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Tesla to fire 9% (almost one in ten) of its workforce:
El Reg has a compelling between-the-lines reading
Tesla is cutting nine per cent of its workforce in a "comprehensive organizational restructuring", according to an internal email sent by its CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday.
While that email was sent only to employees, Musk then tweeted the full text immediately afterwards and it is clear that the missive was designed to be read by external critics and worried investors.
[...] It goes on: "As part of his effort, and the need to reduce costs and become profitable, we have made the difficult decision to let go of approximately 9 per cent of our colleagues across the company."
The email then shifted in tone and notes that the cuts will not impact the company's delayed production schedule for its latest car model: "These cuts were almost entirely made from our salaried population and no production associates were included, so this will not affect our ability to reach Model 3 production targets in the coming months."
[...] Musk addresses that very real issue of running out of money and finding it hard to find people to put in more cash in the last paragraph of his email. But, of course, he can't stop himself from doing so in typical arrogant fashion, even employing the royal "we" in his apparent recognition of reality.
"Given that Tesla has never made an annual profit in the almost 15 year since we have existed, profit is obviously not what motivates us. What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable. That is a valid and fair criticism of Tesla's history to date."
The news is the first sign that Musk has had little choice but to respond to his investors' concerns, no doubt because he realizes he will need to go to them again soon for more cash.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Friday June 15 2018, @05:45AM (25 children)
Congratulations on almost getting the archaic definition of "decimate" right. But one in 9 is not one in 10.
Also, modern usage (and the English language is defined by usage) of decimate requires a much larger fraction.
http://vocabulary-vocabulary.com/dictionary/decimate.php [vocabulary-vocabulary.com]
(Score: 5, Touché) by takyon on Friday June 15 2018, @05:51AM (4 children)
Psst. 9% is closer to one in 11.
- Fellow Pedant
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @07:14AM
His smile looked nothing so much as that of an angel's. The man, Nortonson, was profoundly kind and was respected all throughout his community. But, sometimes, this excessively kind man would get just a teensy bit too rough; when that happened, things began to break. Today was such a day. Broken objects surrounded Nortonson, and all of them had a similar shape.
"I want my m-"
The thing's sentence was cut off by a snapping sound; it never uttered a word ever again. "Oopsie daisy! There goes another one!" the man said in a carefree tone. Silly old Nortonson had applied too much force once again. He looked around for the next object, but discovered that they were all gone. Disappointed, the man left the building to retrieve more. Nortonson had left so many things behind. So many children.
The naked, broken children the man left behind would all rot away in the coming months. It was a natural and beautiful process that could bring a smile to anyone's face.
(Score: 4, Informative) by kazzie on Friday June 15 2018, @08:50AM (2 children)
And El Reg correctly said "Tesla undecimates its workforce" in its title (c.f. undecagon [mathopenref.com])
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 15 2018, @11:18AM (1 child)
Any fans of the Adam Sandler movie "Bedtime Stories" should instantly recognize the term: under-demeciated.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:56PM
i guess its better than over-medicated?
(Score: 4, Informative) by krishnoid on Friday June 15 2018, @05:53AM (14 children)
And neither of those is 1 in 11. So they're literally, uh, undecimating the workforce?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @06:15AM
Under-decimating. See? Maths. This is why we cannot have the white supremacy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Friday June 15 2018, @06:42AM (9 children)
Amazing how I'm the only guy who looks at the articles. Nobody even read the headline, the headline says exactly that. It says "undecimates." Fancy way to say they fired a bunch of folks. It's not great. And it's no surprise. They're trying to do business in High Tax, High Crime California. So difficult. But Elon is no dummy, he's a very smart cookie. Very big guy in PayPal, he did that one with my buddy Peter Thiel. And with our intelligence community -- so many smart folks.
Another thing, I'm no fan of George Soros, as everyone knows. Not a lot we agree on. But he's another smart cookie. He's Jewish, right? And at age 14 he was living in Hungary. While the Nazis were in charge. Very tough situation. But he pulled through. So many of our Jews didn't make it, he did very well for himself. As @therealroseanne [twitter.com] reminded us (very sad what happened to her). He's very very rich. And he believes in Tesla, he bought $35 million in Tesla bonds.
And I'm not a big fan of the electric car. Because, what if you're in Puerto Rico? What happened to their energy grid is DISGUSTING. They put in solar, they're having big problems. But if I did electric I'd do Tesla. Because it's the Trump of electric, it's the most luxurious.
