I was part of the 10% Elon's layoff yesterday | Hacker News Reader

I was part of the 10% Elon's layoff yesterday

old.reddit.com

95 pointsnixass70 comments

> What is something you wish people would understand about tesla that they just blatantly don't?

> The vast majority of the people that work there are genuinely interested in bettering the world and making a good product. Most of the salaried people in engineering work 12 hours/day and are on call, because they feel they should be, all the time. Even while on vacation. They give it their all every day for years for less pay than the industry norm. 95% of them are so dedicated that they stay far longer than they should. They are genuinely hurt when the company is burned on the news. They believe in the cause and 1% of the population cares.

Is it just me or these people are morons? They bought into a billionaire telling them that they doing the hard work while he holds the stock is working for bettering the world... Come on!

Indeed, you know those HR meetings that we always pretend to care and believe the company mission, while commenting afterwards with your co-workers how cringe it all sounded? Does that not happen in Silicon Valley?

What I learned is that people in Silicon Valley actually do drink the Kool-Aid. They may come from top universities, be technically knowledgeable, make a million dollars a year but yeah, I can't think of a more charitable word than "moron".

> I can't think of a more charitable word than "moron".

how about just naivety? until you truly get burned, you'd want to believe that other people would have good intentions.

But do they actually learn? Or ignore the sunk cost of living in the Bay Area and proceed to drink another flavor?

I think cost of living in so high that many have no choice but to drink the koolaid. Software engineers in the US gets paid the highest in the world. The price for it is to become a part of the culture. It's sad, but how else will they be able to afford having a family?

Live…somewhere…else?

That's not a realistic solution for many people with families.

You just said SWEs are some of the highest paying positions in the US. Not to mention many are able to work fully remote. It should be feasible that even with a family they can move.

If you move away then it becomes difficult to justify the high pay.

If you move away and persist with the high pay and excessive resource acquisition, then congrats- you've just entered the category of being another needlessly greedy human, like Mollusk.

But working 12 hours a day is ?

This is very interesting and reminds me of Shadowrun.

Basically these people are living in a cocoon. They get a nice house and salary but in exchange the corporation gets their body and soul.

Yes, when you go to a fancy school and make a lot of money you stop being a moron and start being naive.

It is not naivety to have a passion (expressed as their work) and to be taken advantage of by management, billionaires, whomever. It's simply exploitation of someone's belief system by someone lacking some combination of morals, ethics, and empathy.

Let's not blame good people for the contemptible actions of those exploiting them. We want to encourage more good people who channel their passion into their work (and hopefully that results in progress), and put the contemptible people into metaphorical boxes via laws and regulations to protect others from the harm they cause.

If shitty people are still getting wildly wealthy and we keep churning out burned out cynical people in the process, that’s not progress nor sustainable.

If you are tolerating exploitation by wealthy sociopaths when there is enough information available to know what they're doing and they have the resources to live a tolerable life without participating are either complicit or willfully naive and credulous.

Either way they share the blame.

Can you edit that to be coherent? "You", "they", and the target of "are either..." seem out of sync.

"It's their fault for having feelings and empathy that makes them weak, it is my duty as an apex predator to exploit them": every narcissist ever.

Sometimes a victim is just a victim.

>It is not naivety to have a passion (expressed as their work) and to be taken advantage of

It is. It totally is naivety.

I find it incredibly odd that if someone goes to, say, a Brazilian slum showing off their expensive stuff people are fine with labeling them naive when (not if) they get robbed

Some people have been so sheltered from reality that they'd put their hands in the mouth of a lion and be surprised when the lion bites it off. At some point it is indeed naivety. And on this specific case it's not even like said billionaires are trying hard to fake decency

I agree with you. But this is just not the sentiment of current society. It's called "victim blaming".

That's why they need a union.

I work in SV and it's no different from any other big company. You nod your head to the obvious upper management self-ejaculatory "corporate culture", show up to the "strongly recommended" team building events put together by someone who I didn't even know works on my team, and act happy when your work and workmates are scrambled every couple of years by upper management engaged in its little warring fiefdom re-orgs shortly before they award themselves a job well done and leave for the next company. All pointless, meaningless... like most things, the core software engineering is interesting and useful; the corporate, capitalistic wrappings are the problem.

Look at how these big silicon valley FAANGs and all the competition trying to emulate them hire. They shoot for kids coming right out of college and then do their best to make their life cushy and happy enough that they never question the situation.

