[ncouture]

What matters the most is the results. In my opinion a decision like the following is totally reasonable providing you are looking for people that owns your results to be in charge:

  during a factory visit over issues with the Model X's 
  window. When a worker on the assembly line proposed a 
  solution, Musk lit into the worker's manager.

  "This is totally unacceptable that you had a person working
   in your factory that knows the solution and you don't even
   know that," Musk reportedly said before firing the head of
   the factory.

I'm of the opinion that a manager's responsible to know issues raised by his subordinates.

[jjulius]

In my opinion, there's entirely too much context missing from this for us to say whether or not what is quoted there was totally reasonable.

Had the employee even brought that up to the manager before? Had they had the idea for a long time and didn't bring it up? If so, why not - does the manager foster a culture where collaboration isn't encouraged? If that's the case, does the manager not do that simply out of ineptitude, or because that's the same culture coming down from above him/her? Maybe the individual just had the idea that morning? That week? The very moment it came out of their mouth, even? Has the manager had a stellar tenure up to that point, or a rocky one? How severe was the issue pre-fix that it warranted this termination? I could go on and on.

Point being, two sentences saying, "An employee had an idea and Musk fired his boss because he didn't know about that idea," is typically not going to be enough for us to say, "Oh yeah, that was a good/bad call".

[dtech]

This kind of thing sounds smart, but in practice it's terrible to work with higher ups who randomly do this kind of micromanaging and attach immense consequences to it.

Story I heard from a friend was of a CEO who asked a janitor if he used their store and if not why. He replied that he needed size Y of a product to efficiently store in his cupboard, size X was too small and Z too large. For months he hounded the department and forced negative performance reviews on them because there was no good way to provide Y with their current supplier. They ultimately switched to a different inferior supplier because of it (the brand the janitor normally brought) and lost several good employees in the process. They got a lot of negative feedback from customers from the switch and their revenue on the product went down.

[res0nat0r]

This sounds completely insane, but totally on brand for Elon who needs to keep up his internet persona.

If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic.

(Note this is assuming it doesn't involve anything controversial, office politics etc, just a suggestion based on my observations that I think could help the company overall).

[toss1]

>>If I'm in a meeting with some higher-ups above my boss and I have some suggestion to a process I think may help the company out and relay my thoughts, my boss should be fired because I can think for myself? Completely idiotic.

Tho I've got very mixed assessment of Elon Musk, he's right in this case.

At the moment that you first think of the solution and mention it, your boss should not be fired.

However, this was not that situation.

But, from the above description alone, we know that there was a known problem, and that the employee had enough time to think about it and present it to Musk. One of two things happened. The manager had failed to put out a request like "we have problem X, please bring all ideas for solutions", and/or the employee had previously described the idea and been ignored up the chain of command.

Either of those are cause for a decision of "I now fail to see why we should allow you in our plant, nevermind paying you to be here.".

One of the most basic jobs as a manager is to identify problems, seek solutions and implement them. If the answer had been something like: "yes, he brought the solution to us yesterday, implementation will require P, D, and Q, and we expect to have it into production by next week", I'm sure Musk would have been fine with it.

[res0nat0r]

IMO I don't expect someone with this type of "philosophy" to be that deep of a thinker:

  "1. Email me back to explain why what I said was incorrect. Sometimes, I’m just plain wrong!
  2. Request further clarification if what I said was ambiguous.
  3. Execute the directions."
  Failure to perform one of the three actions would result in termination, Musk noted.

He's proven this over the years by getting sanctioned by the SEC for posting on Twitter over the weekend while high with his girlfriend and then being forced to step down as chairman, and also consistently shitposting on Twitter the last few years that would get any line level employee fired.

[toss1]

I saw that and thought it was a succinct, highly distilled extract showing the result of 'if I'd had more time I'd have written you a shorter letter'. While there's obviously a myriad variations on the theme and actions crossing those lines, the message and call to action is very clear — either identify and address the problems with the directive, or execute it. Punting, dithering, or ignoring it are not options.

That said, the twitter nonsense is getting a bit much. When he wanders into anything outside his zones of expertise, he's a disaster.

[inglor_cz]

Thinkers need different philosophies than executives. Getting an engineering project not to stall requires rules like these.

[datavirtue]

Batshit. Sounds like a withdrawal moment. Anyone who studies institutions, management, and factories knows that the overarching culture that flows from the top-down is what sets the expectations and communication norms. This is typical old school American hierarchically organized culture that made it certain that the employees on the floor knew the solution and that the managers had no idea. The problem starts and ends with Musk and his shitty company culture/communication. It is his job to create a culture where ops communicates with management and vise versa. Toyota has answer to this problem.

[cheeko1234]

This goes along with Nassim Taleb's idea of Skin in the Game:

To learn you need ‘contact with the ground’: Actually, you cannot separate anything from contact with the ground. And the contact with the real world is done via skin in the game-having an exposure to the real world, and paying a price for its consequences, good or bad.

[aaronbrethorst]

Results like these, you mean? https://electrek.co/2022/03/16/tesla-employee-fired-sharing-...

[cbozeman]

I actually do agree with this. The idea that only a certain set of individuals at a company could ever fathom a problem X with product Y and anyone else who shares a potential solution should be ignored is pretty short-sighted and ignorant.

I don't know if someone should be fired over that, but then again, a firing is a pretty potent warning to others not to commit the same offense.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

This a horrible way to run a company, particularly one with high engineering risks.

I'd suggest reading one of the books by Sidney Dekker. The last thing you want to institute is a culture of fear surrounding surfacing problems. Every other manager in that factory just got a loud and clear signal to lock down their staff and suppress awareness of any problem that might get them axe'd.

There are things that justify firing on the spot, but these are generally malicious, criminal, etc acts. Short of that no matter the fuckup treating firing as something done by whim of the CEO is very corrosive.