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

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

#141

Post by KirinDave »

zaroth wrote: post #122
notfromhere wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, voting patterns in the US prove this wrong.

Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory. VC funded startups get the advantage of growing ahead of profit, and booking tax losses which they can carry forward. Bootstrapping means growth driven by profit, which necessitates paying income taxes on the ever growing cash b…

> Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory.

There's no doubt that we get better tax solutions in the short term. Long term, it makes government services we rely upon to sustain our business untenable. This is the problem with an "economic self-interest" argument: scale matters.

There's also the point that in the grand scheme of things, our companies don't matter and their short term windfalls shouldn't come at the cost of funding for education and social services that make it possible to sustain a healthy economy in the future. I certainly don't think my nascent company is more important than funding public education for the next generation in my country.

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

#142

Post by vkou »

_ea1k wrote: post #56

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.

Keep in mind that the only reason for why non-utility deployment of solar makes economic sense was due to extremely generous subsidies, and net meter billing.

Which are not going to stick around forever.

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

#143

Post by PeterMikhailov »

foxyv wrote: 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…

Where in the US do you get arrested for working as a door to door sale person ?

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

#144

Post by KirinDave »

linuxftw wrote: post #136
KirinDave wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some might argue this is the exact nature of government subsidies. I'm not sure why that's bad though. It's true it'd be nice if US science was unfettered by the constant funding-directed pressure to find novel ways to kill people (or support folks doing said killing), but it is true that it spurs research in a variety of areas. > Either solar needs to be the most cost effective solution for their energy needs, or…

> It's a consequence of any insufficiently regulated industry where the penalty for fraud is less than the profit of fraud. It's a fundamental feature of capitalism when untethered from objective assessments of value. That is not a feature or consequence of capitalism. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for fraud are independent of the economic system itself. > I hope people understand that this…

> That is not a feature or consequence of capitalism. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for fraud are independent of the economic system itself.

This is a pretty lousy comeback to my argument. A better comeback might have been, "Why would economic penalties for fraud be effective if you're arguing that economic self-interest doesn't have a strong effect on the actions of humans?"

> For instance, in the following article [1] (top relevant, second overall google search result for 'why buy an electric car'):

The question is not, "Can humans rationalize decisions?" The question is, "On balance, is 'economic self-interest' a good model for predicting human behavior at any given scale?" No one here is arguing that humans can't rationalize.

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

#145

Post by linuxftw »

dv_dt wrote: post #130
linuxftw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh then, is the subsidy for fossil fuels and roads driving increased intensity of hurricane storms? I am unable to reply to this directly due to comment depth. Public highways provide certain economic incentives. Land that would be of marginal utility due to transportation costs without public highways now has greater economic utility. This utility provides economic incentives to private automobiles to capitalize o…

> Increased economic destruction by hurricanes (whether worsened by fossil fuels or not) is due to government providing economic incentives to construct in coastal areas subject to hurricane damage. No, infrastructure built to hurricane standards 50 years ago might be perfectly strong to stand against current storms of the time. If increased storm strength is cause by fossil fuels (and that likelyhood is strongly sup…

> Shouldn't that industry have to pay?

The US government says they shouldn't have to pay. I doubt there is enough data to state empirically that storm 'intensity' has increased substantially over the last 50 years relative to the last 1000.

We don't have a system in place to account for every environmental impact made by people. Is everyone that has ever dug a hole in the ground responsible in some small way for soil erosion to contaminate waterways?

Similarly, what about crop irrigation and water rights? Farmers use public waterways to the detriment of estuaries and deltas. This might cause economic and ecological problems down stream. This may cause destruction of property such as an oyster farm.

It's clear at this point that coastal environments are subject to change, and sometimes dramatic change, irrespective of human influence. This should factor into the cost of the property and its insurance.

> By leaving "the market" to contend with increased hurricane resistance alone you have just caused increased expenses for everyone building homes for ignoring fossil fuel externalities (some of which was encouraged by gov't subsisdy). And it's not just homes, it's maybe reworking entire metropolitan areas sewer or housing zones.

The cost of homes is not necessarily rising but being more fairly distributed to those who choose to live in high-insurance areas. The marginal value of the land will decrease, more money can be allocated towards home construction quality versus merely owning the land, and the cost of housing will normalize.

Higher cost to insure will place deflationary pressure on housing prices to normalize total cost of ownership.

