Steve jobs did the same thing, their marketing was all about pushing how apple users think different and are changing the world by being mindless consumers
I just don't get how we just can't over turn them politically state by state in State Elections. How is this not a thing? I live in an At Will State (PA) and it pretty much sucks to have the knowledge I can be fired for any reason and sure I still can sue but I can still lose even though I am 100% in the right.
Isn't there a technical solution to this? Something like an outwardly anonymous social network with "proof" of employment from LinkedIn, where you can pledge to unionize once participation reaches critical mass for your workplace. Yes laws are better, but this could be a decent workaround.
I don't think it's achievable without outside help and political organisation.
Traditionally bootstrapping into a situation where union organising could happen safely and peacefully required a period of violence on the picket lines. There used to be quite a lot of this in America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
These days it's even harder in some ways; the more "virtual" an organisation is, the easier it is for the company to just disband and restart it and the harder it is to picket. It's not clear if the various strikes against Uber by its workers have achieved anything.
(someone is downvoting you, but it's not me!)
Surely the big Eastern European union success story was Solidarity? Although I can understand how unions would struggle to operate in the post-communist era.
Could you please explain why, in the age of e-mail and Facebook? People in my country have zero problem organising political events on Facebook, attracting several tens of thousands of visitors to their demonstrations.
This reverses cause and effect: in order for unions to receive any legal protection, they have to exist and fight for it (many members paying very high prices.) The unions precede the legal protection, not the other way around.
Can we make it mandatory for everyone that is anti-Union to have to report to work on Labor Day and also they need to work the previous Saturday since it was normally a six day work week before Unions?
I still don't understand American working force's love affair with the filthy rich individuals and corporations. I am constantly told, "This is just how economy works" from my Father-In-law and other "conservatives."
When I mention that we as the working class are getting less and less of the GDP pie and more is going to the corporations and rich. The feeling is this has always been that way. I immediately say "I'm talking percentage" and sadly the average American is stuck at a 4th grade math level and I guess 4th grade doesn't cover the meaning of percentages.
The filthy rich's best warriors are conservative leaning voters right now and I have no idea how that will ever change.
There's precious little mention of this in history lessons.
Bethlehem Steel had a strike, 9,000 workers complaining about the 12 hour work days and the unsafe work conditions. A policeman shot and killed union striker Joseph Szambo while he was drinking a beer and his wife gave birth to their child a few hours later. This caused Congress to get involved and to actually make Bethlehem Steel change their practices and the Labor Union won. http://bethlehem.thelehighvalleypress.com/2012/09/12/bethleh...
Now fast forward to the 1980s and Bethlehem Steel wasted millions in tax dollars on building a huge corporate office and didn't redo their old steel works and had to go out of business. People like to blame the Union but it was Corporate waste of resources that was the demise of the company. https://www.mcall.com/opinion/white/mc-bw-bethlehem-steel-pl...
Do most people want to overturn them? I think you're assuming that start state and it's perhaps not the case.
> I can be fired for any reason
And you can also leave for any reason. It's symmetrical. You don't have this right in some countries - I'd be careful about volunteering to give it up.
That's not symmetrical, or if it is, it's symmetrical in the same way as "heads I win, tails you lose." Being fired and quitting both place the entirety of the risk of unemployment on the employee, there is no counterbalance of power or risk on the part of the employer.
If health insurance wasn't tied to employment in the US, or if there were something like UBI, then the dynamics of at-will employment might be at least more symmetrical.
If there is no power or risk on the part of the employer then why do some countries have a law requiring that you give the employer a notice period? It's to reduce their risk.
In my country can sued for their damages if you leave without a notice period - real damages such as having to hire more expensive temporary staff to do your job until they can find someone else permanent. That's their risk.
In the linked article, it's mentioned that Elon felt a constant need to fire people that he sometimes had to be talked down from, so if the employer risk exists, it doesn't seem to be particularly high in most cases. If the risk for employers was significant, then at-will employment laws wouldn't even exist, because the entire purpose of such laws is to make it arbitrarily easy to fire employees.
The only way at-will employment could truly be symmetrical is if I could walk into work and literally fire any of my managers or the CEO with the same ease with which they could fire me.
But of course, actually applying the power dynamic of at-will employment both ways would just be insane wouldn't it?
