Follow up to employee termination

[ChrML]

What surprises me about the first post is:

- How could a single employee be held accountable for a mass-email?

It's ovious that creating a writing that goes to many customers can be dangerous because emails can be read in a lot of ways. Even the best people can make a mistake in an email. And when it goes to a lot of people, the consequences can be really bad and cost the company a lot of money.

Because of this it seems obvious to me that more people from the team should be reviewing the email together before sending it. When 3-4 people look at it together for 15min, you'll most likely catch the mistakes. And if it still screwed things up, then the entire team screwed up. Too bad, but life goes on, everyone's learned and nobody's fired. People working together is what creates a good working environment. Not everyone for themselves and "You made a mistake? Poor you." In that case it's an issue at management level.

Now it's impossible without insight from both Tesla and the employee to figure our exactly what happened. But it has to be one of these:

1. The employee was doing a crappy job and would be fired anyway for a different reason. That can happen anywhere, but usually the employee should be told the exact honest reason.

2. Or someone higher in management became pissed at this incident. Regional manager needed someone to blame. Now that would be a real shitty work environment and that way of working should be dealt with (again: teams do mistakes together).

 

[bonnie]

I'm just going to leave this here as something to think about ... and perhaps the OP will also chime in.

Why would Tesla get rid of a high performer without any reason whatsoever? They're hungry for good employees. I said originally when this was first made public & will repeat - we do not know all the reasons.

And for @Aaron S. ... If Tesla were to comment publicly on your post, what do you think they'd say? Would there be more to the story? You've gotten your 15 minutes and bumped the topic, to the point @tweetermeyer has picked up on it. We all want to identify with the employee unfairly terminated, but I cannot help but believe there might be more to this saga than what you have been willing to share.

I wish you the best.

 

[bonnie]

What surprises me about the first post is:

- How could a single employee be held accountable for a mass-email?

It's ovious that creating a writing that goes to many customers can be dangerous because emails can be read in a lot of ways. Even the best people can make a mistake in an email. And when it goes to a lot of people, the consequences can be really bad and cost the company a lot of money.

Because of this it seems obvious to me that more people from the team should be reviewing the email together before sending it. When 3-4 people look at it together for 15min, you'll most likely catch the mistakes. And if it still screwed things up, then the entire team screwed up. Too bad, but life goes on, everyone's learned and nobody's fired. People working together is what creates a good working environment. Not everyone for themselves and "You made a mistake? Poor you." In that case it's an issue at management level.

Now it's impossible without insight from both Tesla and the employee to figure our exactly what happened. But it has to be one of these:

1. The employee was doing a crappy job and would be fired anyway for a different reason. That can happen anywhere, but usually the employee should be told the exact honest reason.

2. Or someone higher in management became pissed at this incident. Regional manager needed someone to blame. Now that would be a real shitty work environment and that way of working should be dealt with (again: teams do mistakes together).

Or,
3. The employee had been doing a good job, but knowingly violated boundary conditions set up by management. (To be clear, I don't know this for a fact, only saying there are other possibilities.)

 

[smac]

@bonaire

Truth is Tesla service centres are just like every other car dealership in the world. They want to keep discounts to a minimum while also keeping turnover high. "Stale" cars are toxic.

Problem is Service Centers have their hands tied.

The truly distorting factor is Tesla are booking the residual values higher than is readily achievable in the open market (and this boils down to the accountancy practices used in the RVG).

Unlike a traditional dealership model where the independent franchise has no real care about book losses to the lease partners/manufacturers, Service Centers are desperately trying to sacrifice immediacy in order to buoy used prices. (You can see this in the way Tesla sit on used stock FAR longer than I've ever seen.)

The dam is about to burst, Tesla have exhausted their capacity and will have no choice but to move long held CPO/used stock on to auction. (Unless they want to borrow more money from the markets to hold up used Model S prices).

Rock meet hard place. (Or vertical integration meet reality if you prefer).

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Why would Tesla get rid of a high performer without any reason whatsoever? They're hungry for good employees. I said originally when this was first made public & will repeat - we do not know all the reasons.

Some possibilities:

Large companies tend to become less human, the layers of organization making reactions sometimes less logical.

Some have presented the theory that OPs action combined with some enterprising community members and (un?)fortunate social media news cycle made public something that was allowed, but supposed to be kept under wraps, i.e. some quiet quarter-end inventory discounting. This would then have required action to fix in the public eye. I guess this theory goes that the problem wasn't so much the action, but getting caught.

If that theory is too out there, the other one is that the OP did something his own manager did approve, but some higher-up did not (especially after the story started making waves). It sounds plausible too.

I can see many scenarios where the OP was simply doing his job, perhaps was even excellent at it, and still got booted. It happens in large companies for a multitude of reasons.

Of course it is also completely possible the OP was at fault and knowingly broke rules he was never supposed to break.

 

[ChrML]

Or,
3. The employee had been doing a good job, but knowingly violated boundary conditions set up by management. (To be clear, I don't know this for a fact, only saying there are other possibilities.)