They're drinking the Kool-Aid because the companies give them just enough of the real stuff. Obviously this isn't true for everyone and there are people in the industry there who learn over time, but there's just too many people in the region who believe in the propaganda.

"Unduly optimistic" might be not only more charitable but fairer.

The syndrome is not limited to Silicon Valley or to the 21st Century. I remember very clearly my father almost sixty years ago remarking with disgust that some scientific organization had given an award to Union Carbide, which was notorious for bad treatment of its scientists.

Even that sounds harsh. The Faang engineers are sociopaths chasing top dollar. The engineers at spacex are the other side of the coin. HN berating people for not getting their worth laughable seeing how a mediocre engineer still makes more than 80 percent of the population.

They’re far from stupid. They want to be a part of success and changing the world. Sure, Elon turned into Dr. Evil and took advantage of people and we have to get better at helping people realize this but they’re not morons.

Teslas are awesome cars and the industry is moving to electric cars en masse.

I think it’s great people made that happen. But we need to figure out how to balance the profits in favor of the people…

and that’s not just an Elon problem

The billionaire hate crew often misses that he wasn't a billionaire before he co-started Tesla. Tesla was a scrappy underdog company for a long time; for a good while the most shorted one on the stock market [note: hearsay]. There was a lot of charme in helping it and its somewhat noble goal become successful.

And even if you hate the company's products: They're pretty good at fulfilling their original mission by spawning a lot of successful competition.

Tesla's team has done a great job at making electric vehicles a common thing and they can be proud of that even if the company fully folds tomorrow.

You can't really call them morons, they're normal people, no doubt with lots of skills. I suspect the final analysis is they're under the spell of a cult of personality. They actually believe Elon Musk's bullshit, just like lots of people do. Look at the hordes of people fanboying over Musk, it's pretty obvious that lots of people at Tesla would have to be true believers.

I'm not even so sure all the people that got fired will immediately realize their mistake.

That's kinda the definition of a moron.

Would you say the same thing if investors didn't fall over themselves to make Elon the wealthiest person on earth?

Anyway, people can still believe in the cause. Even then, it's not the only thing that matters. My company isn't public and it's not doing anything world-changing but I am still devoted to it for below market pay.

The Cause of making 70k luxury cars for the wealthy.

My eyes are literally tearing up right now.

It's been stated since pretty much day 1 that the plan was to make luxury cars and then use the experience, manufacturing capability, and profits to trickle down into cheaper, more widely available models. Which is actually what has been happening.

Their cheapest bottom of the barrel model is now 62k CAD in Canada. I don't feel like the recent move to increase the price of their cars by tens of thousands of dollars is aligned with the goal of making cheap EVs.

The goal was never "sell any given EV for as cheap as possible, with no regard to business sense", but to build a company that could end up mass producing normal consumer level EVs. They could cut the price of their cars if they wanted to, but I'm not sure how that would help them reach a goal of a $25k EV.

You're now spending your time making excuses for the richest man on earth, insisting he'll do something for the world eventually.

Meanwhile he makes luxury cars, getting paid top dollar from both consumers and the government both, and shooting rockets into space, for which he's also getting paid by the government.

You think your devotion to the cause of making him ever richer pleases him?

> You're now spending your time making excuses for the richest man on earth, insisting he'll do something for the world eventually.

No, I'm pushing back against false claims and inconsistent logic.

> You think your devotion to the cause of making him ever richer pleases him?

If you said Hitler had 20 fingers, I would have told you that he only had 10. That doesn't mean I'm devoted to Hitler, it means I'm devoted to the truth regardless of who is trendy to hate on right now.

If you believe in the idea of wealth redistribution, there’s no better way than to come up with expensive products/services to sell to rich people who will gladly hand their money over voluntarily. There should be more of this.

Over 1 million people have bought those cars "for the wealthy" and growth has no end in sight. People are buying above what they would normally pay for a Tesla.

Investors don’t make people wealthy. Investors want more back than they put in. Serving lots of customers makes people wealthy.

these people are profoundly gullible.

Finding meaning in your work is important. Working 12 hours on something you care about is far easier than 8 hours on something you don’t.

And just coincidently, it lets more of the revenue go to towards making the CEO a gazillionaire than if the workers were paid more for 12 hours work…

The employees own stock too. How exactly is money being diverted to Elon Musk that would've gone to the employees?

It must be tough to be one of those people and be working things that they know will hurt the company like the problematic needlessly complicated gull wing doors, or watch the Tesla reputation dragged through the gutter due to intentionally misleading marketing of advanced cruise control.

