Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

It certainly is suspicious that people were fired "for performance reasons" when the company is unable or unwilling to provide the performance data that would support that assertion.

But, on the other hand, these employees were probably "at will", so the company does not need to give any reason, or even to publicly justify the firings in any way. So it could be that "performance" is the lie that they believe to damage ongoing recruiting efforts the least.

Or it could be that they have determined individual performance assessments to be useless in the face of the more objectively measurable department-wide performance numbers.

All I know for certain is that I won't be sending them any applications or resumes until they can elucidate their motives behind this.

The simplest explanation is that the company isn't making money and investors are getting antsy about bankruptcy.




You can fire people for any reason, but there are costs involved in laying people off.

HR is a cynical business. Requiring stuff like training your outsourced replacement is also a strategy here — the longer you hang on to “undead” employees, the more likelihood they will leave voluntarily.


The company does have to prove that they didn't fire someone for a restricted reason and basically if there's any hint of that it is viewed poorly by the govt/courts.

I imagine a lot of lawyers will gear up here and there will be a lot of eDiscovery.


California is at will but they do have specific laws and procedures for mass firings and layoffs. I think Tesla is trying to skirt these by calling them performance related instead of layoffs. (And to protect their stock price from having to admit they can't afford all their workers.)




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: