Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 194 posts

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

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Journalists being critical isn't them launching a war, it's them attempting to leave no stone unturned. When you only do your job some of the time, it's reasonable to question your motivation. We've had years of Tesla and Musk puff-pieces and it's only in the last few months that journalists have decided to leave no stone unturned en masse.

> we've had years of Tesla and Musk puff-pieces and it's only in the last few months that journalists have decided to leave no stone unturned en masse

You're complaining about the disease and then complaining about the cure. When Tesla was flush with cash and the recovery was young, the operating and financial envelope was wide. Tesla had the room (i.e. capital and investors' patience) to screw up.

Elon has said he won't raise more capital. He has more investors than before. Many of them have been holding for years. In that midst, he has announced ambitious (i.e. expensive) schedules. That combination creates a precarious envelope. Combine that with being later in the economic cycle, and heightened attention is warranted.

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

#42

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.

Why are “baby boomers” looking to destroy Tesla? What evidence is there that there is actually a generation of people opposed to Tesla? Fossil Fuel supporters don’t have any hatred of Tesla — perhaps they just object to the unfair tax advantages that make a Tesla cost less than the market would actually support.

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

#43

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…

Maybe there is some meat behind these allegations; it seems that Musk has been losing his cool recently; like with the Thai cave incident when he called one of the rescuers a pedophile. Could be a sign that things are not going well.

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

#44
A trend that's been growing for quite a (long!) while now is exemplified by this article: "Tesla did not respond to Ars’ request for comment on Sunday."

Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?

The other major variant of this shyster tactic is along the lines of, "Company X failed to respond immediately when asked for comment." No company is able to respond immediately, particularly not on an issue that's likely contentious. Any response would need to be run by their PR and legal people at the very least.

It's a cheap and nasty way to make companies look/feel uncaring about the issue being reported, but imho it does nothing but reflect poorly on the reporter and publication using these smelly tactics, and leaves me wondering what other agendas they may have running.

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

#46
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. Its a pretty common problem in sales. Lots of sales people are constantly moving jobs and pushing their numbers up.

Who are these poor souls paying out bonuses and commissions on unrealized revenue?

There can be a lot of weird bonus structures kicking around too. For a while, my girlfriend worked in sales at Oracle, and while they were trying to push their cloud offerings, the had some crazy-pants bonuses for any cloud sales; on the order of $4-6000 a quarter if you sold cloud subscriptions. So she got her dad to buy $300 worth of hosting for his auto parts side business, and collected 20x that in bonus.

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

#47
post #31

My partner worked for various solar companies (But not Solar City) as a canvasser hoping to get some sales experience. As a result we got to see first hand how corrupt and underhanded their sales departments could be. Canvassers were exploited mercilessly and commissions never appeared as new requirements were added to the payouts. Paychecks bounced periodically. Canvassers would be told to go door to door in areas w…

Such things are common in sales in general. It's absolutely cutthroat. Salespeople, managers, everyone is in a Hobbesian all-against-all fight to the death for commissions. Crime and fraud are abundant. Personal attacks are not even that uncommon. Anyone who doesn't play this game tends to get muscled out.

It's obviously worse in some organizations than others, but it's probably harder to create a non-toxic sales org than to create a toxic one. Some organizations encourage toxic sales organizations because unfortunately it works, at least in the short term. It can do damage later but that's long after commissions have been earned.

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Journalists being critical isn't them launching a war, it's them attempting to leave no stone unturned. When you only do your job some of the time, it's reasonable to question your motivation. We've had years of Tesla and Musk puff-pieces and it's only in the last few months that journalists have decided to leave no stone unturned en masse.

> we've had years of Tesla and Musk puff-pieces and it's only in the last few months that journalists have decided to leave no stone unturned en masse You're complaining about the disease and then complaining about the cure. When Tesla was flush with cash and the recovery was young, the operating and financial envelope was wide. Tesla had the room ( i.e. capital and investors' patience) to screw up. Elon has said he…

>You're complaining about the disease and then complaining about the cure.

I'm not, I'm saying when someone treats you badly for ten years then suddenly changes their attitude, it's reasonable to wonder what motivated the change.

Tesla stopped being flush with cash and the recovery stopped being young years ago. He's announced ambitious production schedules (and missed them) multiple times. The 'we won't need more capital' thing? He first said that in 2011. Since then he's come back to raise money several times.

The real difference I see this time is a perceived closeness with Trump and general misbehavior on twitter.

Hmm, seem to have struck a chord here. Anyone want to actually say what you disagree with so strongly?

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

#49

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 have yet to meet a "fossil fuel supporter" or any person looking to destroy any alternative fuel source.

The closest I've ever come to that is people I know who actually work in oil drilling that defend fracking...

Aside from that, there is the crowd that wants more nuclear power if people are serious about getting off of fossil fuels...but I really can't say I've ever met somebody who was ANTI "energy sources".

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

#50

A trend that's been growing for quite a (long!) while now is exemplified by this article: " Tesla did not respond to Ars’ request for comment on Sunday. " Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday ? The other major variant of this shyster tactic is along the lines of, "Company X failed to respond immediately when asked for comment." No c…

> Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?

Jeez. Considering the story was posted today, what this probably means is that they requested commentary on Sunday, waited for the entirety of Monday, and didn't hear back until today, when they decided to post it.

Post reply on HN