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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

> It means that Tesla could let go over 3,000 employees in this round of layoffs.

> The CEO also confirmed that Tesla didn’t renew its contract with Home Depot to sell its energy products at their stores.

Tesla energy advisors were supposed to be at 800 Home Depots across the US earlier this year.

If they had 3.5 employees per store, and a team of 200 managing the entire effort, these layoffs could be attributed entirely to the lost Home Depot deal.

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If that was the case they definitely would have noted it. Musk said "In addition to this company-wide restructuring, we've decided not to renew". He then went on to say the majority will be given the opportunity to move to other Tesla retail locations.

It reads more like the cuts don't include the Home Depot related staff (who surely work hourly + comission anyway, these are cuts to salaries positions).

As a Tesla investor, I'm very curious what the conversion rate is of Home Depot/Big Box customers vs Tesla stores. My guess would be it's much higher in Tesla stores. No one likes being bothered at Home Depot by sales staff when they've just popped in for a part.

The powerwall is next to the AC/insulation guy that seems like he is there about 50% of the time. He hooks people with "free home efficiency audits". I've seen a tesla rep there with lower frequency, but I'm having a hard time understanding how many they actually sell, because frankly where I live the only use case is going to be people with large enough solar installations to go off grid, as the power company doesn't do any kind of time based rate tiering (the tiering is entirely usage based, and the power company includes how much solar you consume in the equation).

I’m from the home town of Home Depot and never seen the AC guy or Tesla guy. The only place I’ve seen what you describe is in Costco?

Where are these people positioned in Home Depot to make it effective? Costco’s one entrance and one exit make it ideal for this kind of badgering.

In my experience they have a table at the end of one of the aisles but then roam around bugging people.

> and the power company includes how much solar you consume in the equation

This is very striking to me. Does the power company get actual readings on your solar energy consumption, or is the tiering based on estimated solar usage?

I think they are metering the solar as well...

https://austinenergy.com/wcm/connect/9c2d0f25-b56e-410a-93ee...

iirc Austin is one of the few places in the US that has a full feed-in tariff, that is they buy back all your solar through a dedicated meter at feed-in prices (usually closer to wholesale vs. the retail prices you purchase at) and apply that as a credit.

There's few things that turn me off faster from a store than roving third-party salespeople soliciting like that.

Agreed. An unmanned sales booth would be totally fine, but being accosted by a sales representative when I go into Home Depot to pick up some supplies for a weekend project is extremely off-putting. To the point where I might go out of my way to avoid that company when I am in the market to buy.

Their salespeople were super-aggressive in every setting I've seen them. I remember my girlfriend got hounded by one of their sales people and we had to avoid that part of the store.

The worst is when they ask if you need help finding anything and you think they’re an employee and then they hit you with a sales pitch.

Dude I’m just trying to find the mold spray and get out.

Maybe this would go too far into the "uncanny valley", but why not have teleconferencing sales people? Eg have a terminal near the solar products where you can hit a button and immediately be connected to a remote sales rep. This way you can cut down the sales reps to, say 0.2 per store. And you never talk to one unless you want to either.

I have trouble imagining that people would use such a service.

I think the point of intrusive, unsolicited salesmanship is to convince people to look into products that they would otherwise ignore. People go to home depot to buy hardware, not to meet with salespeople.

I'm not sure if this already took place, but didn't Musk say they were going to layoff loads of inefficient contractors a month or two back? Could that be the "restructuring" that is being referred to?

If the layoffs were related to the Home Depot contract, they would’ve been described in that context. “Because Tesla is not renewing its contract with Home Depot, as many as 3,000 employees are being laid off.” Since it wasn’t phrased that way, it’s safe to assume they’re more general layoffs.

I don't see why you'd need more than 2 full-time equivalent Tesla salesperson per Home Depot store.

Also, those employees weren't hired yet, the "advisors" were a planned/prototype project.

I wasn't even aware they HAD a contract.

My local Home Depot has zero mention of any product Tesla makes.

Mine (not even in a very large city) has a Powerwall display right inside the front door.

