He was going to be announcing a 10% layoff at Tesla. So if he could preempt that by announcing a super dickhead unpopular idea like bringing everyone back into the office, he could probably get a good chunk of them to voluntarily quit beforehand. I think Tesla has a bit of a Netflix problem right now. They were the only game in town for a long time but now everyone else is making good EV’s and for sometimes less money. His inexplicable transformation into right wing online troll will only hurt teslas sales more when EV buyers have the choice to buy from someone who didn’t try to dickslap flight attendants. Or own a car that spontaneously combusts and locks people inside. End of the day, I think he was trying to get some folks to quit before the layoff.
That seems short sighted though. Your best employees will find other options but with a layoff you can somewhat select who to keep.
Yeah I dont buy the 3d Chess gambit. Tesla, which gives him his net worth is precarious and rocking the boat doesnt seem wise for it. He is notorious for the insane hours he'll personally put in and Silicon Valley has had a cultish work for the dream/cause mentality over traditional industries. I think this is shading some of it. Otherwise I think he's succumbing to the pressures of fame in a social media world. Spun out on social media drama. Probably be best if they took his phone and just let him work 90 hours a week and sleep on the factory floor.
Egomaniacal narcissists aren’t always known for good strategic thinking. Musk might be good at the tech stuff. But he’s not smart when it’s comes to understanding people.
He does. Do you think being on the spectrum could make him miss the obvious misstep of requiring your staff to return to the office full time?
I think it could cause him to make the hundreds of other smaller decisions leading up to becoming a right wing troll and then doing that, sure. Combine that with being surrounded by yes-men and calling everyone “haters” or “out to cancel you” or whatever, and you absolutely have someone making decisions like that and thinking they’re reasonable.
Yes, I think the decision lacks the human connection and understanding that people with autism can lack. I could see it being part of it.
I like how a boss making his employees return to the office to build cars is considered some horrible offense that can only be explained as his autism acting up.
Tesla has workers building cars at home? What’s with all the plants then? His Twitter hissy fit about it is autism. That and the lack of awareness on the subject when his IT workforce is liable to revolt and possibly cripple the one thing his company has over the competition.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31620765 Coinbase rescinded offers and is laying off a lot of people because of market conditions. A lot of software developers out there complaining about how base and evil coinbase is because they turned down <these other things> for their offer. A lot of them are calling for government intervention. Meanwhile, they have been given severance packages and job search assistance. I think being disappointed is pretty reasonable. At the same time, these are (often) the very people who push crypto hard, and have no second thoughts to people who earn far less than they do, have tighter job prospects, and don't get anything than a "too bad, so sad" when it happens. As for the whole remote work thing, I preferred it greatly when it was mostly office work. Because of it, the "boss tech" that is coming out for monitoring everything, including always-on wifi and PC Wake On Lan to turn on microphones, cameras, etc. is pretty rough. Microsoft just announced their AI driven union and complaint busting software for real-time employee monitoring.
Does he really? Where does he find the time to be constantly shitposting on Twitter, then? His entire life story is built on inheriting/buying then claiming he built what was already there. I wouldn't put it past him crafting his personal mythology.
I worked for a guy for a short period who hero worshipped Elon Musk and seemed to share many personal qualities with the man. This was a thing he'd do. He'd fuck around and waste time for days and then crunch time put in a bunch of fast work and late nights to meet a deadline ( and also expect others who continuously worked to do OT), and expect some sort of respect for that. Like dude. I just received a package of foozeball table guys that you bought while holed up in your office. You are fooling exactly zero of us, we just don't give you crap because you sign the checks.
Except that isn't what happened. Musk sent this edict out without any warning to managers. Telsa has been hiring software engineers and other types of remote-friendly positions during the pandemic, with plenty of them that either aren't near an office that meets Musk's demands, or they were hired under an expectation of flexible work locations. Tesla is going to lose a bunch of these people. Frankly, even if that weren't the case, any CEO deciding 100% of their employees must be in an office all day, every day has shit for brains. That ship has sailed. Good workers aren't tolerating that agreement anymore, and there's absolutely no reason for it. The announcement was stupidly worded and badly communicated anyway, and showed how clueless Musk is to both how his employees would feel about such a demand, and the realities of implementing it. Musk is a shit human being anyway, so this really shouldn't be that much of a surprise.
More that it just doesn't bring the same enjoyment. It's like watching a baseball game on a small TV versus enjoying a day at the old ball park.
Your personal feelings about remote work and Elon Musk aside, it sounds like that’s exactly what happened. I’m not endorsing his managerial style and I don’t exactly agree with the policy, but it’s not some major violation of labor rights that his devs no longer get to WFH. In fact, considering the layoff announcement, it was probably a deliberate attempt to get people to quit. My dad worked at IBM for 30 years and they used to pull that exact shit on their “telecommuters” all the time.