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.
I’m not sure I’d consider it “shocking” more like “on par”
Right?! It’s like the guy literally modeled himself after Trump from The Apprentice.
He’s so dumb he probably thinks Trump is a good businessman.
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?
Especially now that actual car companies are coming up with their electric models.
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
I don’t disagree with you that old-world car companies have corrupt practices, but this is not why Tesla is so popular. Tesla is popular because they make luxury cars that feel fun and because Elon used to be so ebullient and good at PR.
As for Tesla being better, how? The company is just as corrupt and their R&D into self driving cars is a bit behind competitors
Teslas are not luxury cars lol.
Tesla was the first company to show that ev were an economically viable solution, and demonstrated to the world that old companies were unprepared for the future, willingly jeopardizing any innovation, if a newcomer could so easily solve the problem. That’s why tesla became a stock bubble and elon is so full of money.
And everything was true at the time, traditional car companies were unfit for the challenge. Old, corrupt, bureaucratized monsters actively blocking any type of innovation. If you read automotive ceos interviews at the time, they were betting on methane to be the only viable future. Methane, not joking… Like they didn’t even consulted a junior chemist to know how stupid of idea it was… Traditional car companies are unfortunately much worse than elon. Simply their ceos are not on X… They are to old and technically inept to do so.
Elon is bad, but the rest is worst for everyone. We shouldn’t cheer for those companies getting back the power they are luckily losing. Luckily for humanity future
deleted by creator
The economical viability to put evs in the market.
Clearly ev was viable. Electric engines are better, batteries were not good enough 20 years ago. Old automotive companies were lobbying to claim it wasn’t economical viable. Tesla is the first company that showed otherwise. Nowadays everyone is selling evs
Older companies are not stifling innovation the way you think they’re doing, in fact, I think there are fascinating research being done these days. As for the fact that their CEOs are not on Twitter, isn’t that a good thing? Would you want the CEO of a company to tweet something idiotic at 4 in the morning, wreaking havoc on stock prices and driving the company into firefighting mode, detracting energy from other parts of work?
It is absolutely good they are not on Twitter, elon unfortunately is not the answer.
Research-wise, old companies have proved for decades that they actively bribed politicians and cheated to jeopardize innovation.
I don’t know what research you are referring to, but traditional automotive companies haven’t moved forward since decades. They refined old, inadequate technologies to a extreme level until the reality bit them and they are now they’re chasing.
Automotive sector, between elon and the old, corrupted, incompetent monsters, looks bleak
Batteries, energy, computer vision, deep learning, and crash safety. I’m most excited about better and better virtual human body models reflecting actual human sizes (male, female, adult, children, obese, average sized…) being released for testing, instead of the old default-male crash dummy.
Having said all that, I only use my car on holidays. I bike to work and prefer to take long distance trains for work related trips. So, yeah, fuck cars and fuck ever expanding roads. Streets are for humans, not for cars and parking.
The GM EV-1 in the 1990s was an absolutely viable electric car that was lease-only, and practically every letter wanted to keep the car once the lease was up, but GM took them all back and crushed them.
The feasibility was there. The will to market it was not.
This is exactly what I am saying! Without tesla will be on the same position, because the lack of willingness came from the corruption of the existing automotive companies.
You are confirming what I am saying
You are so utterly clueless about cars, the car industry, and pretty much everything involving ICE and EV cars. You are far better off just stopping right here and stop commenting on subjects you know jack shit about.
I am happy you know better. Because than you know I am right.
Otherwise I’d follow your suggestion about stopping commenting on topics you don’t know jack shit about
I don’t get why people want EVs so bad. We need electric public transport and electric bicycles
EVs are meant to save the car industry, not the planet.
Surely they’re better but you’re right- we should be focusing on more transit rather than just EVs.
Because I travel in-between cities, not only intercity. Also, a travel time of 20 minutes with no changing of vehicles is nice too.
Cult of personality is an infectious disease.
And a really good song
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.
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.
(does not include LGBT+ people)
Hey! What’s wrong with my ears??
Too round. Return your passkey and get out.
No way. That would be un American. /s
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?
Maybe 10 hours if you’re in Murphy and there’s a rock slide. If you’re on Ocracoke island after 9 PM you might have to wait for morning for the next ferry.
