Concerning the performance review: would expect that after acquisition, SolarCity would adjust to Tesla's performance standards. So even if they were based on prior performance reviews, still seems like a reasonable action and level to me.
As much as I try to squint, I'm having troubles seeing the smoking gun here.
> Expectations should be so clear that anyone in the aforementioned bottom tenth of your firm knows they'll be there before the ranking and yanking starts. "Anybody who is fired and surprised? That's the bosses' fault," Welch said on Bloomberg TV in 2015.
Contrast the GE description to what happened here with Tesla: absolute blindsiding where the employees were not given any performance feedback before getting axed.
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14315785/1/how-to-fire-peopl...
There's been a lot of rants about the utility of stack ranking and this sort of "fire the worst performers because everyone else is better" attitude. Namely wrong incentives.
You have John Carmack and a clone of John Carmack working on your game engine. You have stack ranking. Which one should you let go during review season? Should you hire some extra people to protect your good people?
Jack Welch was simply doing long pending layoffs.
You mean, getting rid of people who had been promised deferred compensation, before having to make good on it? That was the deal with old-skool companies, remain loyal for 30 years then ease your way into retirement. GE got the loyalty then shafted those guys.
In India many old people got shafted both the ways being asked to take voluntary retirements and being subjected to high inflation rates at the same time.
Well, you can, or no obligation means anything anymore. Why should a company even pay you your wages if things are a little tight this month, by that logic?
Its just people woke up to the fact that socialism wasn't a feasible model anymore.
These are debt obligations at the level of a country. On 'your' investments.
This is totally different than saying a person should be given a job, even if they don't work.
Ummm airlines and automakers in the US do, or did. Lots of companies/countries are the same.
I'm not able to provide evidence, so my assertion that their firings were a lot of bullshit isn't going to carry much weight. I'm ok with that. But likewise, you might want to consider waiting for evidence that they did in fact cut underperformers, because I don't think you will see that either.
Any signs this is what tesla did? Lowest 2% is fine. Lowest 2% per team is not fine, means you need a scape goat for each team.
If the lack of promised performance reviews is accurate, that's the obvious issue - it implies a labor force decision disguised as a performance decision. This is a pretty common move in e.g. game development, so it certainly isn't unthinkable.
The point about total workforce size is well taken, though; this still seems like it could be as simple as "times are tough so we're cutting more stringently than we might otherwise".