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Comment by preinheimer | Hacker News Reader

One more note here, Tesla has also announced they want to drop 10% of staff. Normally this sort of thing involves severance packages, notifying agencies about upcoming reductions, actually making decisions, etc.

One view here is that if Musk can convince 10% of their staff to quit with this announcement he'll save lots of money (by not paying severance packages and other stuff)!

He's got lots of money, you don't need to save it for him.

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Paying severance to staff you decide you don't want is much cheaper overall than losing staff randomly, which will include your higher performers.

It's not a plausible explanation for Musk's actions. I would be inclined to take his word at face value, that he genuinely believes that remote work is less productive than face to face work at Tesla.

Yeah, I think everyone is assuming that the email and layoffs are causally related. That doesn't seem plausible. If he really wanted to use the work-from-the-office mandate to raise attrition, he would do that months PRIOR to announcing layoffs - not at the same time.

I wouldn't be surprised if people who said they prefer not to come back to the office, will just be given the same severance package. OP should ask HR about it.

They probably are causally related, just not to each other.

High operating cost/productivity = layoffs + back to office.

No matter what’s your opinion on Musk, he’s very erratic and makes lots of decision on the spot, without or against data. It brought him huge wins (turns out people want cool electric cars) and huge headaches (FSD, factory automation, Twitter acquisition).

His engineering teams often learn about projects from his tweets. I’m pretty sure so does HR.

Musk doesn't feel this is random. The remote employees that don't want to come into work in the office are by definition not the higher performers to him.

The reality though is whether or not you announce it in advance, once you start laying folks off you will start to lose high performers who have the ability to get a jew job.

It's usually not worth claiming it, but it seems like there is an argument for constructive dismissal here.

Why is it usually not worth claiming it? The payout is small if one succeeds in arguing it?

what would be the point?

Isn't constructive dismissal just a way to get unemployment, and you would get unemployment anyways with a layoff or involuntary termination?

That is the point: if an employee quits, they're not entitled to unemployment.

However, if they were "constructively dismissed" that is treated as a layoff/involuntary termination and the employee can get unemployment.

Note that the OP mentioned that their remote work agreement was voided. They weren't constructively dismissed, it sounds like they were actually terminated. (A company can't simply decide to unilaterally void part of an employment agreement without voiding the entire agreement. That's not how contracts work. )

My point is that I don't see how constructive dismissal would ever come up in this scenario.

Either they will either quit voluntarily (stupid) or they will be terminated.

They haven't been terminated because they are still working until August at least. It sounds like they were given until Friday to sign a revised employment contract without remote work or the company will take action.

Constructive dismissal usually comes up for hourly workers that stop being scheduled but aren't fired. For a salary employee it is usually cut and dry, either the employer is sending you a check or they aren't.

Not only has the employee been constructively terminated, but I would argue that they have been actually terminated if they were told that their remote work agreement was voided and they need to sign a new one.

It's not a 10% drop in staff. It's a 10% drop in salaried employees. So the numbers aren't as big as most are reporting.

That's true, though the original poster here is a salaried employee, so the pressure level is unchanged for them.

Don't know if it makes a difference but did they announce it? I thought it was a leaked e-mail to executives?

> He's got lots of money, you don't need to save it for him.

I want to nitpick you on this as I know you probably don't mean it but others might be confused by it. There is no way in which Elon Musk personally gets money from this. Elon doesn't have money other than the stock shares he sold. Most of his net value is still in the value of Tesla itself. His announcement of layoffs caused him to lose money.

Additionally if Tesla needed money, there would be no way to provide it as he doesn't have any money to provide it with.

In their employment capacity Elon Musk and other people who work for Tesla have an incredibly large budget. They can use that budget to downsize in a way that complies with the law.

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