2 key sentences in the article say so much:
"Several said Model X, Model S and former SolarCity operations seemed to be targeted."
...
"The spokesman said most of the dismissals were administrative and sales positions, and outside of manufacturing."
This has little to do with performance or any conspiracies. If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain stable among all departments. I would guess if shifting a company's labor requirements was more politically correct, the shift would be much larger.
The average pundits head might just explode trying to rationalize the juxtaposition of a clean tech company increasing production rapidly yet 'firing' hundreds. The rational, however, applaud these efforts and the difficult decisions this requires.
> If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain stable among all departments.
Among all departments, of course not. But the job of administration and sales for the old model of car is a tremendously close match to administration and sales for the new model. If they didn't have a sufficiently large desire to fire these people, they would transfer most or all of them over.
The solarcity firings would possibly represent a shift in labor requirements, but even then they are strongly denying it with the claims of performance-based firings and not layoffs.
If you are right then the talk about performance is just subterfuge to circumvent the law, and also it starts to look like they also illegally targeted workers talking about a union (which certainly looks bad if you've just been in the news for having too many workers injured on the job).
Flawed assumption being presented as logic here. The only logical reason for firing would be if the model S,X skills were completely irrelevant to whatever the new model is - which is unlikely.
It seems to me that the firings were probably more in the sales side. They have had problems with sales people who refused to do things the ‘Tesla Way’ by either being pushy, or by offering discounts to make their numbers look better.
SolarCity is an albatross of debt around their neck... no surprises. They have to raise debt for a long time just to get financing these obligations. No dog and pony shows, just paper to pay off paper.
This has little to do with performance or any conspiracies. If your output of products is about to dramatically shift there is no reason to think employment should remain stable among all departments. I would guess if shifting a company's labor requirements was more politically correct, the shift would be much larger.
The average pundits head might just explode trying to rationalize the juxtaposition of a clean tech company increasing production rapidly yet 'firing' hundreds. The rational, however, applaud these efforts and the difficult decisions this requires.