> I suspect it's not entirely a mistake.

Like Tesla calling their driving assistance “auto-pilot”.

You mean full self driving?

“ All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future...”

https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

You’re right Tesla is guilty of marketing features that don’t exist today but will “in the future”.

But hey they disclose the truth in the fine print (Autopilot is not autonomous), so nothing to see and god forbid we accurately call it what it is “driver assist“ instead of autopilot or even the as of yet non-existent “full self driving”:

“Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

Hm, then Musk, who is notoriously not careful with his words, should have clarified long before it reached this point.

I certainly wouldn't call Musk a careful communicator, but it sounds like the notice these workers received was the clarification. The headline may be a bit misleading: the article says these weren't unconditional pink slips, and HR gave the workers the option of setting a date to return to work.

Yes, upon more careful reading, especially this part, I see what might be the issue:

>The workers... said they both received the notices last week from Tesla's human resources department citing their apparent failure to show up and the company's inability to reach them. The workers provided evidence of their continuing correspondence with managers.

Communicating directly with managers is not the same as communicating with HR; it seems like HR opened up a big list of people who hadn't clocked in in x days and sent them all termination-unless-you-say-otherwise notices.

The question I don't see answered in this article: Did HR communicate an end to the unpaid leave arrangement? I won't contend that that should have been clear from the start, since the situation changes by the day; but at least a little bit of "We're starting to wind down the unpaid leave program based on guidance from county authorities about the safety of ... etc, please arrange to resume your work by $Date,"