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Kudos to Tesla for not only being OK with this guy having a sidegig but also not trying to be a jerk in demanding a cut. I know that seems like status quo for c

by danso 8y ago

Kudos to Tesla for not only being OK with this guy having a sidegig but also not trying to be a jerk in demanding a cut. I know that seems like status quo for companies not to demand control over what employees create outside of work, but seems like that line can be blurred when there's enough money involved. (edit: not just having a sidegig, but being able to launch and run his startup for ~1 year while employed at Tesla) I also have a low bar after reading "Bad Blood", the book about Theranos. One of Theranos's chief engineers, on his own time, came up with a cool idea for bike lights and ran a successful KickStarter [0]. Elizabeth Holmes' response: > Kent told Elizabeth about his successful Kickstarter campaign, thinking she wouldn’t mind. But he badly miscalculated: she and Sunny were furious. They viewed it as a major conflict of interest and asked him to transfer his bike-lights patent to Theranos. The paperwork Kent had signed when he joined the company entitled them to any intellectual property he produced while employed there, they contended. Kent disagreed. He’d worked on his little venture during his free time and felt he had done nothing wrong. He also failed to see how a new type of bicycle light posed a threat to a maker of blood-testing equipment. But Elizabeth and Sunny wouldn’t let it go. In meeting after meeting, they tried to get him to turn over the patent. They ratcheted up the pressure by bringing Theranos’s new senior counsel, David Doyle, to some of the meetings. Eventually Kent, the engineer, was allowed to go on leave of absence to work on his bike-light. I don't think he ever came back, and he was the guy who was the chief architect of the piece of crap that Holmes would later describe as "the most important thing humanity has ever built". [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revolights/revolights-join-the-revolution https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revolights/revolights-j...

