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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 r

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 going to be living at the office for the next 36 months, by contrast.

TaylorGood 11y ago
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 hours days isn't uncommon.. So, your theory is the story.. she can't wait for options to fully vest and gracefully exit. It's not for lack of thrill, growth, etc. – just that after 3-4 years it is heavily taxing and a pace of sanity is much desired.
- vinhboy 11y ago
  I hear people tell stories like this about successful companies all the time. If this is really how the game is played. I quit.
  - rco8786 11y ago
    Nobody said success was easy or didn't involve sacrifice. Just sayin'
  - mipapage 11y ago
    Many years ago I worked as a geologist and watched as a very low-yield gold mine went thru cycles of getting funded, building some infrastructure and then declaring bankruptcy, until finally there was enough infrastructure there to actually make something happen (and maybe the rising gold price helped in the end). It seems this strategy can be applied in different scenarios/fields and with money, people, money and people... Opens your eyes.
  - TaylorGood 11y ago
    Sprint deployment / critical fixes are one thing, but for a year I did 90+ hour work weeks on a CPG startup and fried myself. More specifically, I was so burnt out on the very thing that was supposed to catapult me to the next level. The concept of positive burnout is very real..
  - Eerie 11y ago
    >If this is really how the game is played. I quit. It's not a game.
  - j2bax 11y ago
    I think success, even greatness is possible with a more manageable work/life/sleep balance. It's just far slower and more expensive. SpaceX and Tesla are brute forcing greatness at the expense of a few people that are also impatient for change/success. If they are on-board with the mission, they are probably okay with it until they get their gold and can rest (if they last that long).
- jernfrost 11y ago
  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.
  - arcticfox 11y ago
    Or whether this story is apocryphal, being twice removed from the original workers.
  - rm999 11y ago
    I think it requires strong, perfectionist, top-down leadership. See for example Steve Jobs or James Cameron. They aren't the most popular bosses, but they create amazing things by working their people hard and watching everything very closely.
    - j2bax 11y ago
      Additionally, they are incredibly driven and hard working themselves. They expect the same from everyone below them.
    - marincounty 11y ago
      I think Steve Jobs said this, "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me" I think it's a trade off. I don't think not getting enough sleep is healthy. Without health--what's the point? I also heard Steve Jobs used to frequently work until 12:00 a.m., and sometimes call his employees at 3 a.m. in the morning.
  - runamok 11y ago
    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.
- luckydata 11y ago
  Tesla goes from one firefighting to another, it's a place that while growing is not "growing up". End of quarter are always nuts, people are asked to perform miracles and of course quality suffers when everything is a fire. They had some serious rethinking of how the organization works lately so a bunch of people that had a lot of power ended up with considerably less of it, and some new faces are ascending rapidly.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I agree that the situation isn't ideal, but that's what happens when you attempt to compress 100 years of corporate growth into 10-15 years.
    - luckydata 11y ago
      I don't work at Tesla, I'm just familiar with the situation through close acquaintances. People are getting REALLY tired of hearing "next quarter will be different and we'll start putting processes in place..."
bitmapbrother 11y ago
The Model X has been plagued with problems. I'm guessing they were asked to leave.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  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.
Animats 11y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUjyh2Fhnuk

TaylorGood 11y ago

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 hours days isn't uncommon.. So, your theory is the story.. she can't wait for options to fully vest and gracefully exit. It's not for lack of thrill, growth, etc. – just that after 3-4 years it is heavily taxing and a pace of sanity is much desired.

vinhboy 11y ago
I hear people tell stories like this about successful companies all the time. If this is really how the game is played. I quit.
- rco8786 11y ago
  Nobody said success was easy or didn't involve sacrifice. Just sayin'
- mipapage 11y ago
  Many years ago I worked as a geologist and watched as a very low-yield gold mine went thru cycles of getting funded, building some infrastructure and then declaring bankruptcy, until finally there was enough infrastructure there to actually make something happen (and maybe the rising gold price helped in the end). It seems this strategy can be applied in different scenarios/fields and with money, people, money and people... Opens your eyes.
- TaylorGood 11y ago
  Sprint deployment / critical fixes are one thing, but for a year I did 90+ hour work weeks on a CPG startup and fried myself. More specifically, I was so burnt out on the very thing that was supposed to catapult me to the next level. The concept of positive burnout is very real..
- Eerie 11y ago
  >If this is really how the game is played. I quit. It's not a game.
- j2bax 11y ago
  I think success, even greatness is possible with a more manageable work/life/sleep balance. It's just far slower and more expensive. SpaceX and Tesla are brute forcing greatness at the expense of a few people that are also impatient for change/success. If they are on-board with the mission, they are probably okay with it until they get their gold and can rest (if they last that long).
jernfrost 11y ago
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.
- arcticfox 11y ago
  Or whether this story is apocryphal, being twice removed from the original workers.
- rm999 11y ago
  I think it requires strong, perfectionist, top-down leadership. See for example Steve Jobs or James Cameron. They aren't the most popular bosses, but they create amazing things by working their people hard and watching everything very closely.
  - j2bax 11y ago
    Additionally, they are incredibly driven and hard working themselves. They expect the same from everyone below them.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    I think Steve Jobs said this, "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me" I think it's a trade off. I don't think not getting enough sleep is healthy. Without health--what's the point? I also heard Steve Jobs used to frequently work until 12:00 a.m., and sometimes call his employees at 3 a.m. in the morning.
- runamok 11y ago
  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.
luckydata 11y ago
Tesla goes from one firefighting to another, it's a place that while growing is not "growing up". End of quarter are always nuts, people are asked to perform miracles and of course quality suffers when everything is a fire. They had some serious rethinking of how the organization works lately so a bunch of people that had a lot of power ended up with considerably less of it, and some new faces are ascending rapidly.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I agree that the situation isn't ideal, but that's what happens when you attempt to compress 100 years of corporate growth into 10-15 years.
  - luckydata 11y ago
    I don't work at Tesla, I'm just familiar with the situation through close acquaintances. People are getting REALLY tired of hearing "next quarter will be different and we'll start putting processes in place..."

bitmapbrother 11y ago

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

Shivetya 11y ago
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.

Animats 11y ago

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