Also, it’s REAL hard to be 6 hours away from Charlotte while you’re in either of the Carolinas, as long as you can travel at the Interstate speed limits. You should be able to drive from Bath to Boone in about 10 hours.
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.
deleted by creator
Notice how that’s almost three days
This example was provided as an estimated upper limit - you could drive to basically the furthest-away big city within 60 hours. Other cities would be substantially less than that, because that’s an upper limit.
Driving from a small town on the western tip of NC… let’s say Franklin, NC, to Washington DC takes only 8 hours… but driving to Knoxville, TN would only take you 2 hours.
If that drive takes you “days” by car, you might have an issue.
Do you walk to those cities or what?
Do you think that in Europe we all live right next to the capital or even next to one of the top 4 biggest cities of our country?
I literally already said that the times listed were driving. America as a country is too big for protest to be a feasible solution.
Why don’t you protest on the steps of the company you work at?
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.
“Just stop making mistakes. Also work overtime under stress.”
Meanwhile the thing other employees learn from the firing approach is to get better at covering up their mistakes.
And guess what happen when you ask workers to work 10 hours a day every day? Mistakes.
Or when workers aren’t guaranteed vacations. Or when vacation days are mixed up with you sick days.
A sick employee who can afford to stay home won’t cost the extra due to other employees getting sick.
Companies pay when people make mistakes.
Why the fuck would you fire someone when you just paid for a lesson that prevents further mistakes?
Same thing when children get punished too harshly or unfairly. They just learn how to lie and hide things
Non-fun fact: If you punish kids unfairly enough, they’ll stop giving a shit about lying because they get punished wether 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!
Honestly, has musk ever done anything useful other than just being the money he was born into?
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.
Their engineers and designers did the work. He was the money. At most he stirred up some attention.
Also, side note, why do these points always mention the engineers and designers doing the actual work, and almost never the assembly workers for example?
Usually I’d side with you but in this case, where the target was to introduce electric cars they weren’t the ones making the difference. On the assembly floor it’s just a job, they’d probably just have worked for Ford or Chevy building ICE cars as well.
VW had a hard time finding employees that wanted to take part in their qualification programs for assembly of their ID line in the beginning, very conservative community.
I met a test driver for Mercedes at a fast charger in 2021, he had an EQS test mule with him. Thought I’d ask some questions, got a tirade about all this electric shit won’t work and how he prefers the proper S-Class test jobs. Very conservative bunch, indeed.
The challenge was to make people talk about it and to make them want one, and that required a vision more so than just solving the engineering challenges. Their choice to first make a sports car - the Roadster - didn’t come from the engineers.
Because electric cars were a relatively new concept that needed to be designed and prototyped. That’s a job done by engineers. Factory workers don’t really come in until mass production, after the engineering is done.
Okay, but my point was about changing people’s minds about it being cool and a product you’d want to own. Tesla’s strategy was to make a sports car (the first Roadster) to show that electric cars could compete with combustion engine cars and to make people want one.
The engineers who solved the challenges needed to achieve that didn’t come up with that vision - that came from the top. Of course, that was because those guys had the money and could therefore dictate the direction, but if they wouldn’t have made that choice electric cars would most likely be mass adopted quite a few years later. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s why “engineers did the engineering work” isn’t an argument against my point.
Also, let’s be real; even now people talk about the engineers and designers being the driving force behind Tesla.
Divide and conquer by the rich. Pit white collar workers against blue collar workers so they don’t collectively rise up against the real exploiters. White collar workers are told right from the start of university that they’re on a better path and are better people than those bottom tier laborer serfs and that general attitude gets normalized even if you don’t actually believe you’re better, and it comes out without even explicitly intending to, which is precisely the point.
The engineers and designers were not the people who changed the perception of electric cars - which was needed to got us to where we are now. Both the actual founders and Musk were instrumental in pushing this.
At most he stirred up some attention
Which was definitely needed, and which he does deserve credit for. He’s still a piece of shit regardless, but that doesn’t mean we should overlook and/or dismiss the part he actually did play.
Like yeah, you’re right about engineers and designers doing the actual engineering and designing work, but it’s a generic (though correct) dunk on Musk that has little to do with the point I’m making.
But that’s like saying the engineers at Apple did all the work. But it would not have grabbed the zeitgeist without Jobs. And as much as I despise Musk you do need to give him credit for how he marketed Tesla and SpaceX. As the now is showing he was just making stuff up and lucked into some good decisions, but the accomplishment stands.
