It’s nearly impossible to fight defamation like this. Only defense against it is to be as careful choosing your employer as possible. The amount of power they have over your future is insane and in certain situations, like the one in the article, you basically have no recourse.
Chicago is also a great example of democracy and how well it works out, along with Russia. Maybe don't make a place with massive corruption your example.
Illinois had a governor arrested while in Office just 12 years ago for corruption. They've had it repeatedly over the last 60 years. Seems like a trend, and not just limited to 1929.
The claim that unions are horrible may be true for some large, high profile unions, but what everyone seems to ignore are all the small, totally unknown unions that get shit done.
A good rule of thumb: if the union is so large that it has enough bureaucrats that they have their own Union, then it's likely most of your dues are spent on propagating the Union bureaucracy and not necessarily on aiding the employees the Union represents.
Chicago ain't the world! Here, in Germany, labor unions are not perfect either, but pretty effective. It's a question of culture: if something never can grow up, into a solid state, it will cease to succeed. In the US unions get constantly hated and attacked. It's difficult to develop a healthy personality under such circumstances.
I loooove me some fallacies and biases. I work diligently everyday at work to avoid them.
However; I think this is misplaced as a quick search of Chicago news will inform the reader that Ms. Lightfoot has her hands full trying to balance a budget while not crippling the city because of unions. There is no fallacy here, only truth that is uncomfortable to some.
What are some other examples of how well they work out? Paid holiday? Days off? Working environments that weren't deathtraps? Sounds pretty good to me.
Of course I do. Don't be a childish, passive-aggressive dickhead [0]. You know as well as everyone else here that these were fought for and won by unions.
[0] I make no apology. I really don't like that kind of phony bullshit pretend question. Its dishonesty is corrosive to discourse.
That seems like an inappropriate overreaction. Also, no, they were not. Companies who have never had unions offer these things, because we would not work there if they didn’t.
Even if they were, the fact that they are ubiquitous today without unions would mean that this is historical trivia, and not an argument that supports having a union today.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
The GP comment stepped a foot over that line but this is crashing right through it. Please don't. We're trying for curious conversation here, not repetitive bashing.
I’ll attempt to “not flamewar” but you are being rather sensitive about this. A decent moderation is necessary but i fail to see any reason for the watchdogs to hate on my post.
Fact is Chicago is very much underwater because unions have gripped the city’s pension to the point that they cannot pass meaningful budget resolutions.
Unions had a place at the beginning of the industrial age for worker safety and reasonable wages. With OSHA and a long list of other laws, unions are largely outdated.
Please contribute something useful and not rules that are hardly being bent otherwise you are cluttering “curious conversations.”
It was a cliché one-liner on a divisive theme that was far off topic. That certainly counts as flamebait. This is not a borderline call!
Sometimes people make a more substantive comment in response to a moderation scolding—sort of explaining the background that was in their mind but which they didn't say earlier. I'd say your second and third paragraphs here count as that. If you had included that in your original post, it would at least have been not a one-liner and less of a cliché, and I probably wouldn't have replied.
Unions can be useful for industry specific protections or benefits. This would provide different protections specific to a type of work.
I think arbitration protections and restrictions on employment contracts to preserve employee rights should be handled through legislation since it should be universally applicable to all workers. This would remove the variance in protections from one union to another.
Legislation would be ideal, but in the absence of such legislation (such as the bill mentioned in the article to limit mandatory arbitration that was attempted in 2019 and passed the House but was never voted on in the Senate) unions still might be the best option in the short term.
Maybe. Unions can become corrupt or politically influenced too. In fact, organized labor is one of the main money makers for organized crime. I'm not saying all unions are bad, just that some can be. Just as any power structure like governments or company management can be too.
I wonder if the major unions have banned together to get that bill introduced and voted on? It could be possible that they wouldn't support legislation like that because more legislative protections can make the union seem less useful.
If the unions don't have incentive to push the bill and more workers are covered by unions and don't see the benefit of the bill because they are already protected, then could that delay or even prevent the passage of those protections? It may end up as a long term fix that leaves non-uninonized groups and groups that seem unlikely to organize, like IT. Of course with widespread existing adoption, a counter point could be less opposition to it.
I suspect the reason it didn't pass the Senate is that Republicans are in the majority there, and I can't imagine any union having much influence or leverage with Mitch McConnell to even convince him to hold a vote.
The article suggests she was fired because she asked for a meeting with Musk about floor mats after failing to get the proper response from the regular chain of command. In my experience, everywhere I worked had a chain of command and consistently stepping outside the chain of command and going over your managers heads rarely leads to good results.
From an article mentioned in the LA Times article
> She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
I would understand from a corporate perspective Tesla wanting to remove this person. A company, especially one on the brink of bankruptcy as Tesla was in 2014 has to have a high degree of cohesion and minimal dissent from employees.
> Instead, Balan said, she was forced to resign, an event that launched a six-year legal journey leading to where she is today: about to face off against Tesla — on her own, without an attorney — in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
I can't understand how someone can be let go from a company and make it their life's work over the next 6 years to grieve and fight publicly. Right or wrong, it seems like an utterly destructive process on the personal level.
> Balan says her professional reputation suffered damage so severe she can’t find a company willing to hire her. “They tell me, ‘We’d like to hire you, but we can’t afford to be on Musk’s blacklist,’” she said.
Employers aversion to hiring Balan may have to do with her lawsuit, at least a little bit
Did you miss the part where Musk announced that employees are to disregard hierarchy and go directly up the chain if it solves problems faster, including all the way to the top?
Weeks earlier, in a companywide email, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had dumped on the concept of corporate hierarchy. Find “the fastest way to solve a problem to the benefit of the whole company” and don’t worry about your boss, he told them. Go straight to the top, if need be. Balan took him up on it.
Typical CEO double speak. Senior management at my company says similar things. Then if you look at the HR policy you find the fine print that greatly restricts what was said.
I had a department head tell us his door is always open and to contact him about stuff (company policy supports the open door policy). I took him up on it. When I showed up, he had another manager there in addition to himself (it was supposed to be a scheduled meeting with just me and him). I was later rated poorly, both in an interview and at year end, for a lack of leadership (following the hierarchy).
> In the video, Enrico encouraged every worker at the company to “act like an owner.” Most employees brushed it off as a management cliché; Montañez took it to heart.
> “Here’s my invitation… here’s the CEO telling me, the janitor, that I can act like an owner,” he later recalled. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Didn’t need to. But I knew I was going to act like an owner.”
