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Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

latimes.com

61–70 of 152 posts

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#61
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That presumes you're in a legal jurisdiction where one-party consent is allowed for recording conversations doesn't it? Otherwise it would be inadmissible.

Inadmissible in court, but you can always leak to the press and see what happens.

Not only inadmissible, but can incur criminal liability as well, such as in California.

With criminal statutes, it significantly raises the bar about how to "leak" something to the press, the press who needs to verify the source and can be subpoena'd for records.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#66
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a large contingent of pro-Tesla readers on HN that cannot abide by any criticism of Tesla. Articles critical of Tesla always get flagged, and most of the time dang unflags them, especially if they're from newspapers like LAT.

Can they build in a mechanism to mitigate baseless flagging?

"most of the time dang unflags them" is that mechanism.

If I found a reliable way to automate the recognition of bad-faith user interactions I would sell it to google and retire before bringing it to HN.

edit: Also, apparently, users can "vouch" for posts which presumably is just the inverse of flagging a post.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#67
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article suggests she was fired because she asked for a meeting with Musk about floor mats after failing to get the proper response from the regular chain of command. In my experience, everywhere I worked had a chain of command and consistently stepping outside the chain of command and going over your managers heads rarely leads to good results. From an article mentioned in the LA Times article > She considered le…

Did you miss the part where Musk announced that employees are to disregard hierarchy and go directly up the chain if it solves problems faster, including all the way to the top? Weeks earlier, in a companywide email, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had dumped on the concept of corporate hierarchy. Find “the fastest way to solve a problem to the benefit of the whole company” and don’t worry about your boss, he told th…

Most CEOs and senior managers say this. This isn't carte blanche to undermine your superiors or break protocol.

I'm sure there's more to the story.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#68
Good engineers must learn that while they spent the time learning their skills, other people spent that time learning how to steal others’ people work. If you are really good, you must start your own company. Much harder, I know.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#69
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Only defense against it is to be as careful choosing your employer as possible. That's not the only defense, this is example #25360432 showing how necessary labor unions are.

Unions can be useful for industry specific protections or benefits. This would provide different protections specific to a type of work. I think arbitration protections and restrictions on employment contracts to preserve employee rights should be handled through legislation since it should be universally applicable to all workers. This would remove the variance in protections from one union to another.

Good luck getting suitable legislation through parliament without power. Power listens only to power.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#70
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part where Musk announced that employees are to disregard hierarchy and go directly up the chain if it solves problems faster, including all the way to the top? Weeks earlier, in a companywide email, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had dumped on the concept of corporate hierarchy. Find “the fastest way to solve a problem to the benefit of the whole company” and don’t worry about your boss, he told th…

Typical CEO double speak. Senior management at my company says similar things. Then if you look at the HR policy you find the fine print that greatly restricts what was said. I had a department head tell us his door is always open and to contact him about stuff (company policy supports the open door policy). I took him up on it. When I showed up, he had another manager there in addition to himself (it was supposed to…

To give you an executive's perspective on this one: I'm saying the same to my employees (and I mean it). But there are two types of ways this happens in reality:

Case 1: An actual smart and caring employee bypasses the chain to give me evidence of a manager not acting in the companys interest. Usually that's not the first indication of such a thing and listening around reaffirms the conclusion quickly. The manager is approached as quickly as possible and since at this paygrade it's in no-one's best interest to burn bridges, they suddenly decide to spend more time with their family, a sweet severance package changes hands, employees are happy again and you don't read about this in the news. It's exactly why I said this in the first place (and meant it).

Case 2: An employee with issues not bringing the company further (usually one or more of paranoia, toxicity, not-seeing-the-big-picture, searching for problems instead of solutions or emotional health issues) bypasses the chain of command with "evidence", but listening around almost nobody shares this employees' opinion. You fire them. Suddenly all problems disappear, employees are happy and then you read about this in the news, because the only person left unhappy did really not get the memo.

Judging from the type of problems here (something something starship about floor mats at a time when Model 3 just wasn't ramping up production and cashflow almost ruined the company), I do have my opinion about the type of "privilege escalation" in this case but I obviously won't share it.

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