So many of these things, you have to look at the filings. At the insider trades. And honestly, I haven't looked. But when Elon does his filings and you look at those, I have a feeling he's putting more money into Tesla. And he says, "oh, we're not making money, don't expect us to make money yet, in fact we're losing A LOT of money right now." Doesn't sound great, it's 100% true. The stock goes down like a hooker that's fully booked up. But you notice, he's not quitting. He could say, "oh, we're failing very badly, I quit," he's not saying that. Meanwhile, possibly he's buying the Tesla stock. Or the bonds. And later on, he's going to pull off something AMAZING. He's buddies with Peter, he's buddies with George, he's buddies with our intelligence community. Who would love love love to know where all the cars are. And he's doing the automatic cars, the self driving cars, that give you that. Lots of folks shorting Tesla. Be careful with that, you may be VERY SORRY. Like the folks that backed Crooked Hillary!!!!
(Score: 5, Informative) by aim on Friday June 15 2018, @08:28AM (2 children)
I guess latin is fancy - undecim is latin for 11. Decimate -> kill one in 10. Undecimate thus meaning "kill one in 11"... pretty much what's happening here, except it's jobs being killed rather than people.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @09:35AM
We don't know that for sure. Elon has these new flamethrowers ...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday June 15 2018, @01:15PM
Pedant opportunity! More appropriate to use the matching numeric system when talking about Latin:
Undecim is Latin for XI.
ftfy
Now write that out 100 times. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 15 2018, @11:26AM (4 children)
After the news of Elon Musk's brutal slashing of the deadwood in his white collar workforce, TSLA continues to climb from 333 before the news through 357 yesterday, and we're expecting it to outperform the broader market by at least another point today.
Seriously folks, the stock has outpaced the market by ~8% in the last 3 days - investors treat employees as worthless expenses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 15 2018, @12:19PM (3 children)
And isn't it to be expected? I mean, look...
Musk is firing them boosters at SpaceX again and again (and the valuation of the company goes through the roof. No, SpaceX is not publicly traded)
On the other side, how many times you think Musk can fire a Tesla employee?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 15 2018, @12:53PM (2 children)
Funny, but, it's not just TSLA. Some advice if you work for a smaller, but publicly traded company that goes through a massive RIF including yourself: hang on to your company stock until news of the RIF goes public. When I worked at a place with 10 employees, they slashed 9 (just kept the accountant), and when news of that came out to the market the stock price doubled, and stayed up for two quarters running, even with me and the other employees selling it off.
Of course: use At Your Own Risk, YMMV, I am NOT a certified financial anything, your company may not break the news to the market in the same way that mine did, and the market is never guaranteed to react in any particular way to any particular news. This is just a pattern I have observed repeated many times over the past three decades. FWIW, that same company announced 3 510(k) permission to market approvals over the space of 12 years, the first two caused the stock to jump 4x on announcement, the third had no effect - apparently the market had already assumed the 510(k) was going to be approved, explaining the 10x run up in price over the previous year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday June 20 2018, @06:30PM (1 child)
I'm sorry ... a ten-person public company?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 20 2018, @08:12PM
Reverse shell mergers, so hot in 1990.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 15 2018, @05:41PM
Amazing how I'm the only guy who looks at the articles. Nobody even read the headline...
-1: Inaccurate
We all know Donald Trump doesn't read.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @08:06AM (2 children)
9 % is not 1 in 11 either.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @09:06AM
As opposed to all the numbers above, you are irrationally pedantic.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 15 2018, @02:22PM
Stop pretending to be mathematically smart when clearly you have no grasp of the - for me taught in primary school - concept of significant digits.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @01:10PM (2 children)
Is there some autistic word-of-the-month calendar you guys all have that I'm unaware of? You're like the third person on the internet this week I've seen make this exact same pedantic correction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @01:56PM (1 child)
Good to see you're hanging out on websites that are improving your vocabulary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @06:03PM
Here's another one for you: ostentatious.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 15 2018, @04:42PM (1 child)
I was kinda happy that the author seemed to have some sense of the meaning of decimation. We've all seen the term applied to losses of 1 to 5%, then grossly misapplied to losses exceeding 50%. Deci - one in ten. Not one in three, not one in a thousand, but one in ten. One in nine is close enough, maybe we shouldn't quibble.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Friday June 15 2018, @07:21PM
It's one of those words I used as a kid to indicate "wicked damage", or that I 100% destroyed some other kid at something. It was in history class that they clued me in to the deci- part of it, and then the math :)
History teacher heard me say it in class, and then gave a bad ass explanation of it. He said imagine you had just killed a Roman soldier for grabbing your wife's tits. The reason the Romans were so feared, and they could manage occupied towns and villages, were the roads. Roman soldiers could be in your village within 10 days, and all it took was a runner to get started towards Rome for the clock to start. Romans could march, and when they got to your town they lined everybody up, and killed every 10th person. Whatever Roman was in charge there locally held power in this way.
Decimate. A little more intense than just simply winning :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.