Did he really?
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).
Sounds like Tesla factory workers should form a union.
Wonder how much harder is it to form one in Texas compared to California
but but but elon sleeps on the floor!!!1!! hes so hardworking when hes tweeting literally all day and night!
Power tripping is exhausting.
Also, abusers need to keep a close eye on their victims.
when hes tweeting literally all day and night!
…when he’s Exing all night… ;-)
Nothing shocking if you kept up with the Xitter debacle.
Elmo has been firing anyone with even the slightest hint of critique.
Is this legal in the US?
It is. Most states are so fucked up they have barely any employment protection laws
And some are even trying further reduce the little remaining legislation that deters child labor exploitation.
But they don’t bat an eye using the same children as a scapegoat to push through intrusive laws, under the illusion of protecting the children 😭
The US lacks the freedoms we enjoy.
Can you imagine living somewhere with so little personal freedom?
I do whatever the fuck I want in the USA pretty much every day. It’s great.
Do you have a Bill of Rights, including all the freedoms that ours has?
I mean I can’t get fired on the spot at my work place. Don’t have to worry about a crazy neighbour shooting me. Don’t have to worry about healthcare or its costs. Nobody tells me what books I can and cannot read I can express whichever sexuality I was born with without fear of backlash Don’t have to worry if my kid will come back from school Protected by unions and the like from work bullshittery
You are right though, there is no out dated piece of paper that doesn’t update with the times :( you got me.
deleted by creator
That’s the one thing that gets me about the system is the USA. You have health insurance from your employer that can just fire you if you get sick. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, even if they don’t the insurance company might just decide not to pay out, and even if they do you have to pay hundreds of dollars in premiums.
I really don’t have to worry about any of those problems either, and I have all my needs met and everything is going well, and I have safety nets established in case they aren’t. It really is great here for me.
You have very high taxes to pay for it all and some unions can hold the country hostage (rail strikes). Unemployment is higher because employers are slow to hire because it is so hard to fire anyone and you have less pressure to work.
Nobody tells me what books I can and cannot read
There is no such restriction here. Just because a few local small town libraries complain and get a lot of media attention you can still buy and read anything.
I can express whichever sexuality I was born with
It is protected legally here also.
@RaoulDook @settoloki I can tell you Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees about the same right as America’s BoR. The difference is that americans are regularly told theirs is the greatest document, so many believe it without even knowing what other countries have.
You don’t have the Right to Bear Arms, and we do. Thus your rights are inferior and America wins as usual.
@RaoulDook Every independent freedom index I see rates Canada in the top ten, (or close) even the American-based ones, and the US lags another 10 or so slots below. These ratings literally mean there are 20 or more countries more free than the US.
So, enjoy your indoctrination. I
wonder why people want you to think you’re the most free.@RaoulDook You’re showing your American indoctrination even more. You’ve been told over and over and over that the right to bear arms is of utmost importance. Gun ownership in Canada is quite high and yet we don’t have the violence Americans have to endure every day.
Is this actually shocking or does this make perfect sense to anyone who has paid even a shred of attention to Musk’s manbaby tantrums?
long hours, unsafe conditions, and harassment for employees
He’s racing Jeff Bezos to the bottom.
Wish he’d race Stockton Rush instead.
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.
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.
He’s a billionaire, probably thinks he pays us peasants too much for what we deliver, and would absolutely replace us for slaves if he could
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)
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).
Sigh.
Well, that begs the next question. Do you not have laws to protect whistleblowers and allow anonymous whistleblowing?
Yup. But they don’t work. Same problems. They’ll get dog piled by litigation, threats, and investigations. meanwhile said whistle blower is unemployed and getting raked through the mud. Not much protection going on.
Which is why being able to whistle blow anonymously is so important
Typical Amurica
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.
deleted by creator
The DoL doesn’t have anything to do with unfair dismissal such as is reported in this case. In fact, a large proportion of US work contracts explicitly allow the employer to terminate the contract for any reason with no notice.
Government bad. Job creators good.
Freedumb!
Most of the states have at-will laws. Meaning companies can fire people without cause as they please.
If you are suprised about Elon, then it’s your fault. He has always been like this.