Yeah I guess your right. For example, if they have routines for group reviewing mass emails, and the employee repeatedly after warnings still send them without inviting for a group review. And in addition to this made a serious mistake when breaking this rule.

 

[ChrML]

I can see many scenarios where the OP was simply doing his job, perhaps was even excellent at it, and still got booted. It happens in large companies for a multitude of reasons.

Usually high performing employees don't get fired unless they do something seriously wrong. Such as knowingly and repeatedly after warnings breaking rules, by causing a bad work environment (behaviour mm) or the company is scaling down or putting departments down and for legal reasons can't choose freely who to fire.

I've also worked in a medium company and have been involved in firing people. Some of those fired actually honestly think they are doing a good job, or believe the management is wrong about them. Truth is that one of them became enemies with all our customers because of his personality and miscommunication. Another of them produced less than 10% of what their colleges do despite running around looking busy all the time. One produced ok but always lying and painting a fake pictures of how things are going and complained when not getting help when not asking for help.

None of them went without several rounds talking to them and trying to figure out what we can do to make the job work for them. Yet they despite all efforts tell everyone around them what crap management fired them.

It's what people often do protecting their self-feeling. It's impossible to know exactly why OP was fired without a meeting with both parts to understand the whole situation. People tend to leave out parts that may not seem important to themselves.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@ChrML Sure, all possible. But it also happens that large companies have management chains that obfuscate things (resulting in unintentional misrepresentation of facts possibly) or have conflicting priorities or interests (higher-up caring about PR may have different priorities than a local sales team) - or indeed bad managers on some levels covering their own behinds... And the low-level employee pays a price. These things happen in companies too.

 

[ChrML]

@ChrML Sure, all possible. But it also happens that large companies have management chains that obfuscate things (resulting in unintentional misrepresentation of facts possibly) or have conflicting priorities or interests (higher-up caring about PR may have different priorities than a local sales team) - or indeed bad managers on some levels covering their own behinds... And the low-level employee pays a price. These things happen in companies too.

Yet these situations would be solved by group reviewing mass emails. Central management can't come and say fire X. When the decision was made together by local manager Y, sales guy Z, random salesman T and sender X.

Even if they did not have a group review, the local manager should not be able to say "Sender X did it, I've fired him now". The manager should've followed up on the routines and made sure group reviews were introduced in the first place to avoid these situations.

But of course there are companies with bad leaders too. I've been shocked before how ignorant and selfish people can be.

 

[bonnie]

At this point, I'm going to suggest that we don't know the reason. We can speculate and come up with a list of possible reasons that is never ending. But we don't know and we won't know.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Central management can't come and say fire X.

Of course hard to say about a specific company, but as any kind of a general rule I believe this is where you are wrong. Steve Jobs for example was documented to have been doing this. It could certainly happen if some issue escalates to top management.

But it needn't have to go to top management either. All it would take is some middle manager taking heat, seeing a situation through his/her local prism and demanding action downstream. Suddenly a low-level employee might face termination for something that had local management approval (perhaps spoken), but suddenly became problem for someone higher up - and in the media no less.

Large organizations by nature can be pretty inhumane, but not always through the fault of people either. The nature of the structure can make information flow imperfect and thus result in unintended bad decisions.

 

[ChrML]

Of course hard to say about a specific company, but as any kind of a general rule I believe this is where you are wrong. Steve Jobs for example was documented to have been doing this. It could certainly happen if some issue escalates to top management.

But it needn't have to go to top management either. All it would take is some middle manager taking heat, seeing a situation through his/her local prism and demanding action downstream. Suddenly a low-level employee might face termination for something that had local management approval (perhaps spoken), but suddenly became problem for someone higher up - and in the media no less.

Large organizations by nature can be pretty inhumane, but not always through the fault of people either. The nature of the structure can make information flow imperfect and thus result in unintended bad decisions.

It can happen. But you can't fire X for something he didn't do (the team did it together in that meeting, not X by himself).

It would be a very interesting court trial if Manager Y was put up as a witness and had to testify why he fired employee X for doing something that was decided in a meeting between Y, X, Z and R.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

It can happen. But you can't fire X for something he didn't do (the team did it together in that meeting, not X by himself).

It would be a very interesting court trial if Manager Y was put up as a witness and had to testify why he fired employee X for doing something that was decided in a meeting between Y, X, Z and R.

I still think what you're describing is a bit optimistic. Not all corporate situations happen that cleanly, jurisdictions vary etc.

I think we've exhausted the useful dialogue, since I agree of course we do not know what happened in this case exactly.

 

[RBowen]

People who had personal experiences with Aaron can speak to whether he provided good service to his customers. Aaron was my advisor in September 2016 during their quarter end push for sales. He was recommended by others on TMC, and I must say he did an outstanding job for me -- and therefore for Tesla.

This firing is bullshit. Tesla is being dishonest and two-faced. "We don't discount -- except when we do -- but we don't want to admit it." My new refreshed 2016 Model S 75D was discounted almost $18,000.

This firing is a black eye on Tesla's honesty and credibility.

Aaron, I really appreciate your help last year. Thanks and best of luck.

 

[bro1999]

Some possibilities:

Large companies tend to become less human, the layers of organization making reactions sometimes less logical.

