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Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

cnbc.com

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Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#31

Post by cptskippy »

close04 wrote: post #4

> In fact, we have a large number of employees who request to work on GA4 based on what they hear from colleagues and what they have seen first-hand Wonder if the Tesla spokesman has a desk there. Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work. Equal maybe but certainly not better than a factory building that was not put up in a hurry to meet demands. In any manufactu…

> Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work.

It's in Fremont California where the weather averages 49-69F with extremes being 42F and 79F. It's outside so constantly moving fresh air, and it's covered so no sun beating down. The ends of the tent appear to be open letting natural light in and allowing you to look out at the sky.

Contrast that to a typical factory that's a climate controlled coffin.

I have no experience working in a factory setting but it seems like it's the difference between running outside vs indoor on a treadmill.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#32

Post by loceng »

adrr wrote: post #27
taf2 wrote: post #6

Keep in mind this is from cnbc - they consistently push an anti-tesla position https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/28/40-tesla-headlines-on-c... https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9b71x0/40_tesl... And for more insight google “why does cnbc hate tesla”

Can we get away from the logical fallacies here? If you have a problem with the facts in the article list them instead of attacking the author/publisher.

I think it's valuable to know if a source is generally biased in one direction or another, whether there's accuracy in comparison to other major media sources - who knows, we unfortunately don't have a system that makes that easy and obvious, yet.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#33

Post by jerf »

adrr wrote: post #27
taf2 wrote: post #6

Keep in mind this is from cnbc - they consistently push an anti-tesla position https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/28/40-tesla-headlines-on-c... https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9b71x0/40_tesl... And for more insight google “why does cnbc hate tesla”

Can we get away from the logical fallacies here? If you have a problem with the facts in the article list them instead of attacking the author/publisher.

I think people overestimate the fallaciousness of examining the motivations of the speaker. It only applies to the factual and logical matters; the fact that CNBC may or may not hate Tesla or Elon Musk does not affect whether or not tape was used to correct cracks in parts or whether or not people were asked to work in low-quality conditions on pain of firing, or any strictly logical conclusions you may draw from those facts. Those purported facts may be true or false, but whether someone at CNBC has it out for Elon is not a relevant consideration in whether those facts are true or false.

However, it is entirely relevant in determining whether or not the slant of the piece is necessarily factual or whether it has bias, and in determining the probability that the speaker may have left out information unfavorable to the cause they are advancing.

It is a logical fallacy, but it is only a logical fallacy. It is completely relevant in arenas other than pure, strict logic, such as meta-logical analyses about potential biases.

(There's a few other "fallacies" for which this is true too; many of them like affirming the consequent are just straight-up errors, but "appeal to authority", for instance, is a fallacy in Aristotelian binary true/false logic, but in a more realistic probabilistic logic, it can be valid to use it to update your probabilistic beliefs about the world. You just are not logically justified in taking an authority and setting your belief in their statements to a true, mathematical 100.0000...% (which is what the fallacy would be in Aristotelian logic), and you are obligated to make judgments about the quality of the authority as you make the updates.)

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#34

Post by dymk »

tyingq wrote: post #18
stefco_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What concerns me is that shortcuts in industrial manufacturing processes are often directly detrimental or even fatal to workers. Heavy industry uses toxic chemicals and large, powerful machinery; cutting corners around those things is actively dangerous. Using some electrical tape in places where you'd otherwise use shrink tubing is not a big deal. But like you said, trying to cut corners on a finished hardware desi…

Can confirm. I was an electronic tech in US government work in the 1980's. We routinely used MEK (methyl ethyl keytones) to clean circuit boards, with zero protections. We got these weird requests to confirm we did this of our own free will in the late 80's. Then, in the 2000's, similarly weird requests to confirm we "knew the risks" . If you complied, you were guaranteed VA coverage. Anectodally, strange rates of lo…

Same thing happened to a lot of workers who worked with Asbestos. My dad, his brother, many of their friends got a few thousand bucks in the 80s if they agreed to never sue. A lot of them died a decade or so later from mesothelioma.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#35

Post by supergauntlet »

ajross wrote: post #29
reitzensteinm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This "you're singling Tesla out" persecution complex is getting old. Tesla is an amazing company in many ways, but there's plenty of bad to go along with the good.