To give you an executive's perspective on this one: I'm saying the same to my employees (and I mean it). But there are two types of ways this happens in reality:
Case 1: An actual smart and caring employee bypasses the chain to give me evidence of a manager not acting in the companys interest. Usually that's not the first indication of such a thing and listening around reaffirms the conclusion quickly. The manager is approached as quickly as possible and since at this paygrade it's in no-one's best interest to burn bridges, they suddenly decide to spend more time with their family, a sweet severance package changes hands, employees are happy again and you don't read about this in the news. It's exactly why I said this in the first place (and meant it).
Case 2:
An employee with issues not bringing the company further (usually one or more of paranoia, toxicity, not-seeing-the-big-picture, searching for problems instead of solutions or emotional health issues) bypasses the chain of command with "evidence", but listening around almost nobody shares this employees' opinion. You fire them. Suddenly all problems disappear, employees are happy and then you read about this in the news, because the only person left unhappy did really not get the memo.
Judging from the type of problems here (something something starship about floor mats at a time when Model 3 just wasn't ramping up production and cashflow almost ruined the company), I do have my opinion about the type of "privilege escalation" in this case but I obviously won't share it.
Most cases, sure. But did you see the evidence in the article about her reputation at work? She was quite obviously an appreciated employee all around.
You may be right, this case looks less than clear.
I'm mostly playing devils' advocate here, as newspapers, lawyers and shortsellers usually have their own axe to grind and are continually searching for good David against Goliath stories.
Just dropping in that having a toxic effect on the company and being respected / appreciated by peers are absolutely not mutually exclusive. Often times they rather go hand in hand and you've got such people rallying up others over non-issues (in the big picture of things). As others already said in the comments, cohesion and alignment are far more important to a high risk / high growth company than "solving all the problems".
My specific instance was that I was the application security champion for a critical application application that had a SQL injection vulnerability (with full schema owner privileges!), but lower-level management wasn't making it a priority and didn't even assign any resources to remediate the issue. So I went to explain the issue to the department head because he was the owner of the application. As an ASC I answer to, and represent, the security division so I can talk to the owners of apps that I support regardless of the hierarchy. I think he didn't understand that dynamic, as I typically see managers breaking company policy and not caring (I'm smart enough to keep my mouth shut on those issues). I didn't go to complain. I went to explain the problem and give him options and my recommendation.
He told me that we have a real-time backup system so he didn't think it was worth fixing. I then asked if we ever ran tests of that system and if we had documentation on how to restore from it. We don't. This is for financial trading application handling billions of dollars. Being down for even a few hours could be catastrophic.
The big man spoke. I don't agree with the outcome, but I'm not the boss. So that was the end of it (except for in discussions like this on here). I left for another team because there's no way I'm going to be the security champion for a system with that level of risk. And thank God you weren't my manager or I would have been fired under your #2 scenario.
On a side note, just because a small number of people are complaining doesn't mean their opinions are invalid. Minorities are often disenfranchised due to this thinking. Also, managers may not know all the policies for the company and may be violating them.
For a real life example combining these, company policy states that a person be evaluated against the standard and recieve a rating that way. Some departments mandate that if a manager pick a higher than average rating for someone, then they must pick someone else to balance it out with a lower rating. This would only affect 10% of the population and the number unjustly affected would be lower than that. So the other 90% recieved good rating, so why would they complain? The objective way I know that I was unjustly rated was because I had a manager friend who told me what happened in the meeting and said it was wrong.
#1 implies the firing of a bad manager, which didn't happen. It also requires others in the group to back me up (as a security concern very few people knew).
#2 seemed more fitting since no action was taken. And it resulted in me leaving that area of the company (voluntarily thankfully).
Reminds me of the old Dilbert cartoon where the boss tells his employees to do something, then grabs the binoculars thinking "This will be the easiest round of layoffs ever" [1]. Sometimes, suggestions from upper management that employees should let their guard down and do something they normally wouldn't are just clever tactics to encourage "undesirables" to out themselves.
> The article suggests she was fired because she asked for a meeting with Musk about floor mats after failing to get the proper response from the regular chain of command. In my experience, everywhere I worked had a chain of command and consistently stepping outside the chain of command and going over your managers heads rarely leads to good results.
Tesla's PR claims that it's a non-traditional, innovative company, where if someone finds a serious problem that can't be resolved by the chain of command, they should e-mail Musk.
The reality of course, bears little resemblance to the myth.
Probably the biggest takeaway is, in jurisdictions that permit it, "record all your conversations at work, encrypt them, and hope you never need them."
She would be in a totally different situation if she had a tape of Tesla's AGC threatening her friends through their immigration status. That is straight up mafia tactics.
That presumes you're in a legal jurisdiction where one-party consent is allowed for recording conversations doesn't it? Otherwise it would be inadmissible.
Not only inadmissible, but can incur criminal liability as well, such as in California.
With criminal statutes, it significantly raises the bar about how to "leak" something to the press, the press who needs to verify the source and can be subpoena'd for records.
Now is it is worth admitting to a crime that can carry fines of up to $2,500 and/or imprisonment for up to a year (misdemeanor) is a hefty question. In addition, the violator may be subject to civil liability in the amount of $5,000 or three times the amount of any actual damages sustained as a result.
If this was a lawsuit due to serious, career ending malfeasance against you, where a key witness would be trivially proven a liar and you could end up with millions in a settlement? Maybe? Could they turn around and sue you for 3x the settlement? Sounds like you'd want to talk to a lawyer first.
At the risk of attracting more downvotes, I persist. The problem with corporate malfeasance and bullying, of which Elon Musk seems to be a specialist, is that people are afraid to retaliate.
We shouldn't be afraid.
I personally sued big corporations, as an individual, two times, and won. Granted, this was in Europe, not the US, but the warnings and hand-waving of people telling me one should never do that were similar.
If you care enough about the issue, and don't care much about the risks, which are usually wildly exaggerated, the odds are actually in your favor.
The point here was specifically about secretly recording converations in a jurisdiction where that is illegal. If you'd tried to use recordings like that in your two suits against big coporations, they would have been thrown out by the judge and you would have put yourself at risk of criminal prosecution into the bargain.
Very true. I unwisely chose an employer and my life has been increasingly harsh and lately scary, and the snowball of problems grows and rolls down the hill. OpenTable, don’t work or them.
