Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#21

Post by runamok » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #14

TaylorGood wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will say this: I met a director from Tesla just after their unveiling of the Model X. She said a small number of people were assigned to fully assemble / prep each vehicle shown that night.. for roughly two weeks they worked 20 hour shifts and slept 2 hours each night. Most teams were working on them right up until the cars rolled on stage; there was still wet paint on one. Also, it was said a "normal" workweek of 16…

I just don't get how you can be successful doing stuff that way. People with that little sleep are not going to function optimal. They are going to make mistakes. But both Tesla and SpaceX seems very successful so I wonder if they are successful despite of this or because of this.

Both. They are doing amazing things so they attract awesome people that are dedicated heart and soul. I have a friend who was telling me first hand of their experiences at spaceX and imo it's just a matter of time before some exhausted person makes a mistake and there are huge losses of money and/or life.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#22

Post by gist » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #10

gist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will give the obligatory "why is this article on HN" comment. This is inside baseball and tabloid type infotainment. It certainly doesn't "gratify one's intellectual curiosity" in the way that the guidelines on posting most likely intended.

At some point you're going to just have to accept that an upvote/rating system means that the articles on HN are "whatever the HN community wants to see", and no amount of griping or rules lawyering is ever going to change that. HN is a self-selecting population which mostly shares the same interests, and those interests are usually about hacking or IT or entrepreneurship, but not always. The population likes hearing…

Well point taken but by that token I am sure the HN community might also want to see jokes as well as porn?

Now you could say "yeah they do like that but don't like seeing it on HN". But I say it's more than that. It's that that type of post would get flagged by the mods and taken down as not fitting in as 'appropriate for HN'.

The HN community actually likes Musk rather than Tesla. There are cool things that are happening by other auto makers but you'd never get upvotes on a post about their executives. At least not anywhere near as frequently.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#23

Post by superuser2 » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #14

TaylorGood wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will say this: I met a director from Tesla just after their unveiling of the Model X. She said a small number of people were assigned to fully assemble / prep each vehicle shown that night.. for roughly two weeks they worked 20 hour shifts and slept 2 hours each night. Most teams were working on them right up until the cars rolled on stage; there was still wet paint on one. Also, it was said a "normal" workweek of 16…

I just don't get how you can be successful doing stuff that way. People with that little sleep are not going to function optimal. They are going to make mistakes. But both Tesla and SpaceX seems very successful so I wonder if they are successful despite of this or because of this.

I once lived in a hacker hostel with a girl who was working 16 hour days at Tesla doing embedded systems programming. She said she honestly loved it, got lost in the flow state every day and didn't feel any effects from the sleep deprivation.

These people do exist. (Though maybe not long past early 20s).

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#24

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:53 PM UTC

gist wrote: post #22

Analemma_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point you're going to just have to accept that an upvote/rating system means that the articles on HN are "whatever the HN community wants to see", and no amount of griping or rules lawyering is ever going to change that. HN is a self-selecting population which mostly shares the same interests, and those interests are usually about hacking or IT or entrepreneurship, but not always. The population likes hearing…

Well point taken but by that token I am sure the HN community might also want to see jokes as well as porn? Now you could say "yeah they do like that but don't like seeing it on HN". But I say it's more than that. It's that that type of post would get flagged by the mods and taken down as not fitting in as 'appropriate for HN'. The HN community actually likes Musk rather than Tesla. There are cool things that are hap…

HN upvotes jokes all the time. As for porn, it would be removed by the moderators the first few times, but if a majority the community decided it really wanted it, it would eventually push back on the moderators and the moderation standards would change (well, or YC would just shut it down). At that point it would be up to you whether you wanted to keep coming here, but at the end of the day there's no real way for a vote-based system to perpetually override what the community wants. In practice it works because we're mostly interested in the same things and mostly agree on what isn't appropriate, but you do get edge cases like this.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#25

Post by gist » Wed, May 04, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #18

Chronic51 wrote: post #2

Waiting for the HN fanboys to defend Tesla.