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

#146

Post by soperj »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #137
Spooky23 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest. Why does 89 octane gasoline exist? The magic of solar city is simple -- they figured out how to market easy monthly payments for a big capital investment. People decide to go solar for all sorts of reasons, and financial is usually not the driver. I live in the northeast, and it's marginal value, you save like $20/mo in electric bills and are…

89 and 93 octane isn't the right argument. You need to ask why does gasoline contaminated with ethanol still exist, when all it does is increase the cost of gasoline (per mile), decrease mileage (per gallon), and increase emissions (both per mile and gallon). Drivers would save tons of money if they'd refuse to buy it, we would just need to get enough of us together to get such a thing done.

to subsidize corn producers in the mid-west.

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

#147

Post by theyinwhy »

Marsymars wrote: post #75
princekolt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In my experience, legit journalistic sources are also open to delaying a story to include commentary if the commentary source asks for some reasonable additional time to respond.

Psht, delaying a story is so 2010.

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

#148

Post by zaroth »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #132
zaroth wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory. VC funded startups get the advantage of growing ahead of profit, and booking tax losses which they can carry forward. Bootstrapping means growth driven by profit, which necessitates paying income taxes on the ever growing cash b…

Ok. But the "working class" people who voted Trump in don't get to see any of those gains. They at best got a one time bonus, which is still taxed at higher rates, and in exchange, they get cuts to many of the services they rely on.

The gains to the working class is seen in the lowest unemployment numbers ever, a rising workforce participation rate, and starting to see the first wage growth for the working class in decades.

That’s because that extra 33% in our bank balance means more marketing spending, more inventory, more open reqs for hiring sale, marketing, support, and engineering, etc. etc.

E.g. This WSJ post which is also on the front page: “U.S. Workers Get Biggest Pay Increase in Nearly a Decade”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-employment-costs-rose-in-th...

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

#149

Post by linuxftw »

KirinDave wrote: post #144
linuxftw wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a consequence of any insufficiently regulated industry where the penalty for fraud is less than the profit of fraud. It's a fundamental feature of capitalism when untethered from objective assessments of value. That is not a feature or consequence of capitalism. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for fraud are independent of the economic system itself. > I hope people understand that this…

> That is not a feature or consequence of capitalism. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for fraud are independent of the economic system itself. This is a pretty lousy comeback to my argument. A better comeback might have been, "Why would economic penalties for fraud be effective if you're arguing that economic self-interest doesn't have a strong effect on the actions of humans?" > For instance…

> This is a pretty lousy comeback to my argument. A better comeback might have been, "Why would economic penalties for fraud be effective if you're arguing that economic self-interest doesn't have a strong effect on the actions of humans?"

The statement which I responded to, that capitalism begets fraud as a feature of capitalism, is wholly untrue. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for any crime, whether economic or otherwise, have nothing to do with an economic system. There isn't any other rational response to your claim.

> The question is not, "Can humans rationalize decisions?" The question is, "On balance, is 'economic self-interest' a good model for predicting human behavior at any given scale?" No one here is arguing that humans can't rationalize.

My stance is that economic self-interest is broadly irrefutable, it doesn't require perfect rationality or all (perfect) information.

To a consumer uninterested in something other than price (ie, all motivations in which they care about being equal), power company A (nuclear) selling power for $0.01/kwh vs company B (coal) selling power for $0.005/kwh, the consumer is likely going to choose power company B, due to cheaper price, unless they have some pathological reason for choosing A (it could be that a higher price in itself is perceived as being higher quality, which is the case for many products).

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

#150

Post by rconti »

We just had solar installed (yesterday, actually!)

I worked with 3 companies; a local large-ish San Jose company, a much smaller local company, and SunRun (national).

Ultimately most of the quotes and sizing came back near identical; the very local company had a really nice guy come out and pitch pretty convincingly and ultimately tell me "even if you don't go with us, don't use SunRun, please.." and showed me some negative Yelp reviews and stuff.

Well, I was leaning towards that guy because I liked the idea of using a local company, but after a fair bit of digging I started finding some suspicious stuff.. I had contacted one company, but he presented a business card from another contracting company, and so on. Ultimately there were 3 company names, it was hard to find reviews, the address looked more like a freight forwarding company.. and when you start digging into contractor licenses the guy's associated with companies in SoCal that had been apparently sued out of existence.

I think the problem is, there's such a gold rush in solar, that everyone is just jumping in. The margins must be good, and demand is high. I don't actually think the guy was an outright scammer, I just think there are a lot of third rate contractors trying to set themselves up as solar experts and just over-promising and under-delivering.

Thankfully, this helped me end up with the larger, reputable local company that seems to have the size and professionalism that comes with it, while still helping me feel like I'm able to support a local company, with real local employees, everything under one roof. But you have to look.

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