Ex-Tesla employee reveals shocking details on worker conditions: 'You get fired on the spot.'::Tesla CEO Elon Musk's ‘ultra hardcore’ work culture is revealed to have led to long hours, unsafe conditions, and harassment for employees.
As a western European, to me the problem isn’t that they’re fired on the spot, but that a company can actually do that. You guys should’ve fought for your rights.
Not to mention protesting likely means becoming homeless. It means losing insurance, it means losing you car insurance and likely paying a hefty premium when you can get it again. It means losing access to food, Healthcare. It means risking being barred from future employment.
So let's vote? Well turns out your district is shaped like a contorted snake, and unless you convince 60% of people who will vote for any loony who hates the same people they do, to help their neighbor for once, well you're SOL.
Welcome to 'at-will employment' America, where you can fire anyone for any reason as long as they can't prove it was because you are one of the protected classes under the Civil Rights Act (does not include LGBT+ people). They can literally fire you because they don't like your ears.
Population density, it's easy to protest when the capital is just 30 minutes away by bike like it is in a lot of Western European countries.
Conversely, I'm an American, it will take days for me to reach the nearest major city by car... it will take me around 2.5 hours to reach the newest minor City.
I live in North Carolina by the way.
You could drive through three countries in Western europe, by the time I could get to my nation's capital. My nation's capital is in virginia, that is the state north of me.
Much of our population lives in California, Texas, and New York, all much much further away from Washington DC then where I live.
Combine that with the fact that a lot of us can't take any days off of work without falling way behind on our bills, and even if the capital was somewhere where we could all get to it to hold picket signs... there is simply too much to lose, the workers of the world can't Unite when there is more on the table than our chains. I hate it here
I get your point that the US is big, but it shouldn't take days to get to a major city from anywhere in NC. It's what, a 9 hour drive to Washington from the furthest end of NC?
Ok I'm not even from the states, but you should be able to get to Washington DC in less than a day from North Carolina. Hell, anywhere on the east coast is within 5 hours from a huge metropolitan centre
Fellow Tarheel here, and bud if it takes you "days" to drive to the nearest major city, you should have your car looked at. I drove from San Diego to Raleigh in 60 hours once.
It’s obviously not forbidden to fire people. You just can’t do it like that, because you woke up grumpy that particular morning. Employees are highly protected in France, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fired.
Indeed. That still happens. Just you have to have a valid reason to fire them. Not liking someone is a petty reason to fire someone. Not doing their job is another thing altogether.
I've never spoken with a Tesla employee, current or former, who hasn't corroborated this information about working conditions. Doesn't matter if you are a line worker in the factory or an engineer in the design offices, you are expected to put work above all else, keep your nose down and your mouth shut.
I'll never buy a Tesla because of the shit that I've heard about how they treat their employees there, let alone that dipshit Musk spouting off about full self driving and never following through.
Yep, he got Tesla where it was quickly by squeezing everything he could out of the talent that was hired by the original founders. They got a relatively decent car out of it initially (compared to the competition, which was basically just the Nissan Leaf), but now they're probably struggling to retain/find talent to continue running the company and designing new cars.
He also hired people to fudge the fucking numbers. At one point he had more venture capital in pure slush money than the entire US automobile market had in their banks.
There was never any reason for that other than defrauding investors.
I will never buy one, never even thought about it. Two things though, the 1st generation roadster was not anything like a leaf. 2nd, nearly $500,000,000 of the early funding was from the federal government and around $3,200,000,000 from California. Now the new federal bet on Tesla charging stations is around $7,500,000,000. It may have all been worth it to help the car industry need to compete wiith other electric vehicles, but the government could have easily picked a better choice for all that scratch.
Ditto. I've seen lots of rumors that the software stack is an utter mess as a result. Musk's Uber librarian attitude means he only ever gets junior devs.
The pay has been below market for a while now. He's tried selling "on the mission" which is totally spoiled now.
I expect other manufacturers are going to catch up quick.
spouting off about full self driving and never following through.
That was Musk too laying on the whip demanding progress and a breakthrough with the team running head first into fundamental technical limitations. It was made worse with him putting on even more restrictions with vision only.