False dilemma [1]. There's no reason to assume that by giving up at-will employment, you'll also lose the right to resign for any reason. In fact, there are lots of countries where you can resign for any reason, but can't be fired for every reason.
I did not say that. You've either mis-read what I said or you're wilfully misunderstanding.
I said that the law is symmetrical. I didn't say the relationship was. I also didn't say that the risk was.
If I run a business and I can't afford you, then I have to continue employing you to the detriment of the rest of the business? One of the guys who reports to me just turned in his 2 weeks notice completely out of the blue. It puts me in a bind because we have more work than people to do it, but I don't harbor any ill will towards him.
I can understand your concern (somewhat), but at the same time, being an at will employee simply isn't something that's even on my radar.
I frequently hear this being trotted out as the reason why at-will employment is a good thing. This is, however, not the reality. You can fire employees for many reasons: Poor performance, breaking the rules, and - yes - lack of money.
What you cannot do is fire people on the spot for any random reason. You can fire people, but you have to follow a process that is designed to protect both the employer and the employee.
I have had to fire people in my employ a few times, and every time I was annoyed at the length and complication of the process I had to follow. I never once thought that at-will employment was a good alternative. As an employer, I strongly believe that the practice is barbaric and uncivilized.
Well, you can also quit for any reason, at any time
And...? If your business is structured in such a way that this situation would pose an existential threat to your business, you have failed as a business manager. If this situation doesn't pose an existential threat to your business, it is just an annoyance - sucks to be you, I guess. As a reward for the risks and hardships of being a company owner, you get to take home your profits.
First, in an at-will state in the US, except for those cases relating to protected classes, you can indeed legally let any employee go for any random reason you desire. Any "complications" involved have been added by your company, in an attempt to protect them from employee lawsuits.
Let me just cut to the chase and say this as simply as I can. I think at-will employment is a good thing. As an employee I like knowing I can simply decide to quit on a whim and I see no reason an employer shouldn't have the same freedom.
> I see no reason an employer shouldn’t have the same freedom
Because its not an equal relationship. Unless the company is very, very small or badly managed, losing an employee or two is much less of a deal for employers than losing their jobs is for the average employee. If the employer really wants rid of the employee for a legitimate reason, they can do so, they just have to jump through a few hoops. If they want to get rid of the person just because, then no, they can’t do that and in my opinion shouldn’t be allowed to either. It encourages an abusive or unfair work environment (work longer/harder/more dangerously or I’ll fire you! for example).
For the average person, losing their job is devistating. For the average company, losing an employee barely registers. Remember, that most employees don’t have the same flexibility and job availability that most of us on HN do, yet the laws still apply the same.
What gives you the idea that you cannot leave anytime you want as an employee?
Yet at the same time companies are extremely paranoid about firing people without a good excuse for fear of getting sued. These two sentiments don't really line up.
And yet it's also a perfect example of the one time it does make sense to do so, which is when you own a decent chunk of the company that you're doing it for.
> No wonder things were going to shit. Nobody can do good work if they don't get enough rest and have too much stress.
Yeah, that kind of effort is not sustainable for more than a few months at most. Trying to push too hard just burns out your best people, even (especially?) if they're part owners.
I think it's an especially bad idea at high levels of the company, because of the long feedback loops. If a line worker makes a mistake, they will hopefully catch that within hours. If they make a bunch, somebody's going to come talk to them in short order. If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious. But the more tired I am, the more my focus shifts short-term and the less I notice subtleties and small mistakes. increased error rates and long feedback loops are a very bad combination.
[1] http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...
> If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious
To finish the parable: If an engineer makes a mistake, it might not be noticed until users start to die while operating the product.
For Musk it might make sense, but I doubt it makes sense for most of his employees. Its not worth fucking your health and social life up over a payout, unless its huge. The typical Tesla worker isn't going to make enough from it to make it worth it, in my opinion.
> Yeah, that kind of effort is not sustainable for more than a few months at most.
Agreed, although likely you'll experience negative effects much sooner, although you may not properly burn out for a few months. There were some posts on HN recently about the long-lasting health impact stress has.
> How much of this money did the employees get for all the overtime they were forced to work?
Did someone somehow compel someone else to work those hours? I imagine most Tesla employees are at the top of their field, and have many jobs to choose from. If someone chose to work like that, there must have been a motivation, it doesn't seem like they would have been forced.
