I am waiting for my scheduled HR meeting along with several hundred other co workers in a few minutes. I am an outside, in-home residential solar salesperson hired by Tesla long after the Solar City aquisition. I have relied on the leads generated by the Home Depot employees. I am salaried and most likely going to get my walking papers today. It is apparent they don't see value in the proactive approach process to sales.
> It means that Tesla could let go over 3,000 employees in this round of layoffs.
> The CEO also confirmed that Tesla didn’t renew its contract with Home Depot to sell its energy products at their stores.
Tesla energy advisors were supposed to be at 800 Home Depots across the US earlier this year.
If they had 3.5 employees per store, and a team of 200 managing the entire effort, these layoffs could be attributed entirely to the lost Home Depot deal.
I wonder if some of this is finalizing the digestion of solar city.
How many accountants, tech, and office workers did the combine company have that were redundant? Have there been layoffs from the merger (if there were I missed them) - I'm curious to see if this is the end result of that combination.
The classic solar sales and installation company business model isn't shaping up very well. Operating margins aren't the best due to the need for local assets in frequently changing markets as incentives come and go. It's definitely more profitable to sell batteries/panels/etc to the solar installers than to run the operation itself.
Claims no production staff were affected. Don't know the employee breakdown but imagine production is a huge portion of it. Hard to believe entire other divisions weren't completely eliminated if production not touched.
Given they admitted to over-relying on automation, I doubt they'd be cutting production staff now. It's not difficult to find 9% of the workforce in other departments: sales, marketing, operations, engineering, etc.
Head over to LinkedIN and search 'tesla recruiter'. I stopped counting current employees at 100. Whey the hell does a company need 100 or more recruiters...
They should also sack the execs who made the shitty decision to hire these guys, being approached by salesmen ruins any shopping experience IMHO and the whole debacle has probably lowered Tesla's image even more in the eyes of most people.
Just reading the first few comments.... I really don't get the Tesla hate. Is it hacker-ish contrarianism? Have they done something? What's the deal HN, why are we cheering against the home team?
Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing.
Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing risk. They're interested in a business plan that leads to a mass migration of icbs to electric (or humans to mars). The nature of ambitious goals is that sometimes you don't hit your marks. The nature of risk taking is that you might fail, and have to do fast paced adjustments to recover.
Riskiness also means (literally) that Tesla comes with some chance of total failure. If they lose two or three big bets in a row, it could be game over. There are no cash cows or guaranteed income streams. Tesla is not Toyota or Microsoft. If you own Tesla, you need to be ok with that risk. Don't like it? Perfectly reasonable. Sell.
Personally (not an investor or customer), I think these companies are awesome. If GM disappeared tomorrow, nothing that I care about changes. If Tesla disappears, this could set back electric cars by 5yrs. If McDonald Douglass rocketry disappears, someone else will launch rockets for the US military. SpaceX... that hurts our chances of landing people on the other worlds anytime soon.
None of this risk profile stuff would even be controversial if Tesla was a fund. A fund manager can be as risky as she likes, provided that's the stated investment goal. Why doesn't Elon get this amount of rope? .. at least on hacker news?
Seriously, what has he done to deserve this negativity?
Personally I don't disagree with the notion of taking huge risks and going all out. Tesla and SpaceX have made the world a better place in my view, and they've definitely made the world more interesting.
That said, the overhyping, recklessness and hubris at this stage on the Tesla front seems like instead of helping achieve the wildly ambitious goal, they're making it more likely to fail. If Tesla was slightly more reasonable, and extended their timelines out a bit, it's entirely likely they'd be selling more, better cars.
At some point the company needs to mature a bit and become a little more structured, especially when you're dealing with devices that can literally kill people. I don't think at this stage they'd be less likely to hit their marks if they just got a little more down to earth, on the contrary I think it would help them.
And like it or not, a fund manager can be risky because they're making dozens of bets. Musk has 2, and both are in areas that can directly harm people if things go sideways, it's not the same thing.
Interestingly, I see this from the exact opposite view. I'm surprised it's taken this long for the rubber to meet the road. Tesla sells the most electric vehicles, but it's hardly the sort of delta you describe ("extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do"). Nissan and Tesla both hit the 300,000 car mark in January/February of 2018. And let's not forget the recent NTSB report, which revealed that "Autopilot" is just a better-marketed version of the lane-keeping everyone else is doing.
