I’m in manufacturing right now, and all I can say is just … nobody at the low level cares. You can make all the automation you can think of, but at the end of the day it always depends on the people and trust.
For background, there are high odds any given assembly tech either has or will do a stint through Amazon warehouse. Amazon pays $15+/hr but brutal conditions. But that seems to set some bar and after burning out, those techs feel underpaid and so just don’t care that much.
So should their manager care? Well he might have the same meh attitude, and production is “moving along” so no one is bothering him. A step above him, floor manager, his performance review is tied to keeping production chugging along. Why would you threaten that with stopping / adding more inspections?
Even higher up the totem pole, say a mba vp, sees a 2 year backlog of customers hungry for the product. And you know what? I don’t see any online posts with a steering wheel that falls off forcing tesla to return/refund them for the car. They just get a warranty service. So why would that VP care? Still bringing in the bank.
You nailed it on the head! I think burn out is so persistent throughout all levels of American society. You just feel it everywhere. Almost nobody gives a fuck about their jobs anymore. The incentives encourage people to do just enough to not get fired and that’s about it. There’s no loyalty in either direction anymore and the only reward for doing a good job is even more work.
is it really strange people become disenfranchised with their jobs when most american companies simply seem to only look at the bottom line, try to squeeze out every inch out of every person as much as possible without thinking long term.
MBA culture also does not help build trust amongst those who do the actual work.
When you are not appreciated because appreciation cannot be cast into a cost-benefit excel sheet and thus does not seem to have value, why should you care about your job?
The same kind of thinking resulted in people losing a lot of agency in their jobs aswell, which results in people not having anything to be proud of, because every single step of their job has been turned into a finely tuned series of steps which require litte to no critical or creative thinking.
But then i guess we can blame the industrial revolution for that aswell[0]
Yup. It gets worse as that works its way up the chain:
> production is “moving along” so no one is bothering him.
"My ass is covered." I know people who DO NOT CARE how a job is done as long as it gets done. And it is really bad when that person is promoted into management as anything which makes production happen including overlooking quality and employee/training issues is acceptable to them. Even if lives are on the line. They think its a little nothing of a problem which will never bite them in the ass. And many get away with it all the time. The employees aren't stupid and will game this.
> So why would that VP care? Still bringing in the bank.
Ah, someone here really doesn't like me posting that link.
So here are some quotes from the article :)
"It now places 27th out of 28 manufacturers (the same as last year), with vehicles like the Model Y being present on CR’s list of 10 least reliable cars. The smaller Tesla crossover has a reliability rating of just 18, which makes it slightly more reliable than a Volkswagen Tigua, but slightly less reliable than Chrysler Pacifica. CR wasn’t any kinder on the Model X, pointing to its falcon wing doors as a constant source of problems.
For reference, in a J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Survey published earlier this year, Tesla was ranked 30th out of the 33 included brands."
I toured the Ford plant in Detroit last year. I remember seeing a torque wrench, which knew which vehicle it was working on, and recorded the full torque curve of the bolts it was fastening. Seems like this type of system would have prevented this Model Y problem.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 60.3 ms ] thread[1]: https://twitter.com/preneh24/status/1622802091503677443
For background, there are high odds any given assembly tech either has or will do a stint through Amazon warehouse. Amazon pays $15+/hr but brutal conditions. But that seems to set some bar and after burning out, those techs feel underpaid and so just don’t care that much.
So should their manager care? Well he might have the same meh attitude, and production is “moving along” so no one is bothering him. A step above him, floor manager, his performance review is tied to keeping production chugging along. Why would you threaten that with stopping / adding more inspections?
Even higher up the totem pole, say a mba vp, sees a 2 year backlog of customers hungry for the product. And you know what? I don’t see any online posts with a steering wheel that falls off forcing tesla to return/refund them for the car. They just get a warranty service. So why would that VP care? Still bringing in the bank.
Everyone is becoming Peter from Office Space.
MBA culture also does not help build trust amongst those who do the actual work. When you are not appreciated because appreciation cannot be cast into a cost-benefit excel sheet and thus does not seem to have value, why should you care about your job?
The same kind of thinking resulted in people losing a lot of agency in their jobs aswell, which results in people not having anything to be proud of, because every single step of their job has been turned into a finely tuned series of steps which require litte to no critical or creative thinking.
But then i guess we can blame the industrial revolution for that aswell[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
Yup. It gets worse as that works its way up the chain:
> production is “moving along” so no one is bothering him.
"My ass is covered." I know people who DO NOT CARE how a job is done as long as it gets done. And it is really bad when that person is promoted into management as anything which makes production happen including overlooking quality and employee/training issues is acceptable to them. Even if lives are on the line. They think its a little nothing of a problem which will never bite them in the ass. And many get away with it all the time. The employees aren't stupid and will game this.
> So why would that VP care? Still bringing in the bank.
$$$.
This should not come as a surprise to you guys.
https://insideevs.com/news/549130/consumerreports-tesla-reli...
So here are some quotes from the article :)
"It now places 27th out of 28 manufacturers (the same as last year), with vehicles like the Model Y being present on CR’s list of 10 least reliable cars. The smaller Tesla crossover has a reliability rating of just 18, which makes it slightly more reliable than a Volkswagen Tigua, but slightly less reliable than Chrysler Pacifica. CR wasn’t any kinder on the Model X, pointing to its falcon wing doors as a constant source of problems.
For reference, in a J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Survey published earlier this year, Tesla was ranked 30th out of the 33 included brands."
What do you say guys?