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Tesla employee writes of low wages, poor morale; company denies claims
- sosuke 10y agoJust a note I really appreciate how ARS documented the title changes at the bottom of the article explaining their reasoning.
- simplehuman 10y agoThat Tesla pays poor wages is well known. But this is expected since they are more a startup and do not have that much cash to go by. I guess the sad part is they don't hand out much shares either
- new299 10y agoBeing a startup and having cash to pay employees well are not mutually exclusive. In fact they appear to have raise 2.37 Billion: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tesla-motors#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tesla-motors#/entity
- maxxxxx 10y agoTesla is not a startup. It's a big company with real products. Their startup days are long gone.
- EthanHeilman 10y agoBeing a startup in the automotive manufacturing business is not the same as being a startup in the software business. A software company with 1000 employees is huge, an automotive manufacturing company with 1000 employees is tiny.
- Xixi 10y agoOut of curiosity I checked the number of employees of a small car manufacturer no too far from my hometown: Bugatti. 91 employees for an output of about 40 cars a year. I'm actually surprised that is possible at all to be so small in the automotive industry (though to be fair they belong to Volkswagen Group). Of course not trying to compare that to Tesla, the goal/scope/market is just too different.
- maxxxxx 10y agoGumpert produces a super sports car with around 50 employees. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Automobil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Automobil It really doesn't take many people to produce a car.
- EthanHeilman 10y agoThat is a fair point. I was comparing Tesla to the scale of companies that it wants to compete against.
- saalweachter 10y agoSo is Tesla compensating its factory workers with stock options? If you're working for a startup and they expect you to work long hours for pay below the industry standard and they don't give you stock or stock options, they don't get to play the "startup!" card. We debate endlessly the risk/reward for stock options in a startup versus good pay and benefits at an established company, but if they aren't even giving you stock--
- blackguardx 10y agoTelsa is publicly traded on the US stock market. Surely it has graduated to "real company" by now. If not, when would you mark that point for a company?
- EthanHeilman 10y agoFor an automotive company, when it has produced more than 200,000 cars for more than 5 years in a row. 200,000 cars per year would be: * 2% of Toyota's yearly output, * 4% of GM's yearly output, * 20% of BMW's or Mazda's yearly output.
- blackguardx 10y agoI agree Tesla is a small automotive company, but it isn't a startup. There are plenty of small companies that aren't startups.
- EthanHeilman 10y agoStartup depends on your goals. Tesla wants to compete with GM and Toyota. It clearly has a long way to go.
- luckydata 10y agoFrom the EthanHeilman rulebook?
- EthanHeilman 10y agoWell yeah, blackguardx asked me how I would mark it I gave my answer.
- gdulli 10y ago> Speaking to Gizmodo through Twitter Direct Messages, Elon Musk said, “Our understanding is that this guy was paid by the UAW to join Tesla and agitate for a union,” I guess he got this tactic from Trump, claiming that any dissent comes from paid protesters. While offering no evidence that it's actually the case. > Update 10/2/17 9:20am EST: In a statement this morning UAW categorically denied that Moran had ever been paid by their organization. https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-responds-to-claims-of-low-pay-injuries-and-a-1792190512 https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-responds-to-claims-of-low-pay-...
- 1_2__3 10y agoUgh, this is just a terrible conflation. And it ignores very real and well-understood union tactics like this. You can be pro- or anti- union all you want but if you don't think unions seek out individuals to use as essentially "seeds" for a union - including paying them - you're woefully naive.
- gdulli 10y agoIf you don't think we've entered an era where "facts" are invented from thin air without fear of repercussion because the media portrays opposite sides of a demonstrable fact the way it portrays differences in opinion, you're woefully naive. Recent events may have had a side effect of making honest people need to work harder to prove their claims. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, we could have used more discipline and scrutiny there before the era of fake news anyway.
- marpstar 10y agoDo you have an "facts" to back up your claim that this "era" we've "entered" is a recent phenomena?
- ConfuciusSay02 10y agoFacts have been invented in order to push agendas since the dawn of time. Nothing has changed. The day the printing press was invented is the day it was subverted to push propaganda. The "era of fake news" is fake. It has always been this way.