As to SpaceX--it's an extremely interesting attempt to tread a well-worn path. Commercial exploitation of space travel is a really neat concept. But again your comparison is completely unmoored from reality. SpaceX disappearing will "hurt our changes of landing people on other worlds anytime soon?" Who exactly do you think got us into space, then to the moon? Who is responsible for almost all the progress in space exploration to date, including developing the RP-1 based rocket designs that SpaceX is refining half a century later? It was U.S. defense contractors! It's worth keeping in mind that the Saturn V developed by Boeing/NAA/Douglas in the 1960s could hurl three times as much weight to the moon as the Falcon Heavy. To date, the only proven model for treading new ground in space is large defense contractors spending gobs of State money.
The real question is: why does Tesla/SpaceX generate so much sophomoric positivity?
Musk and Tesla have marketed their autopilot and handled autopilot accidents very poorly. Musk has been indignant at suggestions that Tesla needs to raise more money this year. That attitude in the face of a financial situation that seems to obviously require an influx of cash (while dealing with major production issues) has not helped their public perception.
I think, he's started to quell too many disagreeing opinions. That's why people started seeing him as delusional. And his business seems to suffer from that. You need opposing views.
I get that you have to push forward strongly for a vision to succeed, but there seems to be a fine line between strongly pushing a vision and ignoring all important criticism. And right now he's no longer on the right side of that line IMHO.
That seems to be the price of success. People made him a hero and this is the result.
I've become increasingly annoyed by Musk's personality, ego, Twitter tantrums and his deceptive statements. I used to be a big fan and follower of anything Elon-related. Still a fan of SpaceX.
Having said that, I think they make well-designed, innovative and inspiring products. Build quality and financials are terrible though.
> A fund manager can be as risky as she likes
This is off-topic but... am I the only one that finds this cringey and forced, given that it's such a such male-dominated field?
I want you to run with this thought wherever it takes you:
1. Tesla is heavily shorted.
2. Tesla and SpaceX are disrupting heavily entrenched industries (and we could argue a lot about how much or how effectively, but let's not).
3. It's become apparently easy to mobilize armies of artificial opinion on the internet, who in turn mobilize real people due to groupthink and the human love for picking sides and shouting about it.
I am not suggesting in any way that there isn't anything valid to criticize or that anyone who does so is a sockpuppet, but if there aren't any such campaigns by moneyed interests to tarnish those brands online I would be extremely shocked.
I never understood the fanboyism on HN. Tesla builds electric cars with a subpar autopilot. They are nice cars but it's far from revolutionary. Tesla is not SpaceX.
Tesla is not Apple, the car industry is not Nokia. Many people on HN seem to be confused here. I do think SpaceX should be renamed Tesla though, it would help selling Tesla cars.
> Seriously, what has he done to deserve this negativity?
Interesting isn't it? It's almost like someone turned on a switch and suddenly there is rampant anti-elon musk sentiment. What has elon musk done recently?
and the "journalists" have been waging a war against him. There is a ridiculous amount of news industry workers here ( one of the reasons for the rampant censorship here and on other social media sites is to accommodate the news industry ). The news companies have social media teams pushing their narrative all over social media along with their third party affiliates and ngos.
The media's current punching bag is zuckerburg ( hence the nonstop facebook stories here ). But zuckerburg is giving in to the media, so I suspect the new punching bag will be elon musk.
Expect a lot of negative stories, comments and threads about tesla and elon musk going forward. At least until musk apologizes or gives in to the media.
Apparently Musk really pissed off the media with his talks about creating a media ratings/fact-checking site. I'm actually following it closely because I'm also working on a fact-checking project.
Maybe the hate predates this incident and has little to do with it, but a few weeks of negative articles can do a lot to change some people's attitudes. At one point CNN had an opinion piece on the homepage titled "Elon Musk is Humiliating Himself" - that can't be helpful.
Are they running hot? They're in serious financial trouble and have been unable to meet self-imposed production levels. Now they're laying off thousands of people.
Friendly PSA: always negotiate severance. Companies can always be forced to restructure like this or even just choose to on a whim. Pressure from the board, hiring a new CTO who wants to bring in his or her own people, etc. etc.
