Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 194 posts

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

#51

Post by mikeash »

mikro2nd wrote: post #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 c…

I don’t think it’s done intentionally to make companies look bad. It’s just the inevitable result of two conflicting goals: to reach out for comment from the subject of the article, and to publish as quickly as possible.

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

#52

Post by marshall313 »

briandear wrote: post #42
onepremise wrote: post #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.

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.

If we'd have a carbon tax to level off the economic incentives indirectly received by oil companies and ICE vehicles manufacturers, those products would be much more expensive. Then we can honestly compare which car is cheaper.

Apart from that, I also don't get the 'baby boomers against Tesla' argument.

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

#53

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tango24 wrote: post #32
shafyy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would wager that anything in a range 10%-50% of missing revenue, for a publicly traded company, would be caught by external auditor. And I’d im not mistaken, external auditors are required. If I’m wrong on either of those accounts, then I’d be seriously concerned about our stock market.

This shouldn’t have me laugh out loud, but it did.

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

#54

Post by millzlane »

mikro2nd wrote: post #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 c…

Dark patterns are everywhere.

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

#55

Post by hbosch »

mikro2nd wrote: post #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 c…

> 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.

You believe journalists include those statements as a form of attack?

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

#56

Post by _ea1k »

I think Solar City didn't have a great reputation when they were independent, and I think those problems linger.

In Tesla's defense, they have trimmed back sales considerably and it seems like they are moving to a retail model in the future. I think that has the potential to be a lot more sustainable and less ripe for abuse.

At least, I hope so.

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

#57

Post by pc86 »

Hello71 wrote: post #20
pc86 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When everyone pays bonuses on unrealized revenue it puts you at a hiring disadvantage to pay bonuses off of realized revenue only, or to cut future bonuses when revenue doesn't materialize.

Yes, it in fact does put you at a hiring advantage because it will select for employees actually selling products instead of claiming to sell them.

Realized revenue will always be a percentage of unrealized revenue less than 100%. So by definition paying off of realized revenue at the same rate means you're going to be paying less in commissions to your sales staff.

If I'm a salesperson looking for my next gig you're going to have to prove that you're paying a high enough commission for it to be worth it to me.

But most importantly, why would a salesperson who can make a $15k commission immediately work someplace where they need to wait for the sales and billing cycles to complete? That could easily be 30-60 days after start and will put you tens of thousands in commissions behind your competitors. And if a salesperson quits or is terminated do they still get commissions 30-60+ days in the future? Unlikely, especially if there's any bad blood.

From a business standpoint it's easier to pay on unrealized revenue and decrease the overall commission amount such that it's still profitable even when you're paying commission on money the company doesn't see.

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

#58

Post by ryanlol »

mikro2nd wrote: post #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 c…

Do you always think of the media as an adversary?

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

#59

Post by _ea1k »

shafyy wrote: 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…

The way that I read it was that it was a huge guess and that it was largely in reference to bookings, rather than billings. It wouldn't be booked at revenue at that point, so it would show up as inaccurate revenue forecasting.

Of course, the statements themselves were so hand-wavy that its hard to say for sure.

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

#60

Post by rhcom2 »

mikro2nd wrote: post #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 c…

I think you're adding an emotional component that might not be there. Journalism is always a race to break stories first and in our new world of web journalism that means immediately and not just when you have to send the paper to print. It also means they can do the normal "this story has been updated with XYZ's generic PR response."
Post reply on HN