This comment breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to call names in comments. We also ask people not to post drive-by dismissals. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

What would be nice is if you could issue some guidelines on downvoting.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#26

Post by blackguardx » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #6

Interesting timing for this as they report earnings tonight. They also announced that they've leased 2 buildings near Livermore that give them almost 1,000,000 square feet of space. There is alot of speculation on CNBC that these announcements were made early to help direct the investors call as TSLA is widely expect to report poor earnings this quarter due to Model X delays. Tesla's Powerwall is also starting to be…

I thought the consensus was that the Powerwall was to soak up some capacity at their upcoming plant and get their per unit costs down.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#27

Post by marricks » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

Listening to the earnings call today Elon said one of them is staying on for a transition, and that they will be announcing a big hire in the coming weeks. Sounds like an experienced veteran in production?

I mean, this sounds like it could be hype but they have a pretty special thing with this many pre orders, US manufacturing, and a really exciting product.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#28

Post by Animats » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:45 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #4

Who knows the real story here, but I can imagine once your stock options vest, financial prudence and personal sanity don't really point to doing the next big ramp-up at Tesla. You're heavily recruitable for large swaths of stock at any number of startups, presumably with a status bump on top, or you could just take your well earned millions and chill for a bit. Whoever is running the Model 3 delivery program is goin…

It's going to be a tough few years getting the plant running profitably. Tesla hasn't tried to be price-competitive before. They need to get good at low-cost, high-volume auto manufacturing. Trying to get "fast", "cheap" and "good" all at once is very hard. Tesla tends to get "good", but not the other two.

For comparison, see Apple's plant in Fremont, 1984-1992. This was Steve Jobs' vision of manufacturing.[1] It looks great. It's got automatic stacker cranes. It's got pick and place machines. It's got mobile robots. Everything is very tidy. But it's inefficient. Designing a factory around a storage and retrieval warehouse machine turns out to be a bad idea. Too much of the plant is material handling rather than manufacturing. Apple closed that plant and outsourced manufacturing to Foxconn.

This is the sort of problem you hit in setting up a manufacturing plant. It's easy to end up with too much work in progress spread around the plant. This is worse in automotive, where work in progress is physically large and needs storage space.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUjyh2Fhnuk

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#29

Post by ams6110 » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:46 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #23

jernfrost wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't get how you can be successful doing stuff that way. People with that little sleep are not going to function optimal. They are going to make mistakes. But both Tesla and SpaceX seems very successful so I wonder if they are successful despite of this or because of this.

I once lived in a hacker hostel with a girl who was working 16 hour days at Tesla doing embedded systems programming. She said she honestly loved it, got lost in the flow state every day and didn't feel any effects from the sleep deprivation. These people do exist. (Though maybe not long past early 20s).

I've been in that mode -- it can be fun, as long as you like the work and don't have other responsibilities (family, etc.)

As soon as it starts causing conflict with other areas of your life, it's a fast track to burnout or nervous breakdown.

Re: Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up

#30

Post by Shivetya » Wed, May 04, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #19

vessenes wrote: post #4

Who knows the real story here, but I can imagine once your stock options vest, financial prudence and personal sanity don't really point to doing the next big ramp-up at Tesla. You're heavily recruitable for large swaths of stock at any number of startups, presumably with a status bump on top, or you could just take your well earned millions and chill for a bit. Whoever is running the Model 3 delivery program is goin…

The Model X has been plagued with problems. I'm guessing they were asked to leave.

I am not so sure, it could be they are leaving because Musk is interfering too much in design and production that they cannot effectively do their jobs. Tesla has the highest warranty expenditure per car in the auto industry, even out pacing Mercedes. The X simply has too many tricks that its obviously not from any self respecting design committee but pushed by someone who doesn't listen. Same problems arose when they did their first car.