside I have not seen a lot of good unions. However I also don't know what you define as ok and also don't know what you define as company men. So things that some of us view as issues you might see a perfectly acceptable and view our stance as being company men.

One thing I see all the time are the huge rats and people protesting at any construction job site for a job being done by a non union shop, they throw rocks at the construction workers coming into work, harass customers if the business is adding on telling them that they shouldn't support a business that doesn't use union contractors. Had them throw stuff at me before when I told them to go fuck off and find an actual job to do instead of harassing people over bids that they lost. To which the non union shops being protested were not that much worse than the union shops. Pay per hour might have been a tad lower per hour, plus you had to pay some toward health insurance but the amounts they pay seemed to be on par with any other private company of that size. (single person paying $75 - $100 / month), and they might have worked 5 - 10 hours a week more. In most cases the workers had the same amount of vacation time. In the case of one of the non union shops they actually had better pay and benefits than the union guys. Also know of union shops that close down to party of the year due to weather, while the non union shop lines up jobs all year around and just selects jobs for the winter that are weather valid. So during the winter you do inside remodeling jobs. Now, as an employee maybe you few being laid off for the winter and not having to suffer any cool / cold weather jobs as the better choice and that being forced to work like that is a horrible thing. Don't know. I also know of stories at factories like somebody stated above of workers sleeping. At a steal mill they actually put in a room with beds and you could sleep up to 3/4th of your shift if you felt tired. One of those things that probably started off with good reason, want to make sure if somebody starts to feel a tad off that they aren't trying to run the machines, however somebody probably decided that if John could take a 1 hour nap I should be able to also. Then probably just kept pushing that bar as well 1 hour isn't always good enough, I need 2, then 3... As a result the shop was always struggling to actually have enough people on the floor to get work done as over 1/2 the people were taking their allowed breaks. So if they need 50 guys on the floor at full production they would put 75 on the schedule in hopes that they could have at least 30 keeping the machines going to some degree at any given time. That is until the place had to shut down as they were not able to meet any of their orders in a timely manner and so their parent company moved everything over seas to a factory that was able to keep up with their work and then some.

At the same time even if a union does "good" by its workers the average can still see that as bad. In the case of auto workers that is where part of their being shit on comes from. Companies aren't going to hurt their profit lines to make the demands of unions happen. So if a union demands full coverage of health insurance for all then the company will raise what they charge their customers to make up that difference. If the union demands more people be hired so that everyone gets 8 weeks vacation then again company increases prices. In the case of cars, the auto workers get many benefits which is good for them, but increases the cost of the car then for the person buying it. One of the reason that "American" brands are more since the "foreign" brands don't have the unions and all the benefits. That is also the reason some of the construction companies in my area have more guys at job sites with rats at times than they do actually working is because since they get some more benefits their bids are higher for jobs so they get passed over for non union companies that can do a job 10+% cheaper. Which is good for the consumer, and not so good from the employee standpoint. However that doesn't equal bad. Getting ok benefits and being slave labor are two different levels. Everything comes at a cost and the one that the end customer sees is the only one that they care about. If they have to pay an extra $5 for a widget because the makers of the widget decided to give everyone half the day off on Friday and still pay them for the hours they would have worked they are going to be pissed because they now have to pay more for the same thing they paid less for the week before and the people that make it are getting rewarded with something that they aren't. So nobody is going to view that as good for those guys, they are getting more paid time off, they are going to be pissed at those workers for making them pay more.

Oh you were fine being drunk or high at work as long as you don't get hurt. If you do get hurt while high then you will get fired.

 

[Exavior]

Oh you were fine being drunk or high at work as long as you don't get hurt. If you do get hurt while high then you will get fired.

Nope, this guy almost killed the person I know, luckily they moved quick and only got slightly injured. Broke $50,000 worth of equipment and caused minor injuries to themselves. The blame was put on the person I know as they should have done better to keep him from doing bad things while on drugs or drunk, even gave them a week off without pay as punishment for what the other guy did. When the drug test came back as them being on drugs they just tossed it. Another time when the guy caused an accident they told him to go get a drug test after he sobered up or send somebody who was clean to go take it for him.

 

[Unter Dog]

When your wiper speed setting design is deep embedded on a tactile less screen which is tantamount to distracted driving and only 2 speeds, one can imagine that particular set of engineers responsible should be sacked.

Agree that embedding wiper controls in a touch screen is stupid at best.

Are you saying they have no intermittent settings?

Wiper motors are two speeds since off the shelf wiper motors are actually two coils wound together in one housing. No OEM I’ve designed for wants the added cost/complication of moving to any other type like a brushless motor.

 

[[21CW]killerofall]

Written like a true manager. You'd think differently if you were one of that 2%.

I've been on both sides of the union problem, and understand that there will always be those on each that feel the other is the worst option. However; as a manager, my life wasn't going to be permanently screwed by the union.

As an employee, the only thing preventing me from being screwed, was the union. A manager just didn't like me, I knew it the very first half hour after he started working. A coworker who worked with him previously, said he hated anyone who was taller than he was. Whether that was the only reason, I'll never know, but it would explain his animosity towards me in the first ten minutes after he arrived in our company. Over the coming years, he would use absolutely anything he could to try to get me fired. His poor research into what went on, he used problems which I wasn't involved in, in an effort to make it appear that I was incompetent. Fortunately during HR reviews, and discussions with the union rep, I was able to prove that it was just a witch hunt. Three years later, his team was terminated, and seven years after that, I was still there.