TFA is kind of a strange re-telling of an interesting story.
It came into the public view after an article from Inc. about Musk's famous email telling people to break with the chain of command. [1]
The HuffPo posted an article responding to Inc raising Balan's concerns [2];
> At the time Balan was working on the interiors design team at Tesla, where she identified and “tried … to solve two engineering issues,” she wrote recently on her blog — design flaws that needed to be addressed by the company. But when she tried to force management to fix the problems she was “bullied, humiliated, demoted and retaliated against in the most horrible way possible.” She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
> Balan attempted to go through proper channels but soon found herself “in an even more threatening situation.” She began recording her meetings with fellow engineers when they discussed problems within the company. One recorded meeting lasted more than two hours. The recordings were “for Elon’s ears only,” she wrote in her blog.
>> Then I made my mistake: I wrote an email to Elon Musk, in reference to the infamous ‘Communication within Tesla’ email, to let him know I must meet with him in order to show him evidence of … things going on inside the company that he needed to be aware of.
The original blog post that HuffPo references is gone, but Balan has since posted a long blog article to try to tell her side of the story, which is certainly an interesting read of it's own right. [3]
Recording internal meetings to raise an issue isn't the best way to deal with the situation. I'm not surprised she was let go. The company probably saw this as dangerous behavior.
That's a very "euphemistic" way of putting it. Kind of like putting someone in a wheel chair could be described as "allowing them to tackle different challenges".
She was more than just let go, she was bullied, humiliated, demoted, threatened, retaliated against, and blackmailed among others. Evidence was tampered with, destroyed, or manufactured, along with quite the list of irregularities even judges observed.
There's nothing to justify that except an incredibly toxic company culture coming straight from a brilliant but extremely toxic leader. But people like him don't have to worry about any court. They can always buy their escape from a court of law with money, and buy their escape from the court of public opinion with charisma, PR, and their loyal following.
>She was more than just let go, she was bullied, humiliated, demoted, threatened, retaliated against, and blackmailed among others. Evidence was tampered with, destroyed, or manufactured, along with quite the list of irregularities even judges observed.
Real quick: all of this information exists in your head because of online articles. You haven't seen the full proof of this happening. Be careful of making conclusions based on stories rather than evidence.
A happy and competent friend of mine went to work for them in the HR department at SpaceX, and left a month later, things were that brutal. Later I took a short contact at TBM in curiosity, it was rather hardcore as well. Long story short, I tend to believe it.
Plenty of anecdotal examples to go around on both sides. Talk to anyone in FAANG, you will hear the same story.
Im just saying not to form hard conclusions on things unless you have pretty hard evidence available that presents a certain picture. Its too easy to fall into the trap of manufactured outrage.
> all of this information exists in your head because of online articles
And first person accounts from people I trust all confirming things along the same lines. On the other hand there are people defending Tesla or Musk because they genuinely haven't observed such issues but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In practically all such cases it just means they never got on the wrong side of your company or CEO. A company should never treat you like garbage because you pissed them off. Or ever.
Imagine sexual harassment cases where the vast majority of men will genuinely say they haven't witnessed any foul play. But it's clearly not a sign the issue doesn't exist, just that some people never got to see it.
She only started recording meetings to collect evidence after being "bullied, humiliated, demoted and retaliated against in the most horrible way possible."
As far as I understand, doing that (recording meetings without notifying other participants) is a crime in California (https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-632.html) and that justification does not make it permissible.
So if she admits that she did record these meetings without informing the other participants, then in this defamation case - a key part of which is about the claim in HuffingPost "She also illegally recorded internal conversations within Tesla without anyone’s permission, which is clearly criminal conduct" - she has a good chance to lose, as it's not defamation if it's true.
Even if she broke the law when making the recordings, it's not clear that the recordings can't be used in court. [1]
This would be different if it were the police illegally procuring evidence, under the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' theory, but here it's just a private citizen. So while she could surely be punished for breaking laws related to recording people, that doesn't seem to foreclose the possibility that she could use the recordings in court to prove her case.
Why on earth would Tesla defaming her on some news site after her resignation be required to go to arbitration? Not only does the timeline not fit, it isn't even an employment contract matter.
Thanks for sharing that. It provides much more insight and context on the situation.
For me, the whole thing comes back to the news article. It is absolutely bonkers no matter the circumstance. Huffington Post should not have published anything without verifying that she was actually a criminal.
Clearly Tesla thought they screwed up as well or they wouldn't have fired the guy responsible for it two days later.
I completely understand wanting to have her removed from the company and the way it was done. It's just that you cannot go around labelling someone a criminal for life if all they have done is make a few middle managers angry by going over their heads. If she truly is a "criminal" for secret recordings then it's on Tesla to take that to the proper authorities.
Once the proper authorities (i.e. the justice system, jury of your peers, not power tripping middle managers) determines that you are a criminal, then feel free to share that for reference checks and write as many news articles as you want broadcasting it. But not until then, and if that kind of rule is broken, the penalty for those that do should be very severe.
As mentioned in the article, she is from Romania and representing herself, so there is no legal team assisting her. I think non-idiomatic English does not make it "written so poorly" if that's what you are referring to.
Bullying is when I push you over and take your milk. Tesla isn't a bully, Tesla has been part of the corporate capture of the American legal system, the CEO can literally call you a pedofile and be found not guilty of libel. If you're not powerful enough you can't even get a lawyer to represent you.
Perhaps our legal system found that there is no evidence of libel and you are picking and choosing which legal decisions you agree with despite all being as part of the same system.
I'm no lawyer, but the fact that Elon got off on that just seems wrong. Elon's claims were completely made up and also specifically crafted to harm the victim's reputation with respect to the particular context of the accusation - baselessly labeling a man who risked his life to save children as a person that sexually abuses children. What a disgusting act. Elon is extremely famous, if that doesn't count as libel what does?
Elon's lawyers argued that it was clearly satire because it was so over the top he couldn't possible mean it, the same as when he made deliberate misrepresentations about selling the company in a naked attempt to manipulate stock prices.
It's considered "per se" defamation, meaning that the plaintiff only has to prove that the defamatory act occurred, not that any reputational harm actually resulted (the harm is presumed from the heinous nature of the defamatory statements).
Cristina and Russ Mitchell and are both part of the TSLAQ short selling / anti-Tesla hate group. They've bullied and victimized dozens of Tesla customers in their quest to smear Tesla and Musk. Just my perspective on what I've seen following these people for a few years. They also failed to mention that Cristina already lost the lawsuit once. Now she is appealing, which she has the right to do. I wish her the best of luck in resolving this in a way that allows her to move on from what happened.
