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Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 194 posts

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#22
post #9
post #5

"This tactic allegedly resulted, this person said, in tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue." SolarCity had revenues of ~$480M in 2016 [0]. "Tens of hundreds of millions" would mean billions of dollars of phantom revenue. Even if that fake revenue would be distributed over a couple of years, it would have been a significant proportion of SolarCity's revenue. Just seems unrealistic that the SEC or…

That construction is so weird that I'm going to assume it was a typo and that they meant "tens or hundreds"

Ok. So it could be either $40M or $400M - that's a huge range. Let's assume something in the middle, like $200m. Does it seem credible to you guys that nobody except the three plaintiffs noticed that SolarCity faked half of their 2016 revenue?

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#23
Idk, all this hearsay and the saboteur rebranded whistleblower coming out against TSLA/SolarCity with no real substantial proof. Still cant help but wonder if it's just the usual stock shorters creating new opportunities for themselves or fossil fuel supporters and baby boomers looking for new ways to destroy TSLA.

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#25

Why are we blaming the employees when these kind of things come from high pressure management. Everyone is aware the Elon works his employees to death at Tesla, SpaceX, and apparently SolarCity. I feel like these tech companies are great for consumers and shareholders, but employees are worked like dogs to keep the profit flowing.

There's no reason both can't be at fault.

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#26

Idk, all this hearsay and the saboteur rebranded whistleblower coming out against TSLA/SolarCity with no real substantial proof. Still cant help but wonder if it's just the usual stock shorters creating new opportunities for themselves or fossil fuel supporters and baby boomers looking for new ways to destroy TSLA.

Certainly a lot of short sellers ( and bulls ) spreading rumors online, but this seems more like the continuation of the war between elon musk and journalists.

There have been a surprising number of hit pieces by a number of news companies against musk and his companies lately. I think I've seen more negative news articles concerning elon musk in the past 4 months than the 4 years before that.

There seems to be a pattern that whenever someone challenges journalists or their industry, they gang up and pile on.

I think it's going to be an interesting couple of months for elon musk as I think these journalists are just getting warmed up with their anti-musk hit pieces.

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#27

Why are we blaming the employees when these kind of things come from high pressure management. Everyone is aware the Elon works his employees to death at Tesla, SpaceX, and apparently SolarCity. I feel like these tech companies are great for consumers and shareholders, but employees are worked like dogs to keep the profit flowing.

That's a shite excuse. "Just following orders" etc.

Have you worked at a company before?

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#28
post #6
post #4

Kinda hope these accusations are mostly true in a way, since Ars doesn't seem to show any compunction about naming names filed in a lawsuit. Would suck for the named persons if it turns out to be entirely false. I miss when journalists at least pretended to have standards.

It does seem like the involved persons' names are public, no?

Yes but few bother to read lawsuits. Most read news coverage of lawsuits.

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#29

Idk, all this hearsay and the saboteur rebranded whistleblower coming out against TSLA/SolarCity with no real substantial proof. Still cant help but wonder if it's just the usual stock shorters creating new opportunities for themselves or fossil fuel supporters and baby boomers looking for new ways to destroy TSLA.

I cant tell if Elon sent his reddit marketing team to bombard HN too.

I got 5 downvotes for mentioning that tech companies are working their employees like dogs.

Re: Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales

#30

Idk, all this hearsay and the saboteur rebranded whistleblower coming out against TSLA/SolarCity with no real substantial proof. Still cant help but wonder if it's just the usual stock shorters creating new opportunities for themselves or fossil fuel supporters and baby boomers looking for new ways to destroy TSLA.

Certainly a lot of short sellers ( and bulls ) spreading rumors online, but this seems more like the continuation of the war between elon musk and journalists. There have been a surprising number of hit pieces by a number of news companies against musk and his companies lately. I think I've seen more negative news articles concerning elon musk in the past 4 months than the 4 years before that. There seems to be a pat…

> the war between elon musk and journalists

Elon is attempting to maneuver Tesla through a tight operating and financial envelope. He is doing so with public funding. Of course you're going to have a lot of debate about what he's doing. Journalists being critical isn't them launching a war, it's them attempting to leave no stone unturned.

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