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Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

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Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#102

We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations. As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industry in the world — they don't love the idea of T…

So should our cynicism with respect to corporate ethics be aimed at Tesla only? Or do other corporations sometimes do bad/unethical/paranoid/greedy things too? I suppose its just Tesla.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#103
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it the company’s responsibility to rehabilitate someone over probably-criminal action? I agree that promoting someone unstable enough to commit sabotaging changes to a company would be the wrong move. It’s not like he is forcing anyone to work there.

I’m not saying he should be promoted now or before. I’m saying company culture is to blame for this or at least should be the first thing to review instead of blaming the employee immediately. what if the next person that doesn’t get promoted suicides?

You're conflating two issues here. The company is not responsible for the decisions of its employees relating to promotions. It is the employee that chooses to do something irrational for whatever reason. I agree that a company should reflect on any given incident to determine whether there internal factors that may have contributed to its outcome, however ensuring the personal lives of employees are in tip-top shape is not something a company should ever be responsible for.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#104
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it the company’s responsibility to rehabilitate someone over probably-criminal action? I agree that promoting someone unstable enough to commit sabotaging changes to a company would be the wrong move. It’s not like he is forcing anyone to work there.

I’m not saying he should be promoted now or before. I’m saying company culture is to blame for this or at least should be the first thing to review instead of blaming the employee immediately. what if the next person that doesn’t get promoted suicides?

Nobody is entitled to a promotion. One is promoted based on merit. And the promotee is not the judge of merit. If someone commits suicide because they didn't get a promotion then I'd argue that person is likely to unstable to be working.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#105
post #42

We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations. As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industry in the world — they don't love the idea of T…

Everyone these days is being overloaded with an amount of information - they will never be trained to handle that no previous generation has ever handled What we are watching unfold across any and every issue, are symptoms of people breaking down due to that overload. To handle this new over saturated info environment (which up until now has been sold to everyone as a good thing) one must look to professions that are…

i thought we already solved that; it's called journalism

just read the economist or NYT or whatever you like and stfu instead of thinking you're going to somehow to a better job gathering and exploring information than that

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#106
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone these days is being overloaded with an amount of information - they will never be trained to handle that no previous generation has ever handled What we are watching unfold across any and every issue, are symptoms of people breaking down due to that overload. To handle this new over saturated info environment (which up until now has been sold to everyone as a good thing) one must look to professions that are…

i thought we already solved that; it's called journalism just read the economist or NYT or whatever you like and stfu instead of thinking you're going to somehow to a better job gathering and exploring information than that

I'd like to do that. But every time there is a story about something I really do know about, it is so wrong as to be highly misleading.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of resentment and "hate" on HN about Elon and quite honestly I don't understand where it is coming from. Where are the facts that Elon/Tesla is one gigantic fraud? Where is the scientific proof?

For me, personally, I strongly dislike the Hyperloop and Loop proposals. I can provide lots of details about why these systems suck as public transit options (and I've done so in the past several times), but there has tended to be an annoying cohort that rejects any and all criticism, no matter how reasoned it is. While I don't particularly pay attention to Tesla and Space X, I've noticed that there is similarly a ve…

Personally speaking I’ve been a fan of Musk’s endeavors simply because they tend to actually move where other options creep along painstakingly slowly, get stalled, or are canned entirely.

Focusing on the loop stuff specifically, even if it’s not the optimal transport solution it’s better than the alternative “better” solution that will be in a state of decay by the time it’s finished or never see the light of day at all. Musk doesn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good and I think that’s important in an age where it’s more normal for major infrastructure projects to collapse on themselves or otherwise get gummed up indefinitely than it is for them to succeed.

I don’t endorse his behavior on Twitter lately but I do feel that the efforts of his companies have merit.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#108
post #39

We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations. As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industry in the world — they don't love the idea of T…

I guess we'll see how serious they are about these accusations if they sue the employee or file criminal charges; if the industrial espionage & sabotage accusations are true, it should be easy to make them stick - and having told the whole company about them, Musk now needs to take action or else forfeit credibility & deterrence (both for not being a liar, and for punishing theft/sabotage).

The fact Musk still has any credibility at all given his penchant for making wild claims that inevitably fall flat is baffling to me. How many more spurious predictions and imaginary milestones does he need to pump out before people recognise him for the huckster monorail salesman that he is?

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#109
post #84

I made this same comment on the other discussion. I find it concerning that one person was able to push malicious code to 'production'. To me, this suggests that Tesla, a company building highly sensitive software, does not employ basic branch policies. How is is it that these changes could have made it through a code review process and get deployed? If a company like Microsoft or Google announced that a disgruntled…

This is a very naive comment. There will always be a small handful of engineers that can push the button to move code into PROD or even change code in PROD live. Ideally, with mature controls, the people in this list is short. But to jump to the conclusion that Tesla doesn't use good practises is very short sighted. Who's to say that external parties didn't target this person specifically because of their role/influe…

It seems far more likely that the controls were lax than that the saboteur was one of those privileged few. It's not a naive comment.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#110
post #39

We need to figure out if he was acting alone or with others at Tesla and if he was working with any outside organizations. As you know, there are a long list of organizations that want Tesla to die. These include Wall Street short-sellers, who have already lost billions of dollars and stand to lose a lot more. Then there are the oil & gas companies, the wealthiest industry in the world — they don't love the idea of T…

I guess we'll see how serious they are about these accusations if they sue the employee or file criminal charges; if the industrial espionage & sabotage accusations are true, it should be easy to make them stick - and having told the whole company about them, Musk now needs to take action or else forfeit credibility & deterrence (both for not being a liar, and for punishing theft/sabotage).

My read of the email gave me the impression that the person had essentially confessed to doing the deed. So "making the accusation stick" should not be an issue right?
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