You have a link to equivalent worries about Mazda or Audi or someone? I mean... it's not a persecution complex if there's actual persecution. No one writes articles about tape on Fords. Ever.

Does Ford use electrical tape in lieu of heatshrink tubing?

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#36

Post by cptskippy »

DanCarvajal wrote: post #23
willio58 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Didn’t some _real_ car companies need bail-outs from the US government?

You mean like how every U.S. Tesla ever sold has been heavily subsidized with tax rebates? And how they actually got a U.S. Government loan? And how they got further tax credits from Nevada for building the Gigafactory there?

As opposed to oil subsidies that are reported at $4 billion annually with estimates that they're actually somewhere between $10 and $40 billion?

The tax rebates amount to ~$4 billion subsidy for a BEV manufacturer. Maybe we should just eliminate subsidies on both and see what happens.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#37

Post by baybal2 »

stefco_ wrote: post #9
mbrumlow wrote: post #5

> pressured to take shortcuts I work in software, and this happens all the time and it is not the end of the world. It normally means doing even more work later, or shipping without all the features. Its done by not coding in most cases. But this is a car. What sort of shortcut could you make when assembling parts to a car that has already had every part planed out? Edit: never-mind, I skipped a entire paragraph some…

What concerns me is that shortcuts in industrial manufacturing processes are often directly detrimental or even fatal to workers. Heavy industry uses toxic chemicals and large, powerful machinery; cutting corners around those things is actively dangerous. Using some electrical tape in places where you'd otherwise use shrink tubing is not a big deal. But like you said, trying to cut corners on a finished hardware desi…

Their level of automation is way to low for these days.

The hazardous work workers do, should not have been done in the first place.

Robotic or semi-auto wiring machines are everywhere in China. They also use zero tooling terminals where possible.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#38

Post by cptskippy »

Datenstrom wrote: post #19
noonespecial wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Using some electrical tape in places where you'd otherwise use shrink tubing is not a big deal. The article says that they used electrical tape from Walmart on a bracket that holds the cameras for Autopilot . I've used some Walmart etape... that's a big deal.

I do not know about cars but using electrical tape on aircraft is absolutely not allowed. Unlike in most electronics vehicles deal with vibration, improper wire routing will cause chafing against any surface it touches over time causing exposed wires and shorts in the best case. Zip ties are obviously not allowed because they would cause chafing themselves, electrical tape will likely come come undone after some year…

I've seen plenty of factory installed electrical tape in engine bays of cars. It's not uncommon.

That being said the circumstances around the usage in the article are very different and just because electrical tape can be safe when used properly doesn't mean its safe in the case reported used at Tesla.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#39

Post by shareIdeas »

htkibar wrote: post #21

Tesla has shown time and time again that they care for their customers, giving free services and even upgrades. This is just another CNBC attack on TSLA for whatever reason.

I got a bad feeling, if something is free, it's because it was unsafe.

Re: Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions

#40

Post by aaomidi »

adrr wrote: post #27
taf2 wrote: post #6

Keep in mind this is from cnbc - they consistently push an anti-tesla position https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/28/40-tesla-headlines-on-c... https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9b71x0/40_tesl... And for more insight google “why does cnbc hate tesla”

Can we get away from the logical fallacies here? If you have a problem with the facts in the article list them instead of attacking the author/publisher.

Problem is, with the fast paced nature of today's life you sometimes read a headline and MAYBE a tiny bit of extra info.

Too many news outlets are using clickbait headlines that sound like a big deal but isn't.

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