atomical 8y ago
What could have motivated them to waste so much time on that? Ego?
- notahacker 8y ago
  The bike light had more value than Theranos' actual "product"?
- drzaiusapelord 8y ago
  Elizabeth and Sunny are incredibly corrupt and dishonest people. They simply saw and easy mark in this guy and tried to fleece him. I mean, they've already fleeced millions from investors, whats another con job for them? The work environment was incredibly toxic as well: For example, Balwani took it upon himself to keep track of how long employees were working. In one encounter, Balwani brought up security footage that showed a software engineer only working an eight-hour day. He told the employee, "I'm going to fix you." The engineer promptly resigned and left the building, even as Balwani sent a security officer to try and stop him. Balwani then called the cops on the employee. http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-former-president-sunny-balwani-role-in-the-company-2018-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-former-president-sun...
- danso 8y ago
  The author's conclusion stops short of calling her a sociopath but "there is no question that her moral compass was badly askew...Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference". One of the main themes of the book is her worship of Steve Jobs. Ripping someone for having a side project, instead of full dedication to the company, does sound like something Steve Jobs would've done.
FroshKiller 8y ago
Man, don't be giving a corporation kudos for NOT doing shit they OUGHT NOT do in the first place.
- s2g 8y ago
  shit they probably can't legally do in California anyway.
- danso 8y ago
  Why not? Tesla is seen as a company with ambitious grandiose plans. It's a common Silicon Valley cliché for startups and companies to claim they're changing the world. Tesla is one of the few companies that can legitimately claim an important mission. With all the stories (Tesla or otherwise) about SV companies overworking their employees in the name of holy missions, it's nice to see an example of what looks like an amicable parting. According to the article, Lee was able to launch and his own startup for a year, while still working full time as a product manager at Tesla. Would most startup or startup-like (trying to reach stable profit) companies be OK with that?
  - Will_Do 8y ago
    As someone who has worked at Tesla and a couple startups, there's never been anything in their contracts about other jobs as long as it's not with a competitor. I encourage everyone to push back against wording that is more restrictive than that. In fact CA (and I believe WA as well), it is unlawful for employers to be more restrictive than that[0]. Employment shouldn't make an employer the owner. Tesla had no legal leverage whatsoever to ask for a cut. [0]: https://californiaemploymentlaw.foxrothschild.com/2015/03/articles/wageandhour/can-california-employers-prohibit-moonlighting/ https://californiaemploymentlaw.foxrothschild.com/2015/03/ar...
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    I'm still unclear on the concept of giving a company kudos for not doing something the law will punish them for doing. It's the equivalent of saying we should all get kudos for not stealing from each other. You've made the act of stealing the baseline for moral judgment rather than the reprehensible exception.
trhway 8y ago
i think (IANAL) that CA moonlighting law protects the [small] guys in both cases.
- benmanns 8y ago
  Yep, as long as you're doing it on your own time, own equipment, with none of your employer's trade secrets.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"Kudos to Tesla for not only being OK with this guy having a sidegig, but also not trying to be a jerk in demanding a cut. " Please don't give them kudos. This has to be normal behavior. Being employed by a company doesn't mean being owned by them.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Sadly, I think the bad behavior is relatively common. Two of the last three SV companies I’ve worked for assert ownership over everything you do or invent, even on your own time and on your own equipment at home. I don’t know if this is super common or not, or whether or not it’s legal, and I’m certainly not going to spend $XXX,XXX on a lawyer to find out!
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's why this needs to be illegal. The regular guy doesn't have the money to fight stupid contracts.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      It is illegal in Silicon Valley, which is governed by California law. (I'm making an assumption about the meaning of "SV".) But that just means they can't enforce the contract as to work it can't legally apply to, not that they can be hit with penalties for drafting the contract that way. If they choose to fight over it, you'll still have to fight.
- sincerely 8y ago
  Or, more realistically, since societally we are ok with companies doing pretty much anything that is within the bounds of the law and this behavior seems to be legal, maybe we should be giving them kudos?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    We should not give them kudos but advocate for changing the law and and mark companies that do stuff like this as assholes.
gamblor956 8y ago
Kudos to Tesla for not only being OK with this guy having a sidegig but also not trying to be a jerk in demanding a cut. No kudos for Tesla. In California, they're not allowed to demand a cut of employees' side income streams if that income is unrelated to Tesla's business. The CA Dept of Labor punishes such things very heavily. (This is why Theranos failed to acquire Kent's patent. In California, the IP assignment clause in his contract legally does not extend beyond inventions within the scope of Theranos' business lines if developed independently.)
- danso 8y ago
  FWIW, found this useful thread 2011 HN thread about the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056 Though it's not just about trying to grab rights. Here's a blog post the founder last year, which describes in detail what he was doing from 2016 to June 2017: https://blog.usejournal.com/how-we-made-1m-in-3-months-the-story-of-morning-recovery-86b7c8a64cd0 https://blog.usejournal.com/how-we-made-1m-in-3-months-the-s... He sounds like a hard worker and seems to have been at enough places (Facebook and Uber) to know not to mix hobby with work. But it sounds like he really hustled over the year to the point of his startup being a second job. He doesn't say anything more about Tesla, but I guess I'm assuming his startup passion couldn't have been a total secret. And despite his likely well-paid role at Tesla, they seemed to have tolerated his work-life balance to the point that he got to pick the time of quitting. Yes, I agree that's the way things should be, that companies don't have any influence what you do once you've put in your 40/week. But that doesn't seem to be the status quo in tech, especially at highly ambitious companies like Tesla

by danso 8y ago

atomical 8y ago

What could have motivated them to waste so much time on that? Ego?

notahacker 8y ago
The bike light had more value than Theranos' actual "product"?
drzaiusapelord 8y ago
Elizabeth and Sunny are incredibly corrupt and dishonest people. They simply saw and easy mark in this guy and tried to fleece him. I mean, they've already fleeced millions from investors, whats another con job for them? The work environment was incredibly toxic as well: For example, Balwani took it upon himself to keep track of how long employees were working. In one encounter, Balwani brought up security footage that showed a software engineer only working an eight-hour day. He told the employee, "I'm going to fix you." The engineer promptly resigned and left the building, even as Balwani sent a security officer to try and stop him. Balwani then called the cops on the employee. http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-former-president-sunny-balwani-role-in-the-company-2018-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-former-president-sun...
danso 8y ago
The author's conclusion stops short of calling her a sociopath but "there is no question that her moral compass was badly askew...Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference". One of the main themes of the book is her worship of Steve Jobs. Ripping someone for having a side project, instead of full dedication to the company, does sound like something Steve Jobs would've done.