But who knows, in the US lawsuits are easy to make up, just expensive (lawyers getting the last laugh). Short sellers might just be doing that...The article could as well be fraud...or bad journalism (not checking sources), which sadly, happens more often than not.
Who is telling the truth? The short sellers and whistleblowers or Tesla and their fans/stockholders?
PS: this piece was initially flagged by HN users and since (thankfully) unflagged by moderator.
Each floormat has 4 round smooth patches about 3" in diameter underneath near each corner. Then 4 adhesive velcro patches 3" in diameter are stuck to them.
Then, there are 4 velcro hockey-puck things with screw threads that are screwed into the base carpet in the passenger footwell.
You put the removable carpet in place and the hockey puck velcro sticks to the under carpet velcro and it stays in place.
Except in a hot car the velcro to carpet adhesive gets soft and the carpet comes loose.
From seeing how the internet evolved from dial up days to what it is now, my initial reaction to any article written in a story-esque manner where the author tries to paint a certain bias with words like "unlighted, windowless room, draped in plastic, smelling of paint" is that its mostly just a very one sided account of things.
Its very popular to hate on rich moguls and big companies these days with the rise of online leftism rhetoric, and considering that most non subscription online media publication literally live or die by clicks, you should be suspect of them as much as you are of Tesla. Real factual stories with links are often very milquetoast and boring to read. Id imagine in this case it be something along the lines of "Tesla said this, Employee said this, we don't have proof of any of this stuff other than statements, so we don't know what really happened and likely never will"
It generally seems that the truth is most likely somewhere in between two extremes. Tesla is of course going to be corporate minded and not particularly care too much about employees, and its likely that the client in question is not fully guilt free either.
> The woman from human resources opened the doors — those big heavy fire doors with the push bars. She led the way through an unlighted, windowless room, draped in plastic, smelling of paint. Cristina Balan grew nervous. “This doesn’t look like the way to Elon’s office,” she thought to herself. She was led, she said, through another door into a room where she saw two large men in security uniforms behind desks. They were ordered to wait outside.
"Sorry about the smell; forget what you saw on Dexter, sheet plastic doesn't always work, and sometimes we have to repaint, haha."
I wonder whether the theatrics was at all for intimidation, or just an accident of the combination of legitimate physical security policy, and of wanting a meeting room where other employees wouldn't see the commotion (which happened to be new office space being prepared).
The theatrics appear to be a transparent attempt by the author to fluff up a narrative. Those are normal office building doors, and they didn’t give the physical security people an office with windows. Nothing unusual, and only barely relevant because it would be clear that Elon probably has a nice office, with windows, clueing her in that she wasn’t going to meet with him.
It sounds like the same toxic middle management which she, and others, took issue with was aware of her attempts to contact Musk and leaned on HR to have her removed.
Likely Musk got her communications and asked her management if there was any merit; and if he had indeed done this, it would be contradictory to his previous communication encouraging employees to go around their management.
If they needed to go around management then likely going through management is not the correct response.
Most who claim that HN has a rabid and irrational pro-Tesla cult must have missed the last seven years of incredibly critical commentary. I started noticing in 2015. Maybe I'll put together a montage one day. The claims of a pro-Tesla cult are certainly more widespread than uncritical fanboyism.
So, let's try to be objective about this. Tesla's viewpoint is that Cristina had an internal conflict with other managers regarding the choice of one of the suppliers [0]:
> For example, Ms. Balan was unhappy with a particular supplier that was selected by an internal group of subject matter experts who extensively studied the issue. She took it upon herself to find an alternative supplier that [...]
She herself confirms it (from original article):
> All seemed to be going well until Balan came across what she considered sketchy dealings on supplier contracts and the curling floor mats.
From her fundraiser page, she tried to spin the business disagreement into a "hot topic" gender discrimination issue:
> Soon after I’ve got into an arbitration lawsuit with Tesla based on misclassification, wrongful termination And gender discrimination.
Not knowing the details, this leaves an impression of an opportunistic person who would try all means possible to achieve what she wants, rather than trying to persuade others. The problem with such people is that they can be right in some decisions, wrong in others, but if the rest of the team has to spend 50% of their time catering to that 1 person, it's a net-negative effect on the team. You can call it unfair, but diplomacy and compromises are important if you are working with other people.
Given that, I would be skeptical about other claims she makes:
>Under duress, threatened that if I [did] not sign my resignation I would be handcuffed and dragged to the parking lot …
It's a her-word-against-his case and in such cases both sides are typically trying to bend reality in their favor.
Also, worth noting that Musk has recently announced that he's moving away from California [2], so LA times would have very good reasons for a hit piece like this one.
Did we read the same thing? She was trying to escalate to upper management that she saw some issues with suppliers, which were possibly due to people choosing their friends as supplier instead of choosing the best supplier, and also some issue with floor mats that could be a safety concern. And they fired her for that.
I don't know what else there is to spin? It looks to me she cared too much about doing a good job and tried to mingle with a manager chain that cared more about themselves.
That's from her own words. If she instead wanted to push her own friend as a supplier, she would claim the same. Because it sounds like a good argument if you want to switch a supplier.
I would love to see some facts here, but all that is currently presented is just words. And I don't like that if you play the minority card, whatever you are saying is perceived by the public with more credibility than what your opponents are stating, regardless of the facts. This opens huge possibilities for abuse by opportunists and increases division in the society.
>Is HN turning into a liberal censorship site? If this was always the case, my apologies. I thought HN valued curiosity and truth...
Years ago, yes. Not so anymore. Last year they flagged/removed all submissions of a NYT op-ed (written by an Indian guy) that blamed rich white liberals for the SFBA housing crisis. Tells you all you need to know about the HN echo chamber
> Tells you all you need to know about the HN echo chamber
Actually it doesn't. Readers would need a link to what you're talking about so they could see for themselves what happened and make up their own minds about it, including whether it's relevant here. Sinister complaints like this never come with links because that would reveal the other side of the story, which is rarely anything like how the sinister complainer is framing it.
Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but I suspect the baity title played a role, plus the celebrity aspect, plus the political aspect. The story itself seems on topic, so I'm going to turn off the flags and change the title.
