I wonder how many people who think that everyone would be better if they worked half the hours were laughing at Elon Musk for laying off what he though was deadweight and having to rehire them.
Elon is such a turbo jackass. like a normal jackass but faster.
he is eroding any loyalty the still employed employees may have. if they're smart employees, anyway. if they're not smart, he doesn't want them.
on personal sacrifice for an employer:
the belief that working hard and sacrificing your personal time will bring promotion and reward in the US is severely misplaced in 2023, especially with any publicly traded company, or even a private company beyond a certain size. each employee becomes a resource just like water or electricity or compute or storage, and good behavior is neither noticed nor rewarded. resources are managed as resources, and not as people. certainly not as beings which grow and improve with proper care and feeding.
What planet do you live on where you see this as a sustainable, world-improving system for the world and for compensation? Anyone that works 50 hr weeks for this dude is out of their mind.
this is like saying why does rich people get to have their own maids and butlers so they never have to do any housework, and effectively double their time in a day.
at the end of the day, everyone has a boss and Elon's is the general public. his stock is tanking. while you can say it's not the same as being fired as a regular employee (and it's not), he doesn't 'get to do that'
I would but only for the right price. From what I understand he pays people less than industry standard and also asks them to work obscene hours? You have to be deep in the Elon Musk delusion to consider that when there are companies that pay a multiple of what his companies pay and ask for less of your time.
edit: oh, and if you have stock appreciation that Elon deems to be too much he fires you
A year ago getting workers was very nearly impossible because easy credit was flowing like water and capital was abundant. In addition, historical level of retirement was bringing available, knowledgeable workers out of the market. Anyone who drove workers away was shooting themselves in the foot since those workers were very difficult to get back.
Today, the labor market is rougher for employees and easier for employers - credit is drying up and many projects that were employing workers are dying. More workers are competing for fewer positions and even some workers that thought they would retire are coming back after losing money in the markets has made retirement less viable.
I think parent post is saying that musk is a (somewhat) rational actor - when labor was scarce he would have been more careful not to offend. While labor is plentiful he doesn't care how badly he treats his employees because they don't have a better option.
Not sure I agree with that point - musk seems like an even mix of carnival barker and bipolar to me, but I think that's the idea.
My parents ran a small factory in the 1970s. One of their employees was a hippie who kept ranting about how they were a part of "the system". About him they said "We had to fire that guy" because his attitude toward his employers indicated he couldn't be relied on to do the job that was asked of him.
Elon Musk can make a grade-A ass of himself, but within the bounds of the law to work for him is to serve at his pleasure. Complaining about him and NOT expecting the potential axe is madness.
> Over the previous year, he had been living out of a suitcase, putting in 13-hour days, seven days a week.
This story is a good reminder not to do this. The company will usually not return the favour, you rarely get properly rewarded for crazy hours, yet it has a major impact on your health (both mental and physical) in the long run. Not worth it.
> It was not a 9 to 5 company. People were already working hard; now Musk was implying they needed to do more.
No wonder things were going to shit. Nobody can do good work if they don't get enough rest and have too much stress.
> Three months after that, it would report profits of $312 million, well beyond Wall Street’s expectations.
How much of this money did the employees get for all the overtime they were forced to work?
> Tesla, ... that some aspects were “overly dramatized,” “abbreviated,” and “ultimately misleading anecdotes that completely lack essential context.” ... “Elon cares very deeply about the people who work at his companies. ...
For the sake of everybody working for him, I really really hope this is true and not just PR firefighting and that the story misrepresented what actually happened. I'm not convinced, based on Musk's twitter outbursts and such, but I still hope this story is mostly false.
Supposing that the "correct" 80% is getting cut in this exercise - Musk is still essentially promising sweatshop work conditions for those who remain. It's evident that what he wants is for engineers to work early mornings, late nights, weekends, holidays, maximally in the office, under a trigger-happy boss who shit-talks you, your company and your work on social media, and is motivated by pure financial desperation.
“This is why Elon is a genius for keeping these employees on staff for 3 months instead of laying them off; now he can just get them back to work or they refuse and he saves 3 months of salary!”
Musk created a company that gives around 15,000 workers a job. The company he created is not just a capitalist endeavor, but an attempt to start an environmental movement aimed at making electric cars viable in the world market. At multiple points during the company's early days, Musk put everything he had on the line; assuming huge levels of risk.
Meanwhile, Tesla is not making a profit and one wrong move could destroy it - ending the jobs of thousands and an environmental movement in one fell swoop. Giving luxurious benefits to Tesla employees just isn't possible at this point.
Your criticism that Musk is just a capitalist who doesn't care about his workers and treat them well seems completely unfair.
Elon musk also expects his employees to work hard, the recent story about how spacex and tesla almost went bankrupt had paragraphs about employees totally giving up any semblance of work life balance:
>Hollman exemplified the kind of recruit Musk wanted: ... At 23, Hollman was young, single, and willing to give up any semblance of having a life in favor of working at SpaceX nonstop,
>SpaceX engineers would work for 10 days straight in Texas, come back to California for a weekend, and then head back.
When searching for that article to quote I found this one as well:
>If an employee tells Musk a deadline or cost requirement is isn't possible, he will often kick them off their job on the spot. "Elon will say, 'Fine. You're off the project, and I am now the CEO of the project. I will do your job and be CEO of two companies at the same time. I will deliver it,'" former senior SpaceX engineer Kevin Brogan told Vance. "What's crazy is that Elon actually does it. Every time he's fired someone and taken their job, he's delivered on whatever the project was."
my only point is that HN loves musk and his work ethos but apparently the same expectations from apple/blackberry don't get the same treatment.
I wish this attitude was applied equally to people in private industry like Elon Musk instead of only slamming government employees like the original article (and most similar articles).
It's interesting that in an employment marketplace with mounting evidence that reducing working hours improves worker efficiency, performance, and quality of life, Elon Musk insists on doing the exact opposite. This seems like vandalism.
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