Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by acdha » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #51

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.

ArsTechnica also does this routinely and they often post substantial updates (e.g. updating the title, bumping it back up on the homepage) once they get a response, so I’m really skeptical of claims that this is anything other than the balance you described.

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

#62

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

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.

By that logic, would you say that fossil fuel subsidies are also unfair?

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

#63

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #34

Ok, I can write out the script for this knowing only the headline. - Elon defenders will jump in and claim it's all lies - Elon haters will chime in with "j'accuse!" I honestly don't know the truth about this (few would) but let me point some things: 1. I would find it strange if sales people were paid bonuses (let alone commissions) on non-real sales. 2. Even if bonuses were paid when no money was paid by the custom…

This behaviour is happening in sales departments in companies all over the world. The only reason it's of any interest here is because SolarCity has Musk's name associated with it.

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

#64

Post by slivym » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #40

So, I have no idea what the truth is, but didn't Solar City get bought out by Tesla? In that case, it would seem like it would have been better to clear the books with an audit of past sales, so as to make the price Tesla would have to pay for Solar City, something easier for Tesla to pay. But, I am not a finance person.

The Tesla purchase of Solar City cannot be thought of like a normal purchase- because of Musk's role. Solar City had all sorts of problems before the purchase - it lost >20% of its workforce in 2016 and cut the salaries of it's founders to $1. There was also some really questionable self-dealing like SpaceX buying SolarCity bonds.

It makes perfect sense for Musk as a person to use Tesla to support Solarcity - one of his enterprises supporting another. But that's not how public companies work, you can't force Tesla shareholders to overpay SolarCity shareholders for a buyout simply because Musk personally wants to see SolarCity succeed.But when you view it in that context is makes perfect sense to see why Musk didn't try very hard to drive a hard bargain purchasing SC.

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

#65

Post by dathmar » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

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…

Not only this, but they state "'thousands' of bogus SolarCity accounts may have been created". The average install is $15K-29K [0]. So even is there was 1000 fake accounts at $15k that's $15 million in missing sales?

Add to that even though SolarCity's revenues were about $480M it looks like almost half of that was from leases and incentives [1]. So on the lowest end we are saying 5% of all revenue was faked?

[0] https://www.sunrun.com/solar-lease/cost-of-solar [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/505770/revenue-of-solarc...

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

#66

Post by mrfredward » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #40

So, I have no idea what the truth is, but didn't Solar City get bought out by Tesla? In that case, it would seem like it would have been better to clear the books with an audit of past sales, so as to make the price Tesla would have to pay for Solar City, something easier for Tesla to pay. But, I am not a finance person.

SolarCity was founded and run by Elon Musk's cousins. The conflict of interest has been a topic of discussion for quite some time, and some claim that Tesla intentionally ignored problems at SolarCity when deciding to do the deal.

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

#67

Post by mikro2nd » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #58

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?

No. Far from it. But this "if I don't get an instant response" trick seems to me a cheap and shabby form of journalistic laziness. At the very least, if they don't get a response "instantly", "on Sunday", the very least they could do is follow up with a phone call on Monday and print an amendment, or better, a more balanced rewrite representing all sides fairly when they do receive a response in a more reasonable timespan. I've seldom seen any.

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

#68

Post by kashyapc » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #51

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.

That "reaching out" habit out of instinct should be curbed. I realize it's the game of journalism -- "we should report it first!" But just because the journalist's business model requires to "publish as quickly as possible", they shouldn't pressure companies, who already have to deal with mountains of crap.

(Not that I'm the "fondness for large, opaque corporations" kind; just trying to think fairly where it deserves to be.)

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

#69

Post by ryanlol » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

mikro2nd wrote: post #67

ryanlol wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you always think of the media as an adversary?

No. Far from it. But this "if I don't get an instant response" trick seems to me a cheap and shabby form of journalistic laziness. At the very least, if they don't get a response "instantly", "on Sunday", the very least they could do is follow up with a phone call on Monday and print an amendment, or better, a more balanced rewrite representing all sides fairly when they do receive a response in a more reasonable tim…

This story came out Tuesday, "shabby form of journalistic laziness" is really a stretch.

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

#70

Post by elisharobinson » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

so they reached out to tesla on sunday and waited for 1 day before posting the article, named elon personally on 3 occasions in a 3 para article and did not find it wise to reach out to him for comment.and arstechnica is a reputed source i can't help but doubt why they have a new found vendetta against elon. the trends on the comment section of the article are also informative.