Good engineers must learn that while they spent the time learning their skills, other people spent that time learning how to steal others’ people work. If you are really good, you must start your own company. Much harder, I know.
And a good engineer usually does not make a good salesperson. Starting a company does not make a good engineer better nor does it guarantee a better path in one's career. On the contrary I would dare say.
That's obvious to everybody. The point is, co-owning the company you work for has some fundamental advantages. By the way, this wouldn't be true in a perfectly competitive market, it's only true thanks to market imperfections.
For example, in the company I work for, sometimes I slip into the mode of feeling like I "own" the product we're making, making an extra effort, being emotionally invested, etc. But then I remember, I would just be a fool who works for his employer for free. Also, achieving change requires a lot more effort and often fails, which can be demotivating. In general, I feel like I could run things substantially better if I had the power. Seeing the mediocrity at fairly successful companies makes me really think about working at a startup.
Luckily for you, there’s plenty of us stuck in other depts (technical sales, customer services) that still understand a lot of the technical stuff while being more used to working closely with customers. Try finding a company buddy, they might be closer than you think.
Starting a company does nothing to prevent others from stealing your work. Just puts more effort on the business owner to source business and protect their IP.
If something like this happens at such a company as Tesla, what's stopping it from happening at any company?
It looks like one of the core issues is that it seemed to Tesla that a recall just might kill the company at that time. So they felt that in order to protect the existence of the company, they really needed to be quiet about the floor mats at all costs. They probably rationalized it as "well, how hard is it to check if your floor mat is curling up" or something.
So that seems to be a structural issue. When it comes to the existence of your job or your company, it's too easy to rationalize unethical acts. At least for most people. Especially if their boss tells them to do it.
"That’s a reason Balan, with a stated net worth of $50,000, gives to explain why she is representing herself — she doesn’t have to pay lawyers, so time is her only expense."
This is hilarious, her gofundme is mostly funded by Tesla Shortsellers and they're not even hiding it... I haven't read her claims but this is amusing.
Since someone downvoted me, above are known TESLAQ folks and some are confirmed shortsellers while others tweet incessantly anything negative on this company but I cannot confirm 100% that they have short positions in this stock right now.
I have edited my original comment with a few which did not mark their donation as "private". P.S. I didn't say her case is not valid, simply that it's curious and amusing.
It’s a bit odd to focus on the short sellers anyway. If her funding by short sellers puts her honesty in question then wouldn’t the same logic put Tesla’s honesty about her in question as well? Both sides are making claims in line with their financial interests.
I'm not sure why that's so amusing. The justice system only requires the judiciary to be impartial in order to serve the public good effectively. Plaintiffs and defendants can be as biased as they want.
Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) successfully sued Gawker with the backing of investor Peter Thiel, who had a well-known grudge against them. That doesn't take away from the fact that Gawker grossly invaded people's privacy in order to turn a profit on harmful gossip.
I find it amusing because they find someone who has some sort of a problem with tesla and make them the jesus of their crusade against that company. "How could Elon (or Tesla) have done this?" in order to sway public opinion. They did this with when the plant sabotage employee a few years back, the diver guy who Elon called a pedo and every self proclaimed "whistleblower" as far as I can remember from 2015 when this stuff really got crazy.
They just want to make a buck and posture as if they have some moral quandry with the company or their leadership.
The legal system has a concept of "no harm no foul," (i.e. the concept of a "tort"), and if nobody believed Elon's obviously stupid tweet, there would be no tort to sue on.
The US has a very high standard for "defamation" against "public figures" and a very low barrier to be considered a "public figure". By US standards, the diver was a "public figure", and Musk's insulting comment was not defamation, because it was hyperbolic (comparable to when Hustler Magazine published a fake ad about Jerry Falwell having sex with his mother in an outhouse).
Bottom line is that it's very hard to win defamation cases in the US. The Tesla engineer might have a shot because she was not well known, and Tesla accused her of very specific acts (moonlighting, unapproved travel) and they knew those accusations to be false. On the other hand, these were not exactly crimes, so who knows.
first of there is some dirt here , Tesla dropped the ball on this one. They made it personal and could have handled it more gently. But then again i have a bias towards TESLA and im more inclined to trust press release by lawyers which is legally admissible. There is no doubt she was traumatised by the sudden nature of it all. although i hope after all this PR spotlight she will have her name cleared and one of the many HN comments who are disgusted by the way Tesla handled this will recommend her for employment in their organisation.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadThat's not the only defense, this is example #25360432 showing how necessary labor unions are.
Chicago is a great example of labor unions and how well they work out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
However; I think this is misplaced as a quick search of Chicago news will inform the reader that Ms. Lightfoot has her hands full trying to balance a budget while not crippling the city because of unions. There is no fallacy here, only truth that is uncomfortable to some.
There is, though. And it is an association fallacy.
You wrote:
> Chicago is a great example of labor unions and how well they work out.
The error in your logic:
Premise: Chicago's labor unions are labor unions.
Premise: Chicago's labor unions are bad.
Your conclusion: Therefore, all labor unions are bad.
[0] I make no apology. I really don't like that kind of phony bullshit pretend question. Its dishonesty is corrosive to discourse.
Even if they were, the fact that they are ubiquitous today without unions would mean that this is historical trivia, and not an argument that supports having a union today.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The GP comment stepped a foot over that line but this is crashing right through it. Please don't. We're trying for curious conversation here, not repetitive bashing.
Fact is Chicago is very much underwater because unions have gripped the city’s pension to the point that they cannot pass meaningful budget resolutions.
Unions had a place at the beginning of the industrial age for worker safety and reasonable wages. With OSHA and a long list of other laws, unions are largely outdated.
Please contribute something useful and not rules that are hardly being bent otherwise you are cluttering “curious conversations.”
Sometimes people make a more substantive comment in response to a moderation scolding—sort of explaining the background that was in their mind but which they didn't say earlier. I'd say your second and third paragraphs here count as that. If you had included that in your original post, it would at least have been not a one-liner and less of a cliché, and I probably wouldn't have replied.
I think arbitration protections and restrictions on employment contracts to preserve employee rights should be handled through legislation since it should be universally applicable to all workers. This would remove the variance in protections from one union to another.
I wonder if the major unions have banned together to get that bill introduced and voted on? It could be possible that they wouldn't support legislation like that because more legislative protections can make the union seem less useful.