Without a union to represent me, they could have let me go for any reason they wanted.

This is what employees have to deal with. And this is why we have unions: Terrible, evil managers.

Bad managers created the need for unions. Business schools and business practices where ethics have no place, is why we still need unions. Hate them as much as you want, but your own hatred for organizations that were created to protect people from the evils of their bosses, shows that your feelings that your employees are your adversaries, just might very well be the reason YOUR company needs a union in place.
Employees understand when a company is having problems and must lay off some people. What they don't accept, is that THEY have to be the only ones who lose, as they watch the brass get promotions and bonuses for firing them. When the company has problems, it's a direct result of the decisions made at the top, not from the decisions of the line workers. Yes, there will always be a few problem employees. But making it appear that all are that way, denies the general success of the American businesses.

Bad working conditions created the need for unions, not bad managers. I work for a company (~175k employees total) that is mainly in manufacturing (I work on the IT side) and most of the employees are non-union (many of the employees don't actually work on the lines and not all who work on the lines are in a union either). Our company has made safety a top priority. They figured out that having safe workers actually saves them money in less downtime.

One of our major manufacturing sites never passed a vote to go union from non-union after 2 separate tries by unions over 3 years. My benefits package is better than those in a union. How do I keep myself from being let go? By doing quality work and getting along with my piers and managers (and the fact I am a relatively new employee, 3 years, so I don't make quite as much as a lot of my coworkers, who many have been with the company 10-30 years). I also just got a promotion (started yesterday) due to my hard work. Make yourself valuable to your company, and only an idiot would let you go for no reason.

 

[theBrownLlama]

i still remember stories of overworked workers, and unsafe conditions at Tesla, which was allowed to continue due to the lack of any unions combined with lax regulations and enforcement with regards to these specific complaints. (you get alot of leeway to push profits in some industries. This is not aviation, military or nuclear).

If i was looking at bottom line profits, i will also fire any workers that are replaceable at regular intervals, rather than take a hit to payroll in their increments and bonuses. I also reduce the burden of medical coverage as new recruits has a downtime before benefits kick in. At the same time, i also reduce the demand for representation, which is endemic among those below a salary and position threshold.

it's a factory after all. Machinery , parts design, logistics, catering, are probably all 3rd party contracts.

 

[hexamon]

Tesla exists only because we taxpayers are funding it. Throw in unions and you get one massive clusterfuck masquerading as an innovative tech company run by a flamboyant fraud from S. Africa.

People in certain internet communities say this all the time but saying it doesn't make it true. In what way is Tesla being funded by taxpayers? The only thing I can think of is the electric vehicle subsidy that is available to all manufacturers and about to cap out for Tesla(I think it gets phased out after 250,000 electric cars sold).

 

[nightfly]

Bad working conditions created the need for unions, not bad managers.

You see no connection to the working conditions with the managers? Who do you think is responsible for the working conditions, if not the management?

How do I keep myself from being let go? By doing quality work and getting along with my piers and managers

When someone in a hiring/firing position dislikes you for any reason, you can do the best work in the world, and they will find a reason to get rid of you. I sincerely hope you never find yourself in that position. But you will not be in any position to do anything about it; they WILL figure out a way to get rid of you. Don't think so? One woman I know was promoted, and then fired for incompetence. They offered her a better position, a good raise, 'downsized' her previous job, then let her go when they made it impossible for her to do her new job. It took all of four months.

 

[Deleted member 88301]

Unions became a "thing" to counteract abuse of workers by employers. As with most good ideas, unions have been corrupted. In many, many ways.

http://www.history.com/topics/labor

 

[Wrecked Em]

This is a double edged sword. In the short term, they trim some fat. If they keep trimming annually though, they'll end up with employees who are more focused on making their coworkers look worse than themselves instead of focusing on doing good work.

 

[LMT MFA]

Tesla exists only because we taxpayers are funding it. Throw in unions and you get one massive clusterfuck masquerading as an innovative tech company run by a flamboyant fraud from S. Africa.

Got any sources for that? Or do you mean that loan they got, and already paid off with interest, which two other car manufacturers also got, but in bigger amounts, and defaulted on?

 

[Bawjaws]

Make yourself valuable to your company, and only an idiot would let you go for no reason.

Unfortunately, often the people making the decisions as to who to let go are idiots.

 

[Mad Maxx]

Got any sources for that? Or do you mean that loan they got, and already paid off with interest, which two other car manufacturers also got, but in bigger amounts, and defaulted on?

Tesla subsidies 2017

Google it, Elon.

 

[hexamon]

Tesla subsidies 2017

Google it, Elon.

You made the claim. The burden is on you to prove it. Go ahead.

 

[Archaea]

Not terribly uncommon for agressive companies to fire the bottom ~5% per year to get rid of underperformers. If you work hard, this typical doesn't mean you.

 

[HeadRusch]

Uh, didn't I read these were not manufacturing jobs but were mostly sales and managerial...sales, yeah that I can absolutely understand....anyone in sales knows if you don't actually sell, you're gone.

 

[BloodyIron]

So Elon Musk is a fraud... How?

Tesla exists only because we taxpayers are funding it. Throw in unions and you get one massive clusterfuck masquerading as an innovative tech company run by a flamboyant fraud from S. Africa.