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Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

wsj.com

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#31

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

She was the CFO there not the CEO, how does this reflect on her performance?

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#32
post #16

Awesome Recode Decode interview featuring Musk from last week : https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full...

I'm not sure how you can like this interview. It's extremely combative and the questions from the interviewer seem childish like she is deliberately not listening to Elon's answers. I'm no Elon fan but this is impossible to listen to.

I really liked how Musk handled himself. Combative and stern at times, especially when Kara Swisher said she doesn’t own an electric car :). Overall not a great interview. She kept harping on Model 3 production. I hate it when interviewers try to dissect the past. It’s more exciting to talk about the future, get Musk thinking.. but no let’s just dig about the past.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#33

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

If you paid them and they refuse to deliver, couldn't you sue them for fraud?

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#34
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telstra's major asset is a large copper telecommunications network. The government, as a matter of policy, is tearing that network up and replacing it with a publicly owned fiber network. This is not a great situation for Telstra, to say the least. This has been going on for a while, but a hazy memory suggests there have been shenanigans afoot regarding cash compensation for the damage done - that could cause all sor…

Your assessment isn't correct at all. Telstra sold the copper network to NBN in 2014. And NBN isn't replacing that network at all. They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus. And it's widely known in the industry that Telstra is positioning itself to potentially buy back the NBN given they recently split the compan…

Forgive me if I have any misconceptions or out-of-date knowledge, but while Testra owned the copper telephone network (including, I believe, the copper cabling within everybody's houses), it's only FTTN that uses the traditional copper network -- as it uses copper cabling between the premises and the node (with the node being those above-ground grey pillar box in every suburb, I believe).

FTTC and FTTB don't use the much of the copper network at all: the only copper cabling in FTTC is between the end-user's premises and the small underground pit on every block (a very short stretch for vectored VDSL2 signals at 100 Mbit/s duplex). FTTB is fibre optic cabling to an apartment building, so the only copper cabling there is within the building.

(Side note: From my past research, FTTC with vectored VDSL2 seemed like a great cost-effective technology: leveraging a small amount of pre-existing copper cabling to save digging up every garden in Australia to install the final few meters fibre-optic cabling, with the optional upgrade path to full FTTP being allowed to be done at any time into the future, if a households willing to pay for the upgrade.)

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#35

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

She was the CFO there not the CEO, how does this reflect on her performance?

She's signing off on paying for the delivery of incredibly bad customer service.

Outsource everything to call centres where the agents have no authority to resolve an out of the ordinary issue and have difficulty escalating out of the ordinary issues to someone who can fix it.

How does the operation of a business not reflect on the whole C-suite? Who else is responsible?

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#36

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

If you paid them and they refuse to deliver, couldn't you sue them for fraud?

I got the money back 16 days and 15+ hrs on the phone and one police threat later.

Ultimately the amount of money we're talking about is trivial to me, but that's not the point.

Telsa already has a bad reputation for after sales support and spare parts. They're not doing themselves any favours here.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#37
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kara Swisher is like that sometimes, and I don't like it too. On Steve Jobs last interview to her and Mossberg, Mossberg was trying to capture how Steve thinks, but Kara was only interested in the current event of apple dropping google on the maps app.

Sometimes? She is always like that. Once she has someone in her grip, she won't let go, ever. I don't understand how she can be so one-sided as a journalist, if we can even call what she does journalism. A few years ago she decided she'd get Uber down. Oh boy. Every single thing she was writing was worst than a People magazine article about the Kardashians. 0 objectivity. Straight up fake news, etc.

>0 objectivity. Straight up fake news

Please post a link to an article written by Swisher on Uber that had absolutely "zero objectivity".

This trend of calling articles you disagree with or mediocre journalism "fake news" is frightening.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#39
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the board, and supposedly Musk is being replaced to get a little bit more financial responsibility in Tesla. If Ms. Denholm has a bad track record, then that might not be good news, but I would assume Ms. Denholm was not an impulsive choice, and the board has good reason to seperate her abilities from Telstra's bad performance.

> The rest of the board, and supposedly Musk is being replaced to get a little bit more financial responsibility in Tesla. He’s being replaced as consideration for a settlement agreement with the SEC. It seems likely Tesla chose Denholm because they have a bad PR problem, and it will be difficult for media companies to portray her as a villain.

Perhaps compared to James Murdoch, who was also rumoured to be in contention, she’s less easy to portray as a villain.

But she is easy to cast as an ‘insider’, which is not what many thought ‘an independent Chairman’ meant. The cynics might suggest that Tesla chose her because she is less likely to rock the boat.

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