If the unions don't have incentive to push the bill and more workers are covered by unions and don't see the benefit of the bill because they are already protected, then could that delay or even prevent the passage of those protections? It may end up as a long term fix that leaves non-uninonized groups and groups that seem unlikely to organize, like IT. Of course with widespread existing adoption, a counter point could be less opposition to it.
From an article mentioned in the LA Times article
> She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
I would understand from a corporate perspective Tesla wanting to remove this person. A company, especially one on the brink of bankruptcy as Tesla was in 2014 has to have a high degree of cohesion and minimal dissent from employees.
> Instead, Balan said, she was forced to resign, an event that launched a six-year legal journey leading to where she is today: about to face off against Tesla — on her own, without an attorney — in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
I can't understand how someone can be let go from a company and make it their life's work over the next 6 years to grieve and fight publicly. Right or wrong, it seems like an utterly destructive process on the personal level.
> Balan says her professional reputation suffered damage so severe she can’t find a company willing to hire her. “They tell me, ‘We’d like to hire you, but we can’t afford to be on Musk’s blacklist,’” she said.
Employers aversion to hiring Balan may have to do with her lawsuit, at least a little bit
Weeks earlier, in a companywide email, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had dumped on the concept of corporate hierarchy. Find “the fastest way to solve a problem to the benefit of the whole company” and don’t worry about your boss, he told them. Go straight to the top, if need be. Balan took him up on it.
I had a department head tell us his door is always open and to contact him about stuff (company policy supports the open door policy). I took him up on it. When I showed up, he had another manager there in addition to himself (it was supposed to be a scheduled meeting with just me and him). I was later rated poorly, both in an interview and at year end, for a lack of leadership (following the hierarchy).
https://thehustle.co/hot-cheetos-inventor/
> In the video, Enrico encouraged every worker at the company to “act like an owner.” Most employees brushed it off as a management cliché; Montañez took it to heart.
> “Here’s my invitation… here’s the CEO telling me, the janitor, that I can act like an owner,” he later recalled. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Didn’t need to. But I knew I was going to act like an owner.”
(Predictably, his manager was pissed.)
Case 1: An actual smart and caring employee bypasses the chain to give me evidence of a manager not acting in the companys interest. Usually that's not the first indication of such a thing and listening around reaffirms the conclusion quickly. The manager is approached as quickly as possible and since at this paygrade it's in no-one's best interest to burn bridges, they suddenly decide to spend more time with their family, a sweet severance package changes hands, employees are happy again and you don't read about this in the news. It's exactly why I said this in the first place (and meant it).
Case 2: An employee with issues not bringing the company further (usually one or more of paranoia, toxicity, not-seeing-the-big-picture, searching for problems instead of solutions or emotional health issues) bypasses the chain of command with "evidence", but listening around almost nobody shares this employees' opinion. You fire them. Suddenly all problems disappear, employees are happy and then you read about this in the news, because the only person left unhappy did really not get the memo.
Judging from the type of problems here (something something starship about floor mats at a time when Model 3 just wasn't ramping up production and cashflow almost ruined the company), I do have my opinion about the type of "privilege escalation" in this case but I obviously won't share it.
I'm mostly playing devils' advocate here, as newspapers, lawyers and shortsellers usually have their own axe to grind and are continually searching for good David against Goliath stories.
Just dropping in that having a toxic effect on the company and being respected / appreciated by peers are absolutely not mutually exclusive. Often times they rather go hand in hand and you've got such people rallying up others over non-issues (in the big picture of things). As others already said in the comments, cohesion and alignment are far more important to a high risk / high growth company than "solving all the problems".
He told me that we have a real-time backup system so he didn't think it was worth fixing. I then asked if we ever ran tests of that system and if we had documentation on how to restore from it. We don't. This is for financial trading application handling billions of dollars. Being down for even a few hours could be catastrophic.
The big man spoke. I don't agree with the outcome, but I'm not the boss. So that was the end of it (except for in discussions like this on here). I left for another team because there's no way I'm going to be the security champion for a system with that level of risk. And thank God you weren't my manager or I would have been fired under your #2 scenario.
On a side note, just because a small number of people are complaining doesn't mean their opinions are invalid. Minorities are often disenfranchised due to this thinking. Also, managers may not know all the policies for the company and may be violating them.
For a real life example combining these, company policy states that a person be evaluated against the standard and recieve a rating that way. Some departments mandate that if a manager pick a higher than average rating for someone, then they must pick someone else to balance it out with a lower rating. This would only affect 10% of the population and the number unjustly affected would be lower than that. So the other 90% recieved good rating, so why would they complain? The objective way I know that I was unjustly rated was because I had a manager friend who told me what happened in the meeting and said it was wrong.
#2 seemed more fitting since no action was taken. And it resulted in me leaving that area of the company (voluntarily thankfully).
1: https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-18
I'm sure there's more to the story.
Tesla's PR claims that it's a non-traditional, innovative company, where if someone finds a serious problem that can't be resolved by the chain of command, they should e-mail Musk.
The reality of course, bears little resemblance to the myth.
She would be in a totally different situation if she had a tape of Tesla's AGC threatening her friends through their immigration status. That is straight up mafia tactics.
Brings to mind this case [1].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-29388019
With criminal statutes, it significantly raises the bar about how to "leak" something to the press, the press who needs to verify the source and can be subpoena'd for records.
A private person recording someone illegally is a crime. In some circumstances (for instance to prove a witness in lying), it can still be admissable. [ref https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/secret-recording-con....]
Now is it is worth admitting to a crime that can carry fines of up to $2,500 and/or imprisonment for up to a year (misdemeanor) is a hefty question. In addition, the violator may be subject to civil liability in the amount of $5,000 or three times the amount of any actual damages sustained as a result.
If this was a lawsuit due to serious, career ending malfeasance against you, where a key witness would be trivially proven a liar and you could end up with millions in a settlement? Maybe? Could they turn around and sue you for 3x the settlement? Sounds like you'd want to talk to a lawyer first.
Not happening most of the time though.
We shouldn't be afraid.
I personally sued big corporations, as an individual, two times, and won. Granted, this was in Europe, not the US, but the warnings and hand-waving of people telling me one should never do that were similar.
If you care enough about the issue, and don't care much about the risks, which are usually wildly exaggerated, the odds are actually in your favor.
The article suggests that unlawful recording is the criminal act that Tesla is alleging she committed.
