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’ve never spoken with a Tesla employee, current or former, who hasn’t corroborated this information about working conditions. Doesn’t matter if you are a line worker in the factory or an engineer in the design offices, you are expected to put work above all else, keep your nose down and your mouth shut.
I’ll never buy a Tesla because of the shit that I’ve heard about how they treat their employees there, let alone that dipshit Musk spouting off about full self driving and never following through.
Yep, he got Tesla where it was quickly by squeezing everything he could out of the talent that was hired by the original founders. They got a relatively decent car out of it initially (compared to the competition, which was basically just the Nissan Leaf), but now they’re probably struggling to retain/find talent to continue running the company and designing new cars.
He also hired people to fudge the fucking numbers. At one point he had more venture capital in pure slush money than the entire US automobile market had in their banks.
There was never any reason for that other than defrauding investors.
The Elongated Muskrat is the weirdest hype beast I’ve ever seen.
He stumbles his way through sentences, has zero confidence when speaking, and ummm and uhhhs like a college freshman doing his first presentation that he prepared the morning of.
And yet, he’s generated billions of dollars in funding based purely off of hype for things that he, by track record, only has about a 10% chance of delivering.
It’s bizarre.
Occasionally, I get video links from people praising how great and visionary Musk is. Then I look at the video, and all I see is a mediocre presentation. He should consider taking a few courses on public speaking. That could make him deliver his ideas more fluently, but at the moment I’m having trouble taking him seriously.
Well, he’s a level three hyper genius. Are you?
I will never buy one, never even thought about it. Two things though, the 1st generation roadster was not anything like a leaf. 2nd, nearly $500,000,000 of the early funding was from the federal government and around $3,200,000,000 from California. Now the new federal bet on Tesla charging stations is around $7,500,000,000. It may have all been worth it to help the car industry need to compete wiith other electric vehicles, but the government could have easily picked a better choice for all that scratch.
I believe the other commenter was saying that initially Tesla’s only competition was lacking (“basically like the Leaf”), not saying that the Tesla product was.
Now that Tesla faces credible competition from other automakers, they face a much steeper challenge to retain their market share.
Ditto. I’ve seen lots of rumors that the software stack is an utter mess as a result. Musk’s Uber librarian attitude means he only ever gets junior devs.
The pay has been below market for a while now. He’s tried selling “on the mission” which is totally spoiled now.
I expect other manufacturers are going to catch up quick.
The librarians your just insulted. Oof. Not cool.
Yep, imagine trusting the self-driving tech written by someone that runs a software team like that.
spouting off about full self driving and never following through.
That was Musk too laying on the whip demanding progress and a breakthrough with the team running head first into fundamental technical limitations. It was made worse with him putting on even more restrictions with vision only.
It’s a gigantic red flag when the boss supposedly fires people because he doesn’t like the way they looked at him.
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
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The economical viability to put evs in the market.
Clearly ev was viable. Electric engines have always been better, batteries were simply not good enough 20 years ago. Old automotive companies have been lobbying to claim evs weren’t economical viable until very recently. 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, market would be on the same position, because the lack of willingness came from the corruption of the existing automotive companies of the time.
You are confirming what I am saying. Old car companies are even worst than tesla… This is the bleak situation we are living
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
The same issues persist to this day, but if you said something bad about Tesla 3 or 4 years ago, you’d get all these left-wing environmentalists screaming down your neck because they sooooooo wanted EVs to succeed that they completely fell for that clown Elon’s bullshit. Lo and behold that he was totally just playing liberals like a fiddle and he actually is a right wing psychopath.
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.
80 years of living in the church of capitalism will do that to you.
Not to mention protesting likely means becoming homeless. It means losing insurance, it means losing you car insurance and likely paying a hefty premium when you can get it again. It means losing access to food, Healthcare. It means risking being barred from future employment.
So let’s vote? Well turns out your district is shaped like a contorted snake, and unless you convince 60% of people who will vote for any loony who hates the same people they do, to help their neighbor for once, well you’re SOL.
Leaving your job doesn’t automatically mean becoming homeless and starving. That is a pretty extreme and unrealistic stance.
When 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (by design) it really does.
How do you propose they make rent the next month with no money?
By having a social security net like in any developed country
Did you maybe not see the context of my comment?
We’re talking about whether or not it’s feasible for your average American to quit their job in protest in order to secure workers rights (of which a social security net is part) and your contribution is that they can quit their job in protest to get things like a social security net, by already having a social security net?