I don't understand why anyone idolizes this bastard. There are too many bootlickers out there, which is why nothing ever changes and assholes like him can continue to exploit people.
Tesla is also known for its shit build quality. So why not buy an EV from practically anyone else?
Actual car companies are the same as tesla, even worst. Tesla is so popular because old car companies bribed politicians to avoid transition out of fuel, and cheated (diesel gate was the norm, not an exception).
Unfortunately tesla is still better than other companies. And this says all about how corrupted is automotive industry
The same issues persist to this day, but if you said something bad about Tesla 3 or 4 years ago, you'd get all these left-wing environmentalists screaming down your neck because they sooooooo wanted EVs to succeed that they completely fell for that clown Elon's bullshit. Lo and behold that he was totally just playing liberals like a fiddle and he actually is a right wing psychopath.
Firing for relatively small mistakes just means people will cover up mistakes in the future leading to them causing serious accidents. People who make mistakes learn from them and not only rarely make that mistake again, but help others learn from that mistake.
I'll happily admit when something is my fault. And I'll document and implement changes that help prevent it from happening not just to the teams I lead but as much of the company as I can influence.
If you told Musk, that he is causing net loss for the company this way, he would answer " so then the workers need to work harder". He can't be at fault.
Non-fun fact: If you punish kids unfairly enough, they'll stop giving a shit about lying because they get punished whether they lie or tell the truth anyway. Fucked up personal experience.
But they do still hide stuff. And lose all respect for punishment.
There is a story about a Japanese airline pilot who had to ditch a plane near I want to say San Francisco. No major injuries, no fatalities. When questioned during the inquiry, he said something to the effect of "I believe you Americans have a saying 'I fucked up'", and completely took responsibility. Instead of firing him, in recognition of his honesty, the airline demoted him back to the beginning of the pilot rankings and had him work his way back up. Within a decade he was back in his former position. The lesson is, own your mistakes!
Tesla preys on young and naive employees looking to get their foot in the door.
For instance back on Reddit in many of the engineering subs, there were countless new threads started by fresh engineering graduates who were hell bent on getting a job at Tesla. Many of us would warn them to stay as far away as possible from them (as well as SpaceX) but they wouldn't listen no matter what we told them.
Most of these people weren't dumb. Naive, sure, but not dumb. Some of them had a plan where they would bust their asses working at Tesla for a year or two and then that would be a great addition to their resume. Would it work for them? Not sure, but I do know that HR departments do think highly of seeing Tesla or SpaceX on one's resume, so maybe that plan wasn't quite so bad. I sure as fuck have no interest in working there, but then again, I like having some time-off.
It's the same concept as working at a FAANG company. Yes, they're going to run you rugged, but you'll make bank and it will be great for your resume. There is a reason Google added all these in office amenities to encourage people to not go home.
Oh absolutely. And naive people will fall for that shit. In some ways, I can't blame them. At least years ago, I couldn't blame them because you could hustle for a couple of years and then leave with a ton of money. But these companies aren't stupid. They've changed some of their pay structure to where you don't get the big bucks unless you stick with the company for much longer than you would want to. So now you are fucked. If you divide out the hours your burn to your salary, it just isn't particularly worth it. Fuck that.
I despise the man, but there’s an argument to be made that Tesla accelerated the adoption of electric cars by at least five years, compared to what it otherwise would’ve been. I know he didn’t found Tesla, but I do feel like he played a pivotal role in changing people’s minds about electric cars.
Rather is it instead some billionaire would have done it. We had the bad luck of it being Elon Musk instead of someone better.
He put money in Tesla. That is his main contribution. Tesla which kinda had the first mover advantage of being the one well placed EV company via their deals with AC propulsion and Lotus. Both which happened without Elon.
What really made Tesla possible aka the first Tesla roadster possible was Tappering and Eberhard personally flying cross the Atlantic to go personally meet Lotus leadership for Lotus to produce the gliders aka most of the car. The chassis, body, the suspension. The roadster was mostly a Lotus made car in which Tesla dropped electric drive train. Electric drive train, which core technologies were licenses from AC propulsion.
