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Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

latimes.com

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Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#81

Post by vkou »

bko wrote: post #16
Threeve303 wrote: post #2

It’s nearly impossible to fight defamation like this. Only defense against it is to be as careful choosing your employer as possible. The amount of power they have over your future is insane and in certain situations, like the one in the article, you basically have no recourse.

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…

> 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.

Tesla's PR claims that it's a non-traditional, innovative company, where if someone finds a serious problem that can't be resolved by the chain of command, they should e-mail Musk.

The reality of course, bears little resemblance to the myth.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#82

Post by mgh2 »

Threeve303 wrote: post #79
clort wrote: post #10

There are lots of problems here and it seems to me that Tesla is being a bully. Cristina Balan has a fundraiser page, at https://www.gofundme.com/f/a86fmm-fighting-tesla-for-defamin... and there is some text there from her, setting out some facts as she has seen them.

Thanks for sharing that. It provides much more insight and context on the situation. For me, the whole thing comes back to the news article. It is absolutely bonkers no matter the circumstance. Huffington Post should not have published anything without verifying that she was actually a criminal. Clearly Tesla thought they screwed up as well or they wouldn't have fired the guy responsible for it two days later. I comp…

Well this has to be examined further: she could only be the most prominent case among others.

What about the "1000 lawsuits" the article mentions? Unless it was done by collusion (ex: a union).

In terms of averages and probability, Balan's case does stand a point as a whistleblower, hinting a covert truth behind the company.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#83

Post by endymi0n »

jtbayly wrote: post #72
endymi0n wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most cases, sure. But did you see the evidence in the article about her reputation at work? She was quite obviously an appreciated employee all around.

You may be right, this case looks less than clear.

I'm mostly playing devils' advocate here, as newspapers, lawyers and shortsellers usually have their own axe to grind and are continually searching for good David against Goliath stories.

Just dropping in that having a toxic effect on the company and being respected / appreciated by peers are absolutely not mutually exclusive. Often times they rather go hand in hand and you've got such people rallying up others over non-issues (in the big picture of things). As others already said in the comments, cohesion and alignment are far more important to a high risk / high growth company than "solving all the problems".

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#84

Post by ilaksh »

If something like this happens at such a company as Tesla, what's stopping it from happening at any company?

It looks like one of the core issues is that it seemed to Tesla that a recall just might kill the company at that time. So they felt that in order to protect the existence of the company, they really needed to be quiet about the floor mats at all costs. They probably rationalized it as "well, how hard is it to check if your floor mat is curling up" or something.

So that seems to be a structural issue. When it comes to the existence of your job or your company, it's too easy to rationalize unethical acts. At least for most people. Especially if their boss tells them to do it.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#85

Post by john_moscow »

didibus wrote: post #73
john_moscow wrote: post #27

So, let's try to be objective about this. Tesla's viewpoint is that Cristina had an internal conflict with other managers regarding the choice of one of the suppliers [0]: > For example, Ms. Balan was unhappy with a particular supplier that was selected by an internal group of subject matter experts who extensively studied the issue. She took it upon herself to find an alternative supplier that [...] She herself conf…

Did we read the same thing? She was trying to escalate to upper management that she saw some issues with suppliers, which were possibly due to people choosing their friends as supplier instead of choosing the best supplier, and also some issue with floor mats that could be a safety concern. And they fired her for that. I don't know what else there is to spin? It looks to me she cared too much about doing a good job a…

That's from her own words. If she instead wanted to push her own friend as a supplier, she would claim the same. Because it sounds like a good argument if you want to switch a supplier.

I would love to see some facts here, but all that is currently presented is just words. And I don't like that if you play the minority card, whatever you are saying is perceived by the public with more credibility than what your opponents are stating, regardless of the facts. This opens huge possibilities for abuse by opportunists and increases division in the society.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#86

Post by giantg2 »

endymi0n wrote: post #70
giantg2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My specific instance was that I was the application security champion for a critical application application that had a SQL injection vulnerability (with full schema owner privileges!), but lower-level management wasn't making it a priority and didn't even assign any resources to remediate the issue. So I went to explain the issue to the department head because he was the owner of the application. As an ASC I answer to, and represent, the security division so I can talk to the owners of apps that I support regardless of the hierarchy. I think he didn't understand that dynamic, as I typically see managers breaking company policy and not caring (I'm smart enough to keep my mouth shut on those issues). I didn't go to complain. I went to explain the problem and give him options and my recommendation.

He told me that we have a real-time backup system so he didn't think it was worth fixing. I then asked if we ever ran tests of that system and if we had documentation on how to restore from it. We don't. This is for financial trading application handling billions of dollars. Being down for even a few hours could be catastrophic.

The big man spoke. I don't agree with the outcome, but I'm not the boss. So that was the end of it (except for in discussions like this on here). I left for another team because there's no way I'm going to be the security champion for a system with that level of risk. And thank God you weren't my manager or I would have been fired under your #2 scenario.

On a side note, just because a small number of people are complaining doesn't mean their opinions are invalid. Minorities are often disenfranchised due to this thinking. Also, managers may not know all the policies for the company and may be violating them.

For a real life example combining these, company policy states that a person be evaluated against the standard and recieve a rating that way. Some departments mandate that if a manager pick a higher than average rating for someone, then they must pick someone else to balance it out with a lower rating. This would only affect 10% of the population and the number unjustly affected would be lower than that. So the other 90% recieved good rating, so why would they complain? The objective way I know that I was unjustly rated was because I had a manager friend who told me what happened in the meeting and said it was wrong.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#88

Post by ryandrake »

giantg2 wrote: post #33
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #28

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…

Reminds me of the old Dilbert cartoon where the boss tells his employees to do something, then grabs the binoculars thinking "This will be the easiest round of layoffs ever" [1]. Sometimes, suggestions from upper management that employees should let their guard down and do something they normally wouldn't are just clever tactics to encourage "undesirables" to out themselves.

1: https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-18

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#89

Post by justanotherhn »

This is hilarious, her gofundme is mostly funded by Tesla Shortsellers and they're not even hiding it... I haven't read her claims but this is amusing.

Gregory Reyes $5,000 (shortseller) Donna Walker $1,212 (shortseller) NetflixAndLamp $1,000 (shortseller) DIP Harambe $500 (shortseller) Machine Planet $500 (shortseller) Paul Shust $250 (shortseller) Naked Shortseller $100 (shortseller) Oslo Skeptic $100 (shortseller) Bones ThreeZero $50 (shortseller)

Since someone downvoted me, above are known TESLAQ folks and some are confirmed shortsellers while others tweet incessantly anything negative on this company but I cannot confirm 100% that they have short positions in this stock right now.

Re: Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation

#90

Post by mgh2 »

justanotherhn wrote: post #89

This is hilarious, her gofundme is mostly funded by Tesla Shortsellers and they're not even hiding it... I haven't read her claims but this is amusing. Gregory Reyes $5,000 (shortseller) Donna Walker $1,212 (shortseller) NetflixAndLamp $1,000 (shortseller) DIP Harambe $500 (shortseller) Machine Planet $500 (shortseller) Paul Shust $250 (shortseller) Naked Shortseller $100 (shortseller) Oslo Skeptic $100 (shortseller)…

Can you provide the most prominent names?

Being funded by short sellers does not imply her case is false: they can be independent, albeit the same goal ("your enemy is my friend").

PS: Tesla fans or stock holders could be the reason why this story was initially flagged

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