Yup, absolute morons. Same with software engineers who work at slave-driving game companies because they love video games. Personally, I don't get out of bed for less than 300k/yr @ more than 6h/day, 5d/week

Yea, those dumb morons, finding meaning in their work and doing something they care about for a purpose they believe in. They’d all be better off as critics on online BBSs /s

This is a world of suicide bombers and at one point kamikaze pilots. If it is possible to so enthrall a person to override their natural sense of survivability, it's possible to convince them of anything.

I'm not outright saying that some brainwashing is going on but we do live in a system that truly believes there is no alternative to this type of work culture.

It's rare that jobs exist that you truly care about the vision for. Don't attack people just for feeling something that you've never experienced personally.

Also employees get plentiful stock, even the line workers get stock, which I'm not aware of any other car company doing.

1 week severance pay for 10 years. This hits hard.

„What is something you wish people would understand about tesla that they just blatantly don't?“

„ The vast majority of the people that work there are genuinely interested in bettering the world and making a good product. Most of the salaried people in engineering work 12 hours/day and are on call, because they feel they should be, all the time. Even while on vacation. They give it their all every day for years for less pay than the industry norm. 95% of them are so dedicated that they stay far longer than they should. They are genuinely hurt when the company is burned on the news. They believe in the cause and 1% of the population cares.“

They care for the company so much, but the company does not care about them.

And the guy still talks about "changing the culture of the company". Still drinks the Kool-Aid...

As long as Elon is there, nothing will change.

Obviously. The company exists to sell electric cars, not to “care” about workers. Their relationship with workers is to trade money for work.

> Their relationship with workers is to trade money for work.

Their relationship with workers is to extract as much work as possible by ajy means possible. This is primarily through manipulation and gaslighting, although money is part of the equation.

What on earth are you talking about? The workers got promised they’d work on electric cars. And then they worked on electric cars.

Please identify the gaslighting and manipulation.

True. People have to learn this hard truth and don‘t treat companies like „family“. Especially companies run by ruthless, lying and unstable CEOs like Elon.

A "layoff" that pays a week "severance" isn't a layoff, it is a mass firing. The market should take this into account.

> 1 week severance pay for 10 years

Meanwhile, Coinbase gave 2 months of severance pay to people with rescinded offers aka those who have 0 years of work there. Kinda puts things in perspective.

Ah, the group layoff. Happened to me once, and even our manager didn't rate an individual firing. Tipped off beforehand, I arrived in a white T-shirt marked up with "People Before Profits."

Absolutely ridiculous that they offered him one week severance after ten years service. Worker protection in America is abysmal.

There's an ongoing class action lawsuit that "Tesla broke US law by not providing 60-day notice before mass layoff", and according to the article, Tesla will likely have to pay back-pay.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/lawsuit-tesla-br...

Hope they win.

"I find it very concerning that the richest man in the world considers it 'trivial' that his company is blatantly violating federal labor law [enacted] to protect workers," the plaintiffs' attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, told WRAL TechWire. "While two months [of] pay certainly doesn't matter to him, it matters a lot to the employees who made his company what it is.""

> Q: How did they go about doing it? What was the package they offered?

> A: Clinical. Boss: hey have some news! Me: cool. Boss: you’re fired, we have a meeting. Hr: over teams, you gotta go. Walked out. The whole thing took 15 mins and 5 of that was walking. Scripted… BS. 1 week of pay for 10 years. Lol

1 week of severance pay for 10 years?? Jesus...

There is apparently a group lawsuit in hypothesis. (I read this in the reddit stream)

Pretty sure "hypothesis" isn't the word you want there...

They filed, its not hypothetical. agree.

Yes some of the laid off employees are suing Tesla for not providing the legally required advance notice.

https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-sued-by-former-employ...

My friend who got laid off from Sears got way more than that! I can't believe one of the highest valued companies in the world gives out less than a husk of a company.

Hell IBM when I was there was doing a 1 week for every 6 months of service. 1 week for 10 years? Pretty rude life lesson

No crap - I got 2 weeks from a dead startup where I worked 8 months. Come on.

But re: above comments. Getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to me. Never thought of a job the same again. You may love company, but company never loves back.

Here's the best part: "I don’t need kid gloves but a week of severance for 10 years is absolutely a fuck you."

What in the hell? I have been laid off from an imploding startup and gotten more severance with less "time served".

Anyone can write this. How you can trust this source?

Likely the source is real, but reddit will be quick to base whole narratives of one anecdote, from one man.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com