Always make sure you are happy with what type of offsetting compensation you’ll receive in this eventuality before taking the job, and consider it a huge timesaver if an employer passes on you because you asked to negotiate a competitive severance package.
Somewhere along the way I have come to appreciate that as a society we need to optimize better for psychological, financial and physical wellbeing of people prioritized by proximity: employees, community, humanity. It will definitely slow down innovation. We might go to Mars 20yrs late, no self driving cars for 10 more yrs, walk around the city some more before electric scooter land etc.
Of course it is in conflict with innovations in humanity impacting products like cure for cancer, malaria etc. It would be nice to figure out a solution that provides a good balance.
This is definitely the move of a company in the process of scaling up production of their mass market vehicle that their valuation hinges on. Definitely not about managing cash flow.
I also think that this move was mandated by the board when it recently voted for him to remain chairman (maybe not the firing per se, but that Tesla becomes profitable ASAP).
How many lines of business is Tesla in? What lines of business are these cuts concentrated in?
Lacking the above info, it could very well be the move of a company concentrating resources on a full-scale ramp effort and pruning back non-core or non-scaling lines of business.
[+] [-] jb320|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|7 years ago|reply
> The CEO also confirmed that Tesla didn’t renew its contract with Home Depot to sell its energy products at their stores.
Tesla energy advisors were supposed to be at 800 Home Depots across the US earlier this year.
If they had 3.5 employees per store, and a team of 200 managing the entire effort, these layoffs could be attributed entirely to the lost Home Depot deal.
[+] [-] danso|7 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1006597562156003328
[+] [-] zer00eyz|7 years ago|reply
How many accountants, tech, and office workers did the combine company have that were redundant? Have there been layoffs from the merger (if there were I missed them) - I'm curious to see if this is the end result of that combination.
[+] [-] bduerst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedoops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim_sw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greglindahl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatok|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gk1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ryanmercer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boznz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|7 years ago|reply
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/2/16964154/tesla-home-depot-...
Were home installations ever projected to be a growable part of the company?
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
Overall Musk has been pretty straightforward and explicit with what he's doing.
Tesla (and spacex) set extremely ambitious goals, like none of their competitors do. They take big risks. They're not interested in reducing risk. They're interested in a business plan that leads to a mass migration of icbs to electric (or humans to mars). The nature of ambitious goals is that sometimes you don't hit your marks. The nature of risk taking is that you might fail, and have to do fast paced adjustments to recover.
Riskiness also means (literally) that Tesla comes with some chance of total failure. If they lose two or three big bets in a row, it could be game over. There are no cash cows or guaranteed income streams. Tesla is not Toyota or Microsoft. If you own Tesla, you need to be ok with that risk. Don't like it? Perfectly reasonable. Sell.
Personally (not an investor or customer), I think these companies are awesome. If GM disappeared tomorrow, nothing that I care about changes. If Tesla disappears, this could set back electric cars by 5yrs. If McDonald Douglass rocketry disappears, someone else will launch rockets for the US military. SpaceX... that hurts our chances of landing people on the other worlds anytime soon.
None of this risk profile stuff would even be controversial if Tesla was a fund. A fund manager can be as risky as she likes, provided that's the stated investment goal. Why doesn't Elon get this amount of rope? .. at least on hacker news?
Seriously, what has he done to deserve this negativity?
[+] [-] entee|7 years ago|reply
That said, the overhyping, recklessness and hubris at this stage on the Tesla front seems like instead of helping achieve the wildly ambitious goal, they're making it more likely to fail. If Tesla was slightly more reasonable, and extended their timelines out a bit, it's entirely likely they'd be selling more, better cars.
At some point the company needs to mature a bit and become a little more structured, especially when you're dealing with devices that can literally kill people. I don't think at this stage they'd be less likely to hit their marks if they just got a little more down to earth, on the contrary I think it would help them.
And like it or not, a fund manager can be risky because they're making dozens of bets. Musk has 2, and both are in areas that can directly harm people if things go sideways, it's not the same thing.
[+] [-] rayiner|7 years ago|reply
As to SpaceX--it's an extremely interesting attempt to tread a well-worn path. Commercial exploitation of space travel is a really neat concept. But again your comparison is completely unmoored from reality. SpaceX disappearing will "hurt our changes of landing people on other worlds anytime soon?" Who exactly do you think got us into space, then to the moon? Who is responsible for almost all the progress in space exploration to date, including developing the RP-1 based rocket designs that SpaceX is refining half a century later? It was U.S. defense contractors! It's worth keeping in mind that the Saturn V developed by Boeing/NAA/Douglas in the 1960s could hurl three times as much weight to the moon as the Falcon Heavy. To date, the only proven model for treading new ground in space is large defense contractors spending gobs of State money.