It came into the public view after an article from Inc. about Musk's famous email telling people to break with the chain of command. [1]
The HuffPo posted an article responding to Inc raising Balan's concerns [2];
> At the time Balan was working on the interiors design team at Tesla, where she identified and “tried … to solve two engineering issues,” she wrote recently on her blog — design flaws that needed to be addressed by the company. But when she tried to force management to fix the problems she was “bullied, humiliated, demoted and retaliated against in the most horrible way possible.” She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
> Balan attempted to go through proper channels but soon found herself “in an even more threatening situation.” She began recording her meetings with fellow engineers when they discussed problems within the company. One recorded meeting lasted more than two hours. The recordings were “for Elon’s ears only,” she wrote in her blog.
>> Then I made my mistake: I wrote an email to Elon Musk, in reference to the infamous ‘Communication within Tesla’ email, to let him know I must meet with him in order to show him evidence of … things going on inside the company that he needed to be aware of.
The original blog post that HuffPo references is gone, but Balan has since posted a long blog article to try to tell her side of the story, which is certainly an interesting read of it's own right. [3]
[1] - https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-email-from-elon-musk-...
[2] - http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11...
[3] - http://cristinaibalanstory.com/teslas-longest-comment-on-an-...
I understand why they feel threatened when this sort of thing is turned around on them, though.
That's a very "euphemistic" way of putting it. Kind of like putting someone in a wheel chair could be described as "allowing them to tackle different challenges".
She was more than just let go, she was bullied, humiliated, demoted, threatened, retaliated against, and blackmailed among others. Evidence was tampered with, destroyed, or manufactured, along with quite the list of irregularities even judges observed.
There's nothing to justify that except an incredibly toxic company culture coming straight from a brilliant but extremely toxic leader. But people like him don't have to worry about any court. They can always buy their escape from a court of law with money, and buy their escape from the court of public opinion with charisma, PR, and their loyal following.
Real quick: all of this information exists in your head because of online articles. You haven't seen the full proof of this happening. Be careful of making conclusions based on stories rather than evidence.
Im just saying not to form hard conclusions on things unless you have pretty hard evidence available that presents a certain picture. Its too easy to fall into the trap of manufactured outrage.
And first person accounts from people I trust all confirming things along the same lines. On the other hand there are people defending Tesla or Musk because they genuinely haven't observed such issues but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In practically all such cases it just means they never got on the wrong side of your company or CEO. A company should never treat you like garbage because you pissed them off. Or ever.
Imagine sexual harassment cases where the vast majority of men will genuinely say they haven't witnessed any foul play. But it's clearly not a sign the issue doesn't exist, just that some people never got to see it.
Whether she is telling the truth is for you to judge. The details and tone of voice sound genuine.
Seems ... justified.
So if she admits that she did record these meetings without informing the other participants, then in this defamation case - a key part of which is about the claim in HuffingPost "She also illegally recorded internal conversations within Tesla without anyone’s permission, which is clearly criminal conduct" - she has a good chance to lose, as it's not defamation if it's true.
This would be different if it were the police illegally procuring evidence, under the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' theory, but here it's just a private citizen. So while she could surely be punished for breaking laws related to recording people, that doesn't seem to foreclose the possibility that she could use the recordings in court to prove her case.
1: https://acitylawfirm.com/recorded-conversations/
http://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-autr...
Cristina Balan has a fundraiser page, at https://www.gofundme.com/f/a86fmm-fighting-tesla-for-defamin... and there is some text there from her, setting out some facts as she has seen them.
For me, the whole thing comes back to the news article. It is absolutely bonkers no matter the circumstance. Huffington Post should not have published anything without verifying that she was actually a criminal. Clearly Tesla thought they screwed up as well or they wouldn't have fired the guy responsible for it two days later.
I completely understand wanting to have her removed from the company and the way it was done. It's just that you cannot go around labelling someone a criminal for life if all they have done is make a few middle managers angry by going over their heads. If she truly is a "criminal" for secret recordings then it's on Tesla to take that to the proper authorities. Once the proper authorities (i.e. the justice system, jury of your peers, not power tripping middle managers) determines that you are a criminal, then feel free to share that for reference checks and write as many news articles as you want broadcasting it. But not until then, and if that kind of rule is broken, the penalty for those that do should be very severe.
What about the "1000 lawsuits" the article mentions? Unless it was done by collusion (ex: a union).
In terms of averages and probability, Balan's case does stand a point as a whistleblower, hinting a covert truth behind the company.
Elon has very good lawyers.
It will be nice if the article provided a reference to other specific employee defamation cases, by not lumping them altogether.
Ex: https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/11/news/companies/tesla-elon-m...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/19/21446587/judge-dismiss-de...
But who knows, in the US lawsuits are easy to make up, just expensive (lawyers getting the last laugh). Short sellers might just be doing that...The article could as well be fraud...or bad journalism (not checking sources), which sadly, happens more often than not.
Who is telling the truth? The short sellers and whistleblowers or Tesla and their fans/stockholders?
PS: this piece was initially flagged by HN users and since (thankfully) unflagged by moderator.
The floormats are stupid.
Each floormat has 4 round smooth patches about 3" in diameter underneath near each corner. Then 4 adhesive velcro patches 3" in diameter are stuck to them.
Then, there are 4 velcro hockey-puck things with screw threads that are screwed into the base carpet in the passenger footwell.
You put the removable carpet in place and the hockey puck velcro sticks to the under carpet velcro and it stays in place.
Except in a hot car the velcro to carpet adhesive gets soft and the carpet comes loose.
From seeing how the internet evolved from dial up days to what it is now, my initial reaction to any article written in a story-esque manner where the author tries to paint a certain bias with words like "unlighted, windowless room, draped in plastic, smelling of paint" is that its mostly just a very one sided account of things.
Its very popular to hate on rich moguls and big companies these days with the rise of online leftism rhetoric, and considering that most non subscription online media publication literally live or die by clicks, you should be suspect of them as much as you are of Tesla. Real factual stories with links are often very milquetoast and boring to read. Id imagine in this case it be something along the lines of "Tesla said this, Employee said this, we don't have proof of any of this stuff other than statements, so we don't know what really happened and likely never will"
For reference linked article here: http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11... paints a different picture of how the said employee acted.
It generally seems that the truth is most likely somewhere in between two extremes. Tesla is of course going to be corporate minded and not particularly care too much about employees, and its likely that the client in question is not fully guilt free either.
"Sorry about the smell; forget what you saw on Dexter, sheet plastic doesn't always work, and sometimes we have to repaint, haha."