I remember years ago reading article after article and forum post after forum post about how once we finally deplete oil transportation will revert to the 19th century. I don't read that anymore.
I have little doubt that without Tesla you wouldn't see a dozen other EVs on the market. You might have one or two crappy "compliance cars," but nobody else would be striving to make EVs anyone actually wants to buy.
I am not arguing with you. I don't disagree with much of anything that you wrote.
One of the things that keeps me up at night and frankly depresses me is the question: can you lead or otherwise achieve great things without being an asshole?
Steve Jobs? Asshole. Winston Churchill? Asshole. Stanley Kubrick? Asshole. Bill Gates? Quieter, but judging from MS's behavior in the 80s and 90s, asshole. I could go on.
I'm a founder and have been trying for quite a while to build something great without being an asshole or a total workaholic. It's hard, and I sometimes worry that I'm failing.
Anyone got any good inspiring counterexamples?
I have a speculation about why this might be. The human brain is wired for the much slower, simpler life of a hunter-gatherer. In a modern context most people exist in a state of low-grade depression. We're not really all that driven and our appetite for opportunity and action is calibrated for a world where opportunities for those things are much more rare.
There are ways of tweaking oneself chemically (pun intended): caffeine, amphetamine, cocaine, modafinil. Unfortunately all these have side effects. They accelerate thought but they also muddle or impair it.
But...
Occasionally you get people who are naturally wired with an extreme degree of drive and charisma. It's not that these people are necessarily smarter than everyone else, though some are certainly smart. It's that they operate naturally at a pace that fits the modern world.
Here's where the magic comes in.
Humans are deeply mimetic. We pick up and unconsciously mirror the states of those around us. It's part of why concentrated centers of excellence such as those found in urban settings are often so mysteriously alluring and powerful. When we are around people who are driven to excellence, it increases our drive to excellence.
So you get this positive emotional-mimetic field around these people. Everyone else around them gets tweaked up too.
Unfortunately these traits seem coincident with narcissism, antisocial personality disorders, even full on psychopathy in some cases. So you have these inspiring, driven, animating assholes that seem superhumanly powerful simply because they are not (in modern terms) naturally depressed and anhedonic.
Like I said it's depressing. This is one of those thoughts where if I were proven to be wrong I'd celebrate.
Oil prices, pollution laws and incentives did, Tesla was the only one in position to profit for it timely
Every company has an electric car in their blueprints, Tesla is the right size to benefit for the small demand that the market created on its own
They turned a hundred million so profit this year right? That's not even enough to consider ending the market for the larger companies. Comparatively they could earn those profit just by tweaking a decimal on their car financing services interest.
Most people will resist change until they are forced into it. Even then some people will literally go down with the ship.
That doesn't correspond with the practical realities. Here are some battery electrics that will be released across the next two years, some of which are already available:
https://www.myev.com/research/interesting-finds/hottest-new-...
Look at what a company like Hyundai is doing. Hyundai produces hydrogen fuel cell cars:
https://www.hyundai.de/Modelle/NEXO.html
Hyundai (with Kia) produces EV versions of the Hyundai Kona and the Kia Niro, two battery electrics with good range at a more affordable price than the luxury EVs:
https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric
https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/all-new-e-niro/
Hyundai also has plans for on-car solar:
https://electrek.co/2018/10/31/hyundai-kia-solar-roof-electr...
I don't think any of this adds up to them hating EVs. Hyundai is ahead of most companies on the road to the practical, affordable EV.
They have those blueprints because of Tesla, they were not going to be nearly as quick to market with electric cars before hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/ZEROEMISSION/HISTORY/RNESSA...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
they're all sitting on a lot of technology, the current volume doesn't justify them to push into production, where tesla could use their gung-ho startup attitude and startup capital to run off the equivalent of rounding error for the establishment
They're currently down about $15 billion dollars (and a couple billion more in incentives).
There is a reason GM, Audi, Daimler etc are shifting to electric vehicles.
GM turned a loss selling nine million vehicles or so, opening a whole line to enter a market which is moving just one million units or so competing with players like Tesla that operate at almost a loss make zero sense.