- MK999 10y agoDo you altogether reject the concept/existence of paid protesters?
- gdulli 10y agoI reject the encroachment of post-truth tactics into further areas of discourse. If and when real evidence of paid protest is submitted, it can be discussed freely.
- TallGuyShort 10y agoI would consider hired protesters in the same class of scumminess as what I assume you're referring to by post-truth tactics, and I see no more evidence being presented from their side.
- byroot 10y ago> I see no more evidence being presented from their side. UAW cannot possibly prove that they didn't pay that guy, and that guy can't possibly prove he wasn't paid. You can't logically expect them to provide proofs.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- TallGuyShort 10y agoI'm not talking about proof of not being paid - I'm talking about proof of the original claims, or at least more detail than you see in the sources here. When stuff like this gets picked up and shared on popular websites because of one disgruntled employee, I'm inclined to dismiss it similarly.
- byroot 10y agoFair enough.
- 10y ago
- iopuy 10y agoWow this article looks like it was written using Gizmodo as the only source. Not only that, it is almost a verbatim copy. Generally Ars has great coverage but this is horrible. Also fun fact the title had to be updated due to being misleading. Update: This story went up with two headlines. One of them, "Tesla employee calls for unionization, Musk says that’s 'morally outrageous,'" could have been construed as Musk claiming that unionization itself is morally outrageous, which was not the case. We have replaced that headline with the other.
- M_Grey 10y agoArs hasn't been anything approaching "Great" for years.
- geerlingguy 10y agoIt's really more the individual reporters. Eric Berger, for example, puts out a lot of great and balanced space-related articles.
- M_Grey 10y agoI'd agree with that, but I think when we're down to naming individuals and their merits, my point about the organization as a whole not being good is supported.
- iopuy 10y agohttps://philipwalton.com/articles/the-google-analytics-setup-i-use-on-every-site-i-build/ https://philipwalton.com/articles/the-google-analytics-setup...
- pg_is_a_butt 10y ago"Tesla employee" is really a United Auto Workers UAW union worker who was paid to infiltrate tesla and agitate other workers. little red riding hood's obit wouldn't say "apparent grandmother kills child"... it was a wolf, morons. arstechnica is fake news. you're all idiots.
- rb808 10y ago> employee writes of low wages, poor morale; company denies claims Lol this could be any organization in the world. :)
- lordvon 10y agotemplate <typename Company> void news() { std::cout << Company::ToString() << " employee writes of low wages, poor morale; company denies claims"; }
- throwaway7767 10y agoIf that's your image of working, you should consider working for different companies. This would not describe my workplace, or most of the ones I've worked for.
- tdb7893 10y agoI think you can find at least one employee complaining anywhere, though.
- ashmud 10y agoHow does this compare to Nissan (US), also non-union?
- st3v3r 10y agoThis isn't anything new; apparently SpaceX is the same way. It's why I don't want to go work for an Elon Musk company. I have respect for myself, and it seems like you have to be willing to undercut yourself to work there.
- caconym_ 10y agoI was looking at SpaceX software engineering jobs and the listings said that the position would be expected to work overtime and weekends "as needed". Yeah, no thanks. I guess at least they're up front about it.
- supergeek133 10y agoUsually whenever I see one of these "expose" posts on Gizmodo, it's usually an employee that was a miscreant/unhappy person. The other theme that doesn't get exposed, is that the employee in question has the same attitude no matter where they work. I was working at Best Buy/Geek Squad when they had their big "unhappy employee" expose, and my last point was very true. There are plenty of happy employees at all these companies, people (especially Giz) loves the bad story.
- nitrogen 10y agoIt takes unreasonable people to change the world.
- supergeek133 10y agoYes but one "unreasonable" person complaining on Gizmodo about a company doesn't mean there is some systemic problem at the company or the culture. It's a confirmation bias problem. If Gizmodo posted a bunch of stories about "People at company X say things are awesome!!!" it would probably be deadpanned.
- luckydata 10y agoHey know it all, what about you go work for Tesla and find out for yourself? I have first hand info about what goes on there and I would say the dude is definitely holding back.