I wonder whether the theatrics was at all for intimidation, or just an accident of the combination of legitimate physical security policy, and of wanting a meeting room where other employees wouldn't see the commotion (which happened to be new office space being prepared).
Likely Musk got her communications and asked her management if there was any merit; and if he had indeed done this, it would be contradictory to his previous communication encouraging employees to go around their management.
If they needed to go around management then likely going through management is not the correct response.
Articles critical of Tesla always get flagged, and most of the time dang unflags them, especially if they're from newspapers like LAT.
If I found a reliable way to automate the recognition of bad-faith user interactions I would sell it to google and retire before bringing it to HN.
edit: Also, apparently, users can "vouch" for posts which presumably is just the inverse of flagging a post.
> For example, Ms. Balan was unhappy with a particular supplier that was selected by an internal group of subject matter experts who extensively studied the issue. She took it upon herself to find an alternative supplier that [...]
She herself confirms it (from original article):
> All seemed to be going well until Balan came across what she considered sketchy dealings on supplier contracts and the curling floor mats.
From her fundraiser page, she tried to spin the business disagreement into a "hot topic" gender discrimination issue:
> Soon after I’ve got into an arbitration lawsuit with Tesla based on misclassification, wrongful termination And gender discrimination.
Not knowing the details, this leaves an impression of an opportunistic person who would try all means possible to achieve what she wants, rather than trying to persuade others. The problem with such people is that they can be right in some decisions, wrong in others, but if the rest of the team has to spend 50% of their time catering to that 1 person, it's a net-negative effect on the team. You can call it unfair, but diplomacy and compromises are important if you are working with other people.
Given that, I would be skeptical about other claims she makes:
>Under duress, threatened that if I [did] not sign my resignation I would be handcuffed and dragged to the parking lot …
It's a her-word-against-his case and in such cases both sides are typically trying to bend reality in their favor.
Also, worth noting that Musk has recently announced that he's moving away from California [2], so LA times would have very good reasons for a hit piece like this one.
[0] http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11...
[1] https://www.gofundme.com/f/a86fmm-fighting-tesla-for-defamin...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22163805/elon-musk-texas-...
I don't know what else there is to spin? It looks to me she cared too much about doing a good job and tried to mingle with a manager chain that cared more about themselves.
I would love to see some facts here, but all that is currently presented is just words. And I don't like that if you play the minority card, whatever you are saying is perceived by the public with more credibility than what your opponents are stating, regardless of the facts. This opens huge possibilities for abuse by opportunists and increases division in the society.
It does not seem to violate HN guidelines: not politics, clickbait or fraud, and could serve as an investigative piece.
Just because there is some criticism on a tech darling - it is not even a personal attack.
Is HN turning into a liberal censorship site? I thought HN valued curiosity and truth...
Note: I am not surprised with people's discourse nowadays.
Can someone please unflag it?
Updated: thank you for unflagging
Vouch links only show up when a post is [dead], though. In this case there were enough flags to show [flag] but not enough to kill it.
Years ago, yes. Not so anymore. Last year they flagged/removed all submissions of a NYT op-ed (written by an Indian guy) that blamed rich white liberals for the SFBA housing crisis. Tells you all you need to know about the HN echo chamber
Actually it doesn't. Readers would need a link to what you're talking about so they could see for themselves what happened and make up their own minds about it, including whether it's relevant here. Sinister complaints like this never come with links because that would reveal the other side of the story, which is rarely anything like how the sinister complainer is framing it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Edit: while I have you: why is your account named after a war criminal (https://www.google.com/search?q=dirlewanger)? Someone complained to me about this a few weeks ago, and it does seem like a trollish username, which is not allowed here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25360889.
For example, in the company I work for, sometimes I slip into the mode of feeling like I "own" the product we're making, making an extra effort, being emotionally invested, etc. But then I remember, I would just be a fool who works for his employer for free. Also, achieving change requires a lot more effort and often fails, which can be demotivating. In general, I feel like I could run things substantially better if I had the power. Seeing the mediocrity at fairly successful companies makes me really think about working at a startup.
This hits close to home.
Starting a company does nothing to prevent others from stealing your work. Just puts more effort on the business owner to source business and protect their IP.
It looks like one of the core issues is that it seemed to Tesla that a recall just might kill the company at that time. So they felt that in order to protect the existence of the company, they really needed to be quiet about the floor mats at all costs. They probably rationalized it as "well, how hard is it to check if your floor mat is curling up" or something.
So that seems to be a structural issue. When it comes to the existence of your job or your company, it's too easy to rationalize unethical acts. At least for most people. Especially if their boss tells them to do it.
"That’s a reason Balan, with a stated net worth of $50,000, gives to explain why she is representing herself — she doesn’t have to pay lawyers, so time is her only expense."
Gregory Reyes $5,000 (shortseller) Donna Walker $1,212 (shortseller) NetflixAndLamp $1,000 (shortseller) DIP Harambe $500 (shortseller) Machine Planet $500 (shortseller) Paul Shust $250 (shortseller) Naked Shortseller $100 (shortseller) Oslo Skeptic $100 (shortseller) Bones ThreeZero $50 (shortseller)
Since someone downvoted me, above are known TESLAQ folks and some are confirmed shortsellers while others tweet incessantly anything negative on this company but I cannot confirm 100% that they have short positions in this stock right now.
Being funded by short sellers does not imply her case is false: they can be independent, albeit the same goal ("your enemy is my friend").
PS: Tesla fans or stock holders could be the reason why this story was initially flagged
Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) successfully sued Gawker with the backing of investor Peter Thiel, who had a well-known grudge against them. That doesn't take away from the fact that Gawker grossly invaded people's privacy in order to turn a profit on harmful gossip.
They just want to make a buck and posture as if they have some moral quandry with the company or their leadership.
I never could understand how what he said wasn't considered defamation. If that's not defamation, what is?
The legal system has a concept of "no harm no foul," (i.e. the concept of a "tort"), and if nobody believed Elon's obviously stupid tweet, there would be no tort to sue on.
Bottom line is that it's very hard to win defamation cases in the US. The Tesla engineer might have a shot because she was not well known, and Tesla accused her of very specific acts (moonlighting, unapproved travel) and they knew those accusations to be false. On the other hand, these were not exactly crimes, so who knows.
Marketing tricks are the most important thing in the business world as shown by Tesla, Jeep, Apple, and Nintendo.
Not that I buy their stuff, but some people still do.