Any term for being awful at your job (either in skill or motivation) is going to be insulting. What would you suggest to avoid being dehumanizing?

You can always stack rank your employees and select some people at the bottom, regardless of how amazingly awesome your entire talent pool may be. Those at the bottom are not made awful at their job due to your having ranked them there. No need to label and insult them on their way out when you have to tighten your company's belt.

You will always have a worst employee, but that's not what "dead weight" means. To be dead weight at a company with good talent, you have to be multiple categories below almost everyone.

>No need to label and insult them on their way out

You never need to say when someone didn't do their job, but it's not a terrible thing to do so either. Don't go out of your way to be insulting, but if the basic facts of the situation are insulting, then so be it.

>when you have to tighten your company's belt.

They stated very clearly that it was not about belt-tightening at all. Do you think they're lying?

Only disagreeing that that "dead weight" even needed to be brought up.

> Do you think they're lying?

No, no, I implicitly trust all communications from corporate authority figures, of course.

> Only disagreeing that that "dead weight" even needed to be brought up.

I think it's relevant in a discussion of why a firing occurred. (And that overall discussion has a lot of upvote weight.)

> No, no, I implicitly trust all communications from corporate authority figures, of course.

That's a total deflection. Lack of trust does not let you figure out if any particular statement is true or not. Even dumber than blind trust is to assume everything a corporation ever says is a lie.

So is it your evaluation of the situation that this particular statement is a lie?

Lack of trust should mean the burden of proof is on the untrusted. Waiting to fire (not lay off) bad employees en mass at least smells funny, you have people who weren't fired saying it hurt morale, and possible ulterior motives. But no, no hard evidence, only justified lack of trust.

I never said that statement was a lie (your word not mine); I have no reason to take their claims at face value either.

So by all means, let's continue talking about how much those loser dead weights who got fired must have sucked.

You seem actively hostile to the idea of there being bad employees, and I'm not sure why. Such an idea is completely independent of whether corporations are involved at all.

But corporations are usually very reticent to say negative things about people, so for them to specifically call these people out as bad employees at least makes it plausibly true.

> You seem actively hostile to the idea of there being bad employees, and I'm not sure why.

Why do you say that? Of course there are (were?) bad employees. If they did indeed fire the worst performers, some of them were quite likely bad employees.

> But corporations are usually very reticent to say negative things about people, so for them to specifically call these people out as bad employees at least makes it plausibly true.

Also plausible that it's misdirection or that they're assholes. =)

> I'm not classifying them as dead weight, Tesla is

Then use quotes, that's what they are for. Otherwise you are implying you agree with Tesla corporate vocabulary.

Let's not be hypocrites, at the end of the day it won't change people's fate, however they are still owed a minimum of respect as human beings, they are not mere cogs in the capitalist engine, no matter what Tesla's management thinks.

They ARE deadweight as far as the employer is concerned. Nothing disrespectful to them. They may be very good in some aspects and decent human being, but they are at a wrong place.

Parting company should benefit both side. Layoff often come with severance package to give those who were let go time to find another job, at least I hope that's what Tesla does.

> They ARE deadweight as far as the employer is concerned

no that's just how the employer qualify these people, it doesn't mean these people are responsible for Tesla's shitty management or them missing their financial objectives. They are scapegoats Tesla uses to save face in front of their investors.

I wouldn't qualify them as that, and neither did Tesla. Not everyone is the right fit for the job they are currently working. People can struggle with a job for any number of reasons.

Companies will very rarely propose a pay-cut, but more likely they would just rather find someone else. Because they have specific jobs that needs doing and can't afford to have something done poorly.

Even if hiring was perfect there would still be rational reasons to fire sometimes. And hiring is far from perfect.

I agree they are scapegoats for bad management. They should start firing the CEO. He over promises and then grossly under delivers. Making people work in bad conditions will turn good people into bad employees/DEAD weight. They were DEAD weight because people need rest and time away from work to maintain optimal performance.

You seem so sure of your conclusions without any evidence (if you do have evidence then please provide it). I firmly believe in workers rights. I also firmly believe in evidence. California has some of the most employee friendly employment laws in the US. Germany some of the most in the EU. As long as these employees have reasonable severance and Tesla followed the law I don't see much room to complain. If however they were treated badly or illegally then I'm reasonably certain that a lawyer will help them on a contingency basis.

I'm not so sure of anything. That's the way it looks to me from reading the article. The way it looks to me from reading the article is that these employees were labeled as underperforming simply so the company could avoid triggering any sort of legal scrutiny. I could be totally wrong. It's likely that I'm not considering people walked in without any PEP or any notice and were let go even according to another poster on HN.