The real question is: why does Tesla/SpaceX generate so much sophomoric positivity?
[+] [-] ohitsdom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjzzleep|7 years ago|reply
I get that you have to push forward strongly for a vision to succeed, but there seems to be a fine line between strongly pushing a vision and ignoring all important criticism. And right now he's no longer on the right side of that line IMHO.
That seems to be the price of success. People made him a hero and this is the result.
[+] [-] RivieraKid|7 years ago|reply
Having said that, I think they make well-designed, innovative and inspiring products. Build quality and financials are terrible though.
> A fund manager can be as risky as she likes
This is off-topic but... am I the only one that finds this cringey and forced, given that it's such a such male-dominated field?
[+] [-] notabee|7 years ago|reply
1. Tesla is heavily shorted. 2. Tesla and SpaceX are disrupting heavily entrenched industries (and we could argue a lot about how much or how effectively, but let's not). 3. It's become apparently easy to mobilize armies of artificial opinion on the internet, who in turn mobilize real people due to groupthink and the human love for picking sides and shouting about it.
I am not suggesting in any way that there isn't anything valid to criticize or that anyone who does so is a sockpuppet, but if there aren't any such campaigns by moneyed interests to tarnish those brands online I would be extremely shocked.
[+] [-] pstuart|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Codemonkeyism|7 years ago|reply
Tesla is not Apple, the car industry is not Nokia. Many people on HN seem to be confused here. I do think SpaceX should be renamed Tesla though, it would help selling Tesla cars.
[+] [-] neves|7 years ago|reply
Their relation with journalists aren't also very good: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/elon-...
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|7 years ago|reply
I think you'd care far more than you realize. GM is huge and it failing would have massive downstream effects.
[+] [-] paidleaf|7 years ago|reply
Interesting isn't it? It's almost like someone turned on a switch and suddenly there is rampant anti-elon musk sentiment. What has elon musk done recently?
Well, he went after the biased media.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000560049389907969?lang...
and the "journalists" have been waging a war against him. There is a ridiculous amount of news industry workers here ( one of the reasons for the rampant censorship here and on other social media sites is to accommodate the news industry ). The news companies have social media teams pushing their narrative all over social media along with their third party affiliates and ngos.
The media's current punching bag is zuckerburg ( hence the nonstop facebook stories here ). But zuckerburg is giving in to the media, so I suspect the new punching bag will be elon musk.
Expect a lot of negative stories, comments and threads about tesla and elon musk going forward. At least until musk apologizes or gives in to the media.
[+] [-] madeofpalk|7 years ago|reply
1. People thinking Tesla is overhyped
2. People thinking Musk is overhyped
3. Failings of the two (autopilot, product/shipping delays, etc)
[+] [-] newman8r|7 years ago|reply
Maybe the hate predates this incident and has little to do with it, but a few weeks of negative articles can do a lot to change some people's attitudes. At one point CNN had an opinion piece on the homepage titled "Elon Musk is Humiliating Himself" - that can't be helpful.
[+] [-] ttul|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonknee|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hi41|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlthoughts2018|7 years ago|reply
Always make sure you are happy with what type of offsetting compensation you’ll receive in this eventuality before taking the job, and consider it a huge timesaver if an employer passes on you because you asked to negotiate a competitive severance package.
[+] [-] myrandomcomment|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riantogo|7 years ago|reply
Of course it is in conflict with innovations in humanity impacting products like cure for cancer, malaria etc. It would be nice to figure out a solution that provides a good balance.
[+] [-] _Codemonkeyism|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] IBM|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] andruby|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|7 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1006597562156003328
I also think that this move was mandated by the board when it recently voted for him to remain chairman (maybe not the firing per se, but that Tesla becomes profitable ASAP).
[+] [-] jhayward|7 years ago|reply
Lacking the above info, it could very well be the move of a company concentrating resources on a full-scale ramp effort and pruning back non-core or non-scaling lines of business.
[+] [-] astrodev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
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