They'll keep their design fresh and up to date to be ready when the time comes, but so far it's territory of steps and smaller companies that can profit from small production runs
The Tesla Model S, in its main US market, is the leader in the luxury car market. Model 3 is the #1 selling car by revenue.
Production is limited to 2 US factories. Worldwide numbers go up fast when they have a Euro factory, Chinese factory, etc.
> GM turned a loss selling nine million vehicles or so, opening a whole line to enter a market which is moving just one million units or so competing with players like Tesla that operate at almost a loss make zero sense.
And yet they are doing it.
Yes that why they killed the volt
What separates the high achievers, apart from any basic talent and training, is a personality that doesn't experience the relevant kind of pain or discomfort that would discourage them from the task.
For a lot of sports, that means overcompetitive asshole. For a lot of businesses, the same. That personality gets a lot of leeway to optimize towards linear goals. But then you go looking at certain niches and there is nuance. Sometimes it's endurance - masochism. Someone who runs ultramarathons, or repeatedly starts over a speedrun of a classic video game. Sometimes it's a poker player or day trader who can't feel the weight of moving around big stakes. There are many roles where the successful personality isn't the competitive narcissist. But in the specific case of small companies that get very big very quickly, they are prolific.
And that's a point which helps me personally, since I know some things about my comfort zone by now and where the standard advice is going to fail. Only some people are numbed enough to simply "hustle" and succeed. For the rest it's more like a quest to find the right kinds of challenges, the ones that they are most likely to engage with at a high level. When they can do that, people call them a genius. But from their own perspective, it's ordinary, or only somewhat more painful than doing nothing. And this quality of personality matching a high level skillset runs throughout our fictional characters, despite Western society nominally engaging with beliefs of anyone being equally able to learn to do anything. I think we know this and turn our back on it because it uproots several of our major founding myths about society and its potential and whom we should support and how.
Historically we do seem to need "kings" of some form or another. This makes the requirement socially tautological. Kings have to be assholes because people need asshole kings.
My depressing hypothesis is that because the average human is essentially depressed, un-driven, and anhedonic, we depend on being dominated by hyper-driven assholes to reach our full potential.
What's weird about this is that in a way we are using or even enslaving the king. There's an anthropological hypothesis out there that monarchy evolved in part from the practice of human sacrifice, and when a king's company or country does not perform we still do sacrifice them at least in word if not in deed.
I hypothesize that the conventional model of the "great man" has it wrong. It's not the genius of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk that is driving excellence. It's the drive itself. The actual work at SpaceX or Tesla is being done by the employees, but I question whether the employees could drive themselves to do that work given that we are naturally wired to sit around a campfire, eat, fuck, and occasionally go hunting or berry picking. My hypothesis is that without drive and charisma to emotionally mime, most people don't do much.
I've wondered for a long time if the solution might not be superior stimulant medications. Could we have a king in pill form? Could a simple emotional or even metabolic tweak (again pun intended) eliminate much of the need for inspiring leaders to motivate us?
Now I'm incubating this goofball speculation that the post-enlightenment-era rejection of monarchs was driven in part by importation of coffee reducing the need for kings, which is hilarious and utterly insane. I better get back to work.
Edit:
This whole line of thinking has a big question mark after it. I am speculating and philosophizing, not pronouncing dogma.
I also do not intend anything I wrote as a personal insult against anyone. I've never met Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, and regardless of the circumstances I do think the things they're doing (or did in the former case) are making the world a better place.
I'm just asking if we can find a better way to make the world a better place that is also more compassionate and pleasant at the immediate interpersonal level. You don't solve problems by denying unpleasant realities, so I'm exploring what I see as an unpleasant reality.
Don't get me wrong, I drive an EV. They're great. But let's not exaggerate what Tesla is.
I mean it's luxurious as eating wagyu beef is, there's a barrier to entry but not as artificial as in for example buying Gucci loafers, and if you really want the taste/experience you have to cough up the money.
Working class people buy used cars, below $15k at least.
This is the typical cycle for a new good. You could have said that the first cell phone, which cost a fortune, or the first smartphone, were each luxury goods for wealthy people to show off. Which was true, but now years later, all that money drove innovation to the point where nearly the entire world has one, interconnecting humanity to a much greater degree than before.
Also, you don't need to treat your employees with that level of disrespect if you want to "push humanity forward" with them.
> 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.