Funnily worlds first big EV company might have been called AC propulsion. They had their Tzero prototype, which is pretty much hand build kit car Tesla Roadster. All of first Eberhard, Tappering and then Musk talked to AC propulsion about them starting serial production of tzero. However it didn't happen since the company leadership adamantly refused. That is why Eberhard and Tappering incorporated Tesla Inc. They needed separate company to start production of tzero style roadster, since AC Propulsion strictly stuck to the field of just electric drivetrain tech. Under which field they then did what they thought their business is, AC propulsion licenses the drivetrain tech to Tesla and then let Tesla take the job and risk of actual automotive production.
Main contribution of Elon was insisting on carbon fiber instead of glass fiber composites. Requiring expensive retooling at Lotus for the Tesla production line thus making making car more expensive and saving negligible amounts of weight.
All the engineers apparently went: We already considered carbon fiber anyway. Carbon Not worth the extra cost of parts for the weight saving. This body can be perfectly well be done with glass fiber composites. Like you are the main stock holder, so it's your money. We do it in carbon fiber, if you insist. Just saying there is no reason to do it engineering wise.
However Elon wanted cool space age carbon fiber body so they did it in carbon fiber. Again at great extra cost for both Tesla and the customers.
Sound familiar? Elon insisting on non practical engineering choice, since he got in its head a obsession to make the thing that way and no otherway. Like removing radars and other sensors even though as leaks have later revealed all the main engineers on the driving systemics said it is stupid idea and leads to unreliable sensorial leading to problems.
Atleast in the camera only case he is trying to save money. I guess that is improvement over the unnecessary exorbitantly expensive carbon body paneling on the Roadster (Roadster is aluminium tub chassis car , the carbon fiber was doing no mechanical work, it was literally just body cladding).
sortof. my advice would be to refuse signing a severance or anything else they might give you after that point, and to give it to a lawyer instead. they will probably consult for free and let you know if you have a case. i bet a company like that sees a lot of wrongful termination lawsuits, and they probably like to settle outside of court.
should we start patitioning that elon musk not be involved with any companies. everything ive heard about him makes me think he has no respect for us peasants.
Nah he'd 100% replace humans with robots if he could. Way more efficient. No need for water, food, toilets, breaks, hell even lights technically speaking. Huge huge list of pros for him. (Don't hate me I'm all for complete world automation)
It's not that shocking; I read a positive profile on Musk almost 10 years ago where he nevertheless fired an employee on the spot for not immediately knowing the answer to some random question Musk had for him.
How is this legal? Does the US have zero employee protection regulation?
If this happened in NZ, the business owner would be put through the ringer and it would be front page news (it's been front page plenty here) for unfair dismissal.
The laws are there, sure. But if you become a corporate "whistle blower" you're not likely to get a job again. And the company will just drown the accusations in fines and litigation and nothing changes because we're poor and solo, because we're not unionized because if we try we get fired (again, illegally).
They have employment rules, but I believe as they employee your main recourse would be to sue them. They don't have a government entity like Employment New Zealand to hold the employer to account on the employee's behalf.
Textbook narcissist play. Expect everyone around you stand at attention to make your dreams happen. Maybe if you offered tangible rewards like bonuses and pay increases instead of vague promises of "exceptional reward" then people would work harder for you. Also, studies prove time and again that working excessive hours leads to diminishing returns. Also, throwing a fucking baby tantrum when a burned-out employee makes a mistake is a great way to lose talent.
It's a company whose primary business model is selling carbon credits. How could anyone even imagine that they have anything but unfair employment practices? They exist to exploit
That's the thing though. I think this attitude is incredibly pervasive in tech more broadly. No one hires juniors. They don't want to train and invest in inexperienced employees. Instead firms will hire seniors, milk them for every hour they are willing to dedicate.
Those that care give it their all and burn out after only a couple years. Especially when they see their extra efforts go unrewarded. The burnt husk of a human that comes out the other end will usually quit for greener pastures and the chance to start fresh where they are hopefully recognized. They are now someone else's problem.
Then you end up with the poor souls that have experienced this cycle 2-3 times, don't give a shit and just coast by giving the firm the minimum effort to avoid a bad performance review.
Unfortunately I think the current tech culture is very hostile to anyone who is young or cared.