Entire Supercharging Team Fired?

News yesterday is that the entire 500+ person word-wide SC team has been let go. That is alarming. Why would Elon sack the execs and all the employees of this important part of Tesla's business? Could Tesla be selling the SC network off to a third party? Opinions? Other theories?

 

[gearchruncher]

Sure, she did. She could have let go the extra 4%, or whatever the number was, and the rest wouldn't have been laid off. But she chose insubordination and got almost the entire division laid off. (You could say this was like the "trolley problem", and she decided to try to save the few by putting everyone in danger.)

Any good manager will tell you that you only leave decisions up to people you trust. Why did Elon trust her enough to decide if 20% or 100% of people get laid off when he requested 20%?

And did someone say Trolley problem?

I can see why he would clear everyone out and start over. Insubordination is not to be taken lightly

Ahh yes. More gaslighting. The enemy is both weak and strong. She was just recently made a direct report. She was nothing. But it's her fault everyone got laid off for her insubordination, that's a logical response to one brand new director of a group of 500 people not doing what the CEO wants. Not just firing her. Because everyone on her team was super loyal to this brand new person and so they all deserve to be made an example of.

This is all straight out of the fascist dictator paybook.

 

[gt2690b]

Cool.
So what "strategy" was involved in allowing Tinuuci to pick either laying off 20% of her team or laying off the whole team? Why did Elon leave that up to her instead of him?

What is the well thought out strategy in not telling your customers that supposedly Superchargers will sill expand "this year" until a week later, after getting completely roasted from every angle for that whole week?

I'm sorry I assumed you knew what Monday morning quarterback meant

 

[MP3Mike]

And did someone say Trolley problem?

I think this fits this situation better:

 

[texas_star_TM3]

I think this fits this situation better:

View attachment 1046102

If your team has 20% low performers then you need to resign as leader… because that’s an insane %.

 

[MP3Mike]

If your team has 20% low performers then you need to resign as leader… because that’s an insane %.

Every team has 20% low performers. (Unless you somehow have a team where everybody has identical performance.)

 

[texas_star_TM3]

Every team has 20% low performers. (Unless you somehow have a team where everybody has identical performance.)

Well… just sayin’ if 20% of your team deserve to be canned at any moment… then you are running a bad team and never did appropriate performance assessment in the years prior.

 

[MP3Mike]

Well… just sayin’ if 20% of your team deserve to be canned at any moment… then you are running a bad team and never did appropriate performance assessment in the years prior.

Nobody said they deserved to be canned. But if you have to reduce staff size you normally don't fire your best employees.

 

[pb2000]

Well… just sayin’ if 20% of your team deserve to be canned at any moment… then you are running a bad team and never did appropriate performance assessment in the years prior.

The vast majority of the western world's companies run on incompetence at all levels. Like it or not, there is a lot of truth to the 'hot waitress economic index' and 'It's not what you know, but who you know'.

 

[E90alex]

So they still use the NACS plug?

V4 pedestals have magic docks

 

[brianman]

I've had so many Elon apologists over the years decompose an Elon tweet using hyper pedantic language that I have learned how to do it. Let me try:
...

You sound like someone that might be fun to have a "talk Tesla" lunch with. Lots of challenges pulling reality out of Musk statements.

 

[ucmndd]

Tesla is apparently such a great rewarding place to work, not only are the employees staying with them longer than average, the company is top of the list for high performing candidates.

Holy Elon Distortion Field, Batman!

Top talent is fleeing Tesla like rats from a sinking ship. Not many are willing to risk their livelihood on the whim of someone that has proven to be so unhinged and more importantly unpredictable.

You can work people to the bone and get away with brazen mercurial leadership - for a while. Particularly if you have them bought in to the mission and give them significant skin in the game through equity as part of their compensation.

Equity is out at Tesla because every share they give to a plebe is one less for Elon. It doesn’t matter much anyway because the share price is going nowhere on account of completely losing sight of the mission.

Tesla is starting to look like the Trump
White House in year 4. The only people left are 5th string sycophants.

 

[gearchruncher]

I think this fits this situation better:

Unless you have evidence that Tinuuci was specifically told "you either fire 20% of your team or I will fire all of them" then this was in no way Tinucci's "trolley problem" choice. The whole point of the trolly problem is that you can see both outcomes.

The most common public story is that she and her team were fired because she would not fire the right percentage, but the logical outcome of that for any rational person that has worked in any corporate job is not to think "Insubordination is not to be taken lightly, so if I don't do this, the likely outcome is everyone gets fired" That's only when you work for a dictator where the message is more important than the strategy.\

The vast majority of the western world's companies run on incompetence at all levels.

Which is why you don't make your CEO the highest paid person on earth.

 

[Ben W]

lol. so per his prior tweet expansion is slowing down with the focus on expanding existing chargers and uptime ... and now he is spending "well over
$500 million" this year alone on expansion with "thousands of new chargers".

