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Comment by whatok | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

I think most companies would have a hard time finding 3,500 people to fire and not have it effect anything. Especially ones that describe themselves as a "growth company".

Most companies would have a hard time finding that many people to fire because they weren't that big. Most companies would have no problem finding 1 in 10 to fire in a downsizing.

Also given they're having trouble with that manufacturing output, I can't imagine firing those people would help things out. AFAIK there's no such thing has the "reverse mythical man month" - removing people from a late running project speeds it up.

There's definitely cases where removing a person from a project speeds it up. Just to name a few:

* the person removed is a distraction to the team in some way, possibly outside of their control

* the team is over the two-pizza limit, and coordination costs are out of control

* roles between individuals aren't clear, and removing one of them makes it obvious, removing a source of confusion

[edit: added some examples]

> the two-pizza limit

OT, but can someone please explain this to me?

From what I understand this is a team size that you can still feed with two pizzas. But how is this different from just saying "the two-person limit"?

When I'm with friends, we order one pizza per person. On occasion, when I haven't eaten a lot during the day, I've ordered two pizzas just for myself. And I'm a regular sized Dutch guy, so not one of those stereotypical Americans that can win eating contests.

In America a person can eat two pieces of pizza and maybe a side salad plus a drink and that's plenty. Pizzas have eight slices in their "default" configuration, so one pizza feeds 4 developers.

Note: I hate 90% of pizza.

Perhaps you have smaller pizzas than in America? Most people I know could not eat a whole pizza here in America. The two pizza limit is supposed to be more like eight people.

could be sales and marketing

Considering demand for product is outstripping their ability to produce product, their sales & marketing teams are setting a high standard of work the rest of the company has yet to meet.

Feels a little unfair if they were the ones getting axed.

Or maybe they aren't needed at all? Most people I know that want a Tesla have wanted one forever and weren't really coerced into it by sales and marketing.

Ah, but marketing isn’t simply coercion or persuasion. For instance, if you’re gathering requirements from customers before, during and after the development of a product you’re doing marketing whether you realise it or not.

All other things being equal, the more compelling the product, the less you need to market it to achieve a given level of interest. Tesla cars are SUPER compelling on a lot of levels. I would be surprised to hear that they need the same level of marketing effort as weaker entrants from other car companies.

The best marketing is the one you don’t realise.

They may not have had a sales guy come knocking on their front door, but if you think they weren’t marketed to, then Tesla did an excellent job of marketing.

Sounds like the same problem you find everywher regarding engineering, programming, IT, and sales competence: if your products seem simple and bulletproof, your servers seem to never go down, your program just works intuitively, and people want your product even before they walk into the store, that does not mean you can downsize those departments. It means you should give them a raise because they're doing a great job!

I thought Tesla had no marketing dept?

Where do people get this from? Their filings clearly state they spend millions a quarter on marketing.

Probably from half-remembered Tesla marketing spiel, at a guess.

Musk has said no advertising. They do have marketing staff.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/four-ps.asp

I'm not sure where you heard that: https://g.co/kgs/3va2C3

They don't have an advertising dept. They have a small marketing team.

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...

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