Very helpful, thank you
No it pretty much does, I’m lucky I’m on disability. Cuz in this one horse town, you can go months or years between jobs. I may be getting paid in chump change and pizza parties…
But at least I can eat pizza…
Too many of us thought of ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I did when I was a teenager, it seems most of our parents never grew out of being teenagers.
Too many of us thought of ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Don’t know why that was in past tense. This is still such a massive issue in American society.
Looking good for your age!
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.
Ok I’m not even from the states, but you should be able to get to Washington DC in less than a day from North Carolina. Hell, anywhere on the east coast is within 5 hours from a huge metropolitan centre
Fellow Tarheel here, and bud if it takes you “days” to drive to the nearest major city, you should have your car looked at. I drove from San Diego to Raleigh in 60 hours once.
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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 or Atlanta, GA 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?
they can’t, really. they probably see a lot of wrongful termination lawsuits, and try to settle them out of court.
Wrongful termination suits are hard to win. If they can point at you failing to do your job in any way your case is shot.
The trade off between job security and arbitrary firings and people who are unproductive but can’t be fired.
The first is a problem for the worker, the second is mainly a problem for the employer.
While I bet that the employers claim that it’s impossible to do and will lead to the downfall of the economy it has worked just fine in Europe.
I do think it’s good to create a healthy culture that respects workers, but I don’t understand why being able to fire an employee is a bad thing
Imagine you’re not allowed to fire people you don’t like who you think are doing a bad job at work
It’s obviously not forbidden to fire people. You just can’t do it like that, because you woke up grumpy that particular morning. Employees are highly protected in France, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fired.
Indeed. That still happens. Just you have to have a valid reason to fire them. Not liking someone is a petty reason to fire someone. Not doing their job is another thing altogether.
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.”
Companies pay when people make mistakes.
Why the fuck would you fire someone when you just paid for a lesson that prevents further mistakes?
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.
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 whether they lie or tell the truth anyway. Fucked up personal experience.
But they do still hide stuff. And lose all respect for punishment.
There is a story about a Japanese airline pilot who had to ditch a plane near I want to say San Francisco. No major injuries, no fatalities. When questioned during the inquiry, he said something to the effect of “I believe you Americans have a saying ‘I fucked up’”, and completely took responsibility. Instead of firing him, in recognition of his honesty, the airline demoted him back to the beginning of the pilot rankings and had him work his way back up. Within a decade he was back in his former position. The lesson is, own your mistakes!
Sounds like Tesla factory workers should form a union.
Wonder how much harder is it to form one in Texas compared to California
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).
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.
sortof. my advice would be to refuse signing a severance or anything else they might give you after that point, and to give it to a lawyer instead. they will probably consult for free and let you know if you have a case. i bet a company like that sees a lot of wrongful termination lawsuits, and they probably like to settle outside of court.
Nothing shocking if you kept up with the Xitter debacle.
Elmo has been firing anyone with even the slightest hint of critique.
Bastion of freedom of speech so long as you are a yes person!
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?
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… ;-)
long hours, unsafe conditions, and harassment for employees
He’s racing Jeff Bezos to the bottom.
Wish he’d race Stockton Rush instead.
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
He’s south African and has roots in emerald mining… he’d use slaves in a heartbeat and not lose sleep at all.
Nah he’d 100% replace humans with robots if he could. Way more efficient. No need for water, food, toilets, breaks, hell even lights technically speaking. Huge huge list of pros for him. (Don’t hate me I’m all for complete world automation)
It’s not that shocking; I read a positive profile on Musk almost 10 years ago where he nevertheless fired an employee on the spot for not immediately knowing the answer to some random question Musk had for him.
How is this legal? Does the US have zero employee protection regulation?
If this happened in NZ, the business owner would be put through the ringer and it would be front page news (it’s been front page plenty here) for unfair dismissal.
The laws are there, sure. But if you become a corporate “whistle blower” you’re not likely to get a job again. And the company will just drown the accusations in fines and litigation and nothing changes because we’re poor and solo, because we’re not unionized because if we try we get fired (again, illegally).
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.
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.
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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.
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There are employment rules though, right? Aside from wage disputes I mean, which in terms of law are more related to contract execution than employment rules. For cases specifically to do with employment rules, who enforces the rule? In other rich western countries exist entities like Employment New Zealand and Fair Work Australia to manage this as a primary function. The US doesn’t have one.
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Typical Amurica
Government bad. Job creators good.
Freedumb!
Most of the states have at-will laws. Meaning companies can fire people without cause as they please.