"thousands of new chargers" = 2,000 new stalls minimum ("thousands") = assume 12 stalls per average new site = 167+ (!) new Super Charger sites.
but that would mean it's nearly $3 million per new site which is way too high. Assume something closer to $500k+ per new site and we are looking at just under ~1,000 new charger sites.

but then... Elon's word on X is as good as gold. you can totally take that to the bank. Folks - no slow down in expansion - the non existing team will assist with the creation of 200 - 1,000 new Supercharger sites this year. Odd though that the internal email to contractors said to stop all new work and only complete already started projects. they better hurry up with that many SC's being slated for this year per Elon.

I think you might be misinterpreting Elon's tweet. The $500m will be spent "on new sites and expansions", which means "on new sites and existing sites". Quite possibly a majority of the $500m will be spent on existing sites, and my guess is that many of the new sites would be large ones (>12 chargers), so there may not be that many of them.

Tesla's cost per charger has been estimated to be about $43,000, so a 12-charger installation is roughly $500k in charger costs, implying that naively the $500 million could buy about 12,000 chargers. But the charger cost is likely a minority of the costs involved in actually constructing (or expanding) a site: there's land acquisition, permitting, utility hookup, costs for building out more power to the location, paving, solar canopies, megapacks for onsite storage capacity, etc., etc.

So this $500m spending figure could still represent a signifcant slowdown in the overall pace of Supercharger buildout. (And a third of the year is already gone, even before the layoffs.) So I stand by my assessment that Elon's firing of the entire SC team was a terrible, verging on catastrophic, unforced error; one that Tesla will come to heavily regret.

 

[gt2690b]

I think you might be misinterpreting Elon's tweet. The $500m will be spent "on new sites and expansions", which means "on new sites and existing sites". Quite possibly a majority of the $500m will be spent on existing sites, and my guess is that many of the new sites would be large ones (>12 chargers), so there may not be that many of them.

Tesla's cost per charger has been estimated to be about $43,000, so a 12-charger installation is roughly $500k in charger costs, implying that naively the $500 million could buy about 12,000 chargers. But the charger cost is likely a minority of the costs involved in actually constructing (or expanding) a site: there's land acquisition, permitting, utility hookup, costs for building out more power to the location, paving, solar canopies, megapacks for onsite storage capacity, etc., etc.

So this $500m spending figure could still represent a signifcant slowdown in the overall pace of Supercharger buildout. (And a third of the year is already gone, even before the layoffs.) So I stand by my assessment that Elon's firing of the entire SC team was a terrible, verging on catastrophic, unforced error; one that Tesla will come to heavily regret.

I assume you and others are putting your money where your mouth is and are shorting the Tesla stock?

 

[gt2690b]

Unless you have evidence that Tinuuci was specifically told "you either fire 20% of your team or I will fire all of them" then this was in no way Tinucci's "trolley problem" choice. The whole point of the trolly problem is that you can see both outcomes.

The most common public story is that she and her team were fired because she would not fire the right percentage, but the logical outcome of that for any rational person that has worked in any corporate job is not to think "Insubordination is not to be taken lightly, so if I don't do this, the likely outcome is everyone gets fired" That's only when you work for a dictator where the message is more important than the strategy.\


Which is why you don't make your CEO the highest paid person on earth.

I believe Elon's Tesla salary is $0

 

[FastEddieB]

I assume you and others are putting your money where your mouth is and are shorting the Tesla stock?

To be fair, shorting stock is a strategy that some avoid on general principle. Finite upside/infinite downside if you guess wrong.

No matter how down I was on a stock, I would never short it for that reason.

 

[gt2690b]

To be fair, shorting stock is a strategy that some avoid on general principle. Finite upside/infinite downside if you guess wrong.

No matter how down I was on a stock, I would never short it for that reason.

Are the people that are full in on "Elon's off his rocker" stock owners?

 

[ucmndd]

Are the people that are full in on "Elon's off his rocker" stock owners?

Answering for myself - not any more.

 

[MP3Mike]

Unless you have evidence that Tinuuci was specifically told "you either fire 20% of your team or I will fire all of them" then this was in no way Tinucci's "trolley problem" choice. The whole point of the trolly problem is that you can see both outcomes.

There have been multiple reports that that is exactly what happened, like this one:

I have an acquaintance who who worked in the Supercharger division and was let go. The story, according to him, is that Elon asked the head of the Division to make additional cuts to her team. She declined. Elon said make cuts or I will layoff the whole division. She again declined.

 

[gearchruncher]

I believe Elon's Tesla salary is $0

If you're going to play pendant, it works both ways. I said his "pay" not his "salary."
The IRS taxes him on what Tesla gives him, and the shareholders have to vote on it. That's pay. And the pay being considered is higher than anyone else.

Do you really want to go down the route of arguing that stock options and similar agreements are not "pay"?