Some have presented the theory that OPs action combined with some enterprising community members and (un?)fortunate social media news cycle made public something that was allowed, but supposed to be kept under wraps, i.e. some quiet quarter-end inventory discounting. This would then have required action to fix in the public eye. I guess this theory goes that the problem wasn't so much the action, but getting caught.

If that theory is too out there, the other one is that the OP did something his own manager did approve, but some higher-up did not (especially after the story started making waves). It sounds plausible too.

I can see many scenarios where the OP was simply doing his job, perhaps was even excellent at it, and still got booted. It happens in large companies for a multitude of reasons.

Of course it is also completely possible the OP was at fault and knowingly broke rules he was never supposed to break.

Or how about CEO is a micro manager, and got pissy when he found out some low level worker distorted the 'No discounts...even for my mom' charade by having news outlets pick up on the disc----adjustments. So he had the employee, Aaron, fired.

If Aaron was a "bad apple" as some people in this thread are trying to imply, I'm sure he would have had no problem going public MUCH earlier and airing out all the dirty laundry about how he was mistreated by Tesla. The fact he waited nearly 3 months to share his side after trying to resolve things behind the scenes speaks volumes. The veiled attacks on his character are pretty despicable, IMO.

 

[bonaire]

And here I thought you were describing Internet forums![

Or how about CEO is a micro manager, and got pissy when he found out some low level worker distorted the 'No discounts...even for my mom' charade by having news outlets pick up on the disc----adjustments. So he had the employee, Aaron, fired.

If Aaron was a "bad apple" as some people in this thread are trying to imply, I'm sure he would have had no problem going public MUCH earlier and airing out all the dirty laundry about how he was mistreated by Tesla. The fact he waited nearly 3 months to share his side after trying to resolve things behind the scenes speaks volumes. The veiled attacks on his character are pretty despicable, IMO.

I may get banned from TMC for this but let's see.

They utilize "talk" to pump up the stock such as "will deliver 100k-200k Model 3 in H2 of 2017". The CEO makes these claims.
Then don't even come close to a small fraction of that. it's fine but it's also characteristic of a type of lying that business leaders do. Lying of "future improbability but let's make it sound good".

Firing a guy who is trying to sell the company's product by using wrong word? Are you kidding me?

We've heard rumors of 20% discounts on old stock in China in Q4 of 2015 to "make the number". They built a ton of P90DL in early 2016 only knowing that it will be discontinued and $30k discounts (I used the word!) were done to clear them out.

Before all that, talk was of "cars were in transit and couldn't be delivered - so we couldn't meet sales number".

For a company that uses constant wordsmithing to convince the financial analysts that they are stronger than they appear and that they are "disrupting trillion dollar industries" as noted by chief-water-carrier Adam Jonas all at the same time that their company underwrites an impressive bond - is all use of words to distract investors from actualities of the firm's business in-detail. And wrap it all up with NDAs and customer "make good" repairs, also signing NDAs is a form of hiding the truth. This is not truly disruption - it is a mass delusion of value. Who wins in this game?

How many like Andrew S. never spoke-up due to fear of NDA retribution, or other? Those NDAs have pretty strong tentacles in terms of dissuading people of speaking their own truths.

 

[Doug_G]

I may get banned from TMC for this but let's see.

Why in the world would you think that? You are entitled to express your opinion, including one that is critical of Tesla. We’re not in the pocket of Tesla; quite the contrary. We have worked to maintain our independence.

People mainly get banned for personal attacks, trolling, unsponsored commercial activity, and sock puppet accounts.

 

[Economite]

It can happen. But you can't fire X for something he didn't do (the team did it together in that meeting, not X by himself).

In the US an employer absolutely can do this. Virtually all employment in the US (other than unionized jobs, civil service jobs, and some entertainers and executives who work under contract) is at-will. So the company has the legal right to fire just about anyone for any reason or no reason at all. The only thing a company can't do is fire someone for an illegal reason (generally meaning for a reason based on race/religion or the like, or for being a whistleblower or union organizer).

"It wasn't my fault" or "I didn't get a warning first" aren't legally relevant arguments most of the time.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@Doug_G And may I say what a fine job the whole TMC gang has been doing of late.

It is interesting too, the psychology almost reverses itself. When disagreement is so welcome, one tends to become more agreeable. I mean, not all, but sometimes when you freely get stuff off your chest the negative things tend to go away a bit...

I look at some of the current Tesla blogging sites and the atmosphere IMO there is often much less successful. There is something nicely mature about the TMC atmosphere overall, warts and all. So, well done you all.

IMO a free and balanced TMC is, in the end, in Tesla's interest too. Nurturing a great owner community is a good thing.

 

[pdq]

Aaron personally sold me my P90D and he was amazing from start to finish. I have nothing but great things to say about him. Sorry to see him be forced to leave Tesla but I'm sure his family appreciates him being around more now.

Best of luck in the future Aaron.

This is just one more affirmation that Tesla doesn't know how to run a car company.

And here I thought they only treated customers like crap.

Sorry to hear about your getting fired Aaron.