FroshKiller 8y ago

Man, don't be giving a corporation kudos for NOT doing shit they OUGHT NOT do in the first place.

s2g 8y ago
shit they probably can't legally do in California anyway.
danso 8y ago
Why not? Tesla is seen as a company with ambitious grandiose plans. It's a common Silicon Valley cliché for startups and companies to claim they're changing the world. Tesla is one of the few companies that can legitimately claim an important mission. With all the stories (Tesla or otherwise) about SV companies overworking their employees in the name of holy missions, it's nice to see an example of what looks like an amicable parting. According to the article, Lee was able to launch and his own startup for a year, while still working full time as a product manager at Tesla. Would most startup or startup-like (trying to reach stable profit) companies be OK with that?
- Will_Do 8y ago
  As someone who has worked at Tesla and a couple startups, there's never been anything in their contracts about other jobs as long as it's not with a competitor. I encourage everyone to push back against wording that is more restrictive than that. In fact CA (and I believe WA as well), it is unlawful for employers to be more restrictive than that[0]. Employment shouldn't make an employer the owner. Tesla had no legal leverage whatsoever to ask for a cut. [0]: https://californiaemploymentlaw.foxrothschild.com/2015/03/articles/wageandhour/can-california-employers-prohibit-moonlighting/ https://californiaemploymentlaw.foxrothschild.com/2015/03/ar...
- gamblor956 8y ago
  I'm still unclear on the concept of giving a company kudos for not doing something the law will punish them for doing. It's the equivalent of saying we should all get kudos for not stealing from each other. You've made the act of stealing the baseline for moral judgment rather than the reprehensible exception.

trhway 8y ago

i think (IANAL) that CA moonlighting law protects the [small] guys in both cases.

benmanns 8y ago
Yep, as long as you're doing it on your own time, own equipment, with none of your employer's trade secrets.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"Kudos to Tesla for not only being OK with this guy having a sidegig, but also not trying to be a jerk in demanding a cut. " Please don't give them kudos. This has to be normal behavior. Being employed by a company doesn't mean being owned by them.

ryandrake 8y ago
Sadly, I think the bad behavior is relatively common. Two of the last three SV companies I’ve worked for assert ownership over everything you do or invent, even on your own time and on your own equipment at home. I don’t know if this is super common or not, or whether or not it’s legal, and I’m certainly not going to spend $XXX,XXX on a lawyer to find out!
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's why this needs to be illegal. The regular guy doesn't have the money to fight stupid contracts.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    It is illegal in Silicon Valley, which is governed by California law. (I'm making an assumption about the meaning of "SV".) But that just means they can't enforce the contract as to work it can't legally apply to, not that they can be hit with penalties for drafting the contract that way. If they choose to fight over it, you'll still have to fight.
sincerely 8y ago
Or, more realistically, since societally we are ok with companies doing pretty much anything that is within the bounds of the law and this behavior seems to be legal, maybe we should be giving them kudos?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  We should not give them kudos but advocate for changing the law and and mark companies that do stuff like this as assholes.

gamblor956 8y ago

Kudos to Tesla for not only being OK with this guy having a sidegig but also not trying to be a jerk in demanding a cut. No kudos for Tesla. In California, they're not allowed to demand a cut of employees' side income streams if that income is unrelated to Tesla's business. The CA Dept of Labor punishes such things very heavily. (This is why Theranos failed to acquire Kent's patent. In California, the IP assignment clause in his contract legally does not extend beyond inventions within the scope of Theranos' business lines if developed independently.)

danso 8y ago
FWIW, found this useful thread 2011 HN thread about the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056 Though it's not just about trying to grab rights. Here's a blog post the founder last year, which describes in detail what he was doing from 2016 to June 2017: https://blog.usejournal.com/how-we-made-1m-in-3-months-the-story-of-morning-recovery-86b7c8a64cd0 https://blog.usejournal.com/how-we-made-1m-in-3-months-the-s... He sounds like a hard worker and seems to have been at enough places (Facebook and Uber) to know not to mix hobby with work. But it sounds like he really hustled over the year to the point of his startup being a second job. He doesn't say anything more about Tesla, but I guess I'm assuming his startup passion couldn't have been a total secret. And despite his likely well-paid role at Tesla, they seemed to have tolerated his work-life balance to the point that he got to pick the time of quitting. Yes, I agree that's the way things should be, that companies don't have any influence what you do once you've put in your 40/week. But that doesn't seem to be the status quo in tech, especially at highly ambitious companies like Tesla