The contract was for 800 Home Depot locations out of ~2,000 total locations. Our location has People watching the entrance of the store as well as combing the aisles to pitch customers.

Valuable products don't need a hard sell.

> combing the aisles to pitch customers

That's really obnoxious. What an awesome way to drive me to other retailers.

>Valuable products don't need a hard sell

Is your claim that Tesla products are doing such good business at Home Depot that they no longer need salespeople?

Is anything ever bad news for this company? They are bleeding red ink, haven't ever made production goals, claim to be growing exponentially, and yet are laying off employees because business is so good?

I'm with the poster down thread: the Fandom is hard to comprehend.

I think that you misread your parent, who was, to my reading, saying that the fact that powerwalls apparently needed a hard sell was proof that they were not good products.

But, but . . . Elon Musk! Sports Cars and Electricity and Space and stuff! What's there not to like?!!

Valuable products may need people to convince others that they're valuable. That is, in effect, the sell.

Mine has a powerwall disaply. I remembering seeing it and thinking "I bet this is not effective". Guess I was right!

I was approached by a Tesla contractor in Home Depot on a few days ago. It was honestly not a good experience.

For one, I was approached cold. I too had no idea that they had this agreement, so I was looking at something when someone came up and asked me something like "what type of project are you working on?" So I naturally just described what I was doing and before realizing this was not a HD employee.

He asks me if I thought about solar and whatever, but it wasn't relevant to my situation (roof slope orients E/W at the 45th latitude, so not great for solar). He goes on his way.

It was just a weird experience. I wasn't in a department related to electricity or solar, and they had no displays indicating a partnership with Tesla or that you may be cold-approached by a Tesla employee.

I still can't believe retail establishments think it's a good idea to degrade the customer experience by letting third-party salespeople rove their stores. I know Home Depot et al are making money from it, but I can't imagine there are many customers coming away with positive feelings from these come-ons.

Even first-party roving salespeople can be a big turn-off.

I've found that my local Walmart is often cheaper than Amazon, but I've been shopping at Amazon more frequently ever since I was repeatedly ambushed by people trying to get me to sign up for a Walmart Mastercard while I was wandering around the store shopping.

Is this a regional thing? I've never seen any 3rd-party sales staff in a Home Depot here in Chicago, or anything like this in any other big box store I frequent.

Perhaps it's a sun thing?

I’ve seen it here in Ohio. Sams Club and also Menards. Usually some guy at a aisle or back of the store trying to sell satellite tv. It is annoying...

Just shopping for whatever you needed and some random guy asks what you have for television.

Also seen a woman trying to sell perfume and wanted to spray some on people at another store, kinda pushy near where the cash registers are. Aren’t some people allergic to that stuff? I think it would be better to have samples next to the actual perfume for when someone is actually shopping for that.

>Just shopping for whatever you needed and some random guy asks what you have for television.

I've had that in Costco, trying to sell me cable TV service. Then they act completely flabbergasted when I say I don't watch TV and don't care about cable.

Haha, I had the same response from a door-to-door cable pusher.

Costco has been doing this with Direct TV recently. Its a very bad experience imo.

You walk in the door and sometimes there's someone saying: "I can save you money on your TV service"

Comcast does this in Walmart. The people Comcast hires are ultra-aggressive, obnoxious, crude individuals that actually follow you while shopping asking what you spend on service, what service you have, etc.

I flat out no longer shop in my local Walmart for this reason alone. Otherwise, I don't mind Walmart.

It seems to be a largely Home Depot thing, they seem to regularly have someone trying to sell me satellite television service in the stores here in Indy while Lowes has never had any such thing that I've seen.

Huh, my Dad was complaining about random salespeople at Home Depot to explain his driving out to OSH. I had assumed another customer just pissed him off.

Yeah, I had this experience a couple of years ago with someone trying to sell kitchen cabinet re-facing.

I had a similar experience, although in my case the Tesla guy could at least tell me where the screws I was looking for were.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment

I'd bet Musk saying it was Tesla's decision not to renew the deal is a classic PR corporate power myth.

I can guarantee that they didn't have 3.5 per store and an extra 200.

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