- cross-posted to:
- enoughmuskspam
- cross-posted to:
- enoughmuskspam
Summary
Tesla replaced many laid-off U.S. workers with foreign H-1B visa holders after a 2024 wave of layoffs affecting 15,000 employees.
These visas, tied to employer sponsorship, often lower compensation and give employers significant leverage over workers.
Critics argue this displaces U.S. employees, as senior engineers were replaced by lower-paid junior engineers.
CEO Elon Musk, while advocating for expanding H-1B visa caps, faces backlash, especially from conservatives, for “job-stealing” concerns.
Musk contends there’s a U.S. skill shortage, but critics highlight potential exploitation tied to Tesla’s demanding work culture and visa dependence.
I have been involved in 2 layoffs. The work did not disappear. The first time, I trained the imported / overseas staff who replaced us, and the 2nd time, I was retained to manage the contract. They did subpar work for pennies on the dollar. Everyone suffered, and nothing improved other than labor costs.
I seriously don’t understand why, after over 20 years of shoddy outsourcing, anyone would ever greenlight this shit?
I mean, even from a shareholder’s perspective, unless I want to sell my stocks within the next year or so, I should oppose these stunts. And since most stocks are owned by institutional investors, that are kind of interested in long term growth, this should be a no brainer.
Favoring short-term gains over long-term value is exactly why this happens. Labor is often one of the largest cost centers in business, so shaving 10% off could potentially save millions in the short-term. Who cares if those gains eventually get offset or even eclipsed by losses in efficiency or innovation? I can just dump the stock/short it and leave someone else holding the bag.
Insert “First Time?” JPEG here
It should be, but there are plenty of perverse incentives, mostly about next quarter’s profits, cashing out, seagull managers, loot and scoot executives, etc…
Even domestically, you’ll always find some dumbasses willing to sell their entire lives to make ends meet. I know after my layoff from an environmental monitoring company, all the work my region was doing got shifted to a single team down in Kentucky who was already doing 12hr days. They’re now doing 16-18hrs last I heard, 6 days a week because they’re covering 3 separate states with 4 people, for 2/3 of the hourly pay I was making.
This is a worker exploitation problem compounded by a short-term vs long-term thought process.
Did you see it coming when you trained them or did it catch you off guard?
We were given 6 months pay to do 2 weeks of work
Severance?
Nope, that was separate and based on seniority. 2 weeks for every year as a permanent employee. I had 13 years at the time.
Our labor costs for the department were 2.9 million. The outsourced contract was for 1.8 mill. The only highlight is that instead of rolling new stuff out on the backs of current staff, they had to negotiate the minutia every time. Eventually…costs evened out, but by that time, the CFO had bounced to his next gig.