10 ms·

Yay for at-will employment laws... :-( > Over the previous year, he had been living out of a suitcase, putting in 13-hour days, seven days a week. This story

Yay for at-will employment laws... :-( > Over the previous year, he had been living out of a suitcase, putting in 13-hour days, seven days a week. This story is a good reminder not to do this. The company will usually not return the favour, you rarely get properly rewarded for crazy hours, yet it has a major impact on your health (both mental and physical) in the long run. Not worth it. > It was not a 9 to 5 company. People were already working hard; now Musk was implying they needed to do more. No wonder things were going to shit. Nobody can do good work if they don't get enough rest and have too much stress. > Three months after that, it would report profits of $312 million, well beyond Wall Street’s expectations. How much of this money did the employees get for all the overtime they were forced to work? > Tesla, ... that some aspects were “overly dramatized,” “abbreviated,” and “ultimately misleading anecdotes that completely lack essential context.” ... “Elon cares very deeply about the people who work at his companies. ... For the sake of everybody working for him, I really really hope this is true and not just PR firefighting and that the story misrepresented what actually happened. I'm not convinced, based on Musk's twitter outbursts and such, but I still hope this story is mostly false.

Aromaisn 8y ago
When working for Tesla I can only assume the dynamic is different. For many it IS worth it, and will work crazy hours without recompense, because in their eyes it pushes humanity further forward. They work for the joy of innovation.
- pell 8y ago
  I think, this might be true for some people in the beginning, but according to this article and other similar articles, a lot of people are leaving the company. So I'm not so sure this idealism is all that accurate. Also, you don't need to treat your employees with that level of disrespect if you want to "push humanity forward" with them.
  - Aromaisn 8y ago
    Perhaps I kept my comment too brief. I'm not endorsing Musk's behaviour in the slightest; it's abhorrent. I was speaking solely in reference to the initial comment about the obscene hours these employees seem to do, and conjecturing a reason as to how the employee might justify it to themselves.
    - dkersten 8y ago
      Obviously they’re rationalising and justifying it to themselves or they wouldn’t be doing it. I get it. But that doesn’t make it a bad decision. I’ve heard a LOT of stories where people went way above and beyond what they had to and then got dropped like they were nothing when it didn’t suit the employer anymore and very, very, very few stories where it worked out well for the employee.
      - dkersten 8y ago
        Too late to edit, but I meant “that doesn’t make it a good decision” not “bad decision”
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  It's a luxury car. For wealthy people to show off. Don't get me wrong, I drive an EV. They're great. But let's not exaggerate what Tesla is.
  - pvarangot 8y ago
    Is Tesla really on the "for flexing it" side of luxury? I'm in Argentina and never met anyone who owns or drives one, let alone get into one save for on a trip and it was in a showroom. I was under the impression it's the kind of luxury were your money is worth because no one else does an EV that's as comfortable, dependable, fast and with good range. I mean it's luxurious as eating wagyu beef is, there's a barrier to entry but not as artificial as in for example buying Gucci loafers, and if you really want the taste/experience you have to cough up the money.
    - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
      I work at Google, and there's a lot of them (both S and 3 and a few Xs) in the parking lot here, but that's because of Google salary. They're bloody expensive. The "$35,000" model is nowhere to be seen, and even when it comes, it'll be stupidly expensive still here in Canada. Working class people buy used cars, below $15k at least.
  - berberous 8y ago
    That’s true about the buyers, but go read Elon’s grand plan. He has no interest in making luxury cars, but you can’t launch a mass market cheap car from nothing. He has gone from a 250k roadster, to a 100k luxury sedan, to a 55k fully loaded sedan, and soon to a 35k sedan. As soon as he can drop it further, he will. And in 20 years, the car transportation landscape will have been transformed. This is the typical cycle for a new good. You could have said that the first cell phone, which cost a fortune, or the first smartphone, were each luxury goods for wealthy people to show off. Which was true, but now years later, all that money drove innovation to the point where nearly the entire world has one, interconnecting humanity to a much greater degree than before.
taneq 8y ago
> This story is a good reminder not to do this. The company will usually not return the favour, you rarely get properly rewarded for crazy hours, yet it has a major impact on your health (both mental and physical) in the long run. Not worth it. And yet it's also a perfect example of the one time it does make sense to do so, which is when you own a decent chunk of the company that you're doing it for. > No wonder things were going to shit. Nobody can do good work if they don't get enough rest and have too much stress. Yeah, that kind of effort is not sustainable for more than a few months at most. Trying to push too hard just burns out your best people, even (especially?) if they're part owners.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I would be amazed if it were sustainable for even that long. My recollection is that it's a couple of weeks before productivity ends up back where it would be if you were just working reasonable hours. And then you rapidly descend into less and less productive states. (There used to be a great presentation with linked research about this here [1], but their website seems shaky.) I think it's an especially bad idea at high levels of the company, because of the long feedback loops. If a line worker makes a mistake, they will hopefully catch that within hours. If they make a bunch, somebody's going to come talk to them in short order. If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious. But the more tired I am, the more my focus shifts short-term and the less I notice subtleties and small mistakes. increased error rates and long feedback loops are a very bad combination. [1] http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    > If a line worker makes a mistake, they will hopefully catch that within hours. > If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious To finish the parable: If an engineer makes a mistake, it might not be noticed until users start to die while operating the product.
    - 8y ago
baldfat 8y ago
> at-will employment laws I just don't get how we just can't over turn them politically state by state in State Elections. How is this not a thing? I live in an At Will State (PA) and it pretty much sucks to have the knowledge I can be fired for any reason and sure I still can sue but I can still lose even though I am 100% in the right.
- pjc50 8y ago
  There's going to be a lot of money thrown at propaganda to convince voters that requiring employers to treat employees fairly will reduce jobs. And as soon as anyone mentions unions, it's all over. Every (right-of-centre) American knows that they're the only hardworking person in the country and the entire rest of the workforce is lazy good-for-nothings who need the constant threat of firing to achieve anything. /s
  - svantana 8y ago
    > as soon as anyone mentions unions, it's all over Isn't there a technical solution to this? Something like an outwardly anonymous social network with "proof" of employment from LinkedIn, where you can pledge to unionize once participation reaches critical mass for your workplace. Yes laws are better, but this could be a decent workaround.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Too easy to infiltrate, too difficult to enforce participation internally. And you've got to advertise it somehow to the workforce. I don't think it's achievable without outside help and political organisation.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        What is not achievable? We're talking about collective bargaining, how is that not achievable without outside help and involving the government? People got it working just fine 100 years ago... Of course back then laws were not favoring corporations that much (in my country where it worked then, not the USA).
api 8y ago
... yet Tesla pushed the entire world to electrify transport. I remember years ago reading article after article and forum post after forum post about how once we finally deplete oil transportation will revert to the 19th century. I don't read that anymore. I have little doubt that without Tesla you wouldn't see a dozen other EVs on the market. You might have one or two crappy "compliance cars," but nobody else would be striving to make EVs anyone actually wants to buy. I am not arguing with you. I don't disagree with much of anything that you wrote. One of the things that keeps me up at night and frankly depresses me is the question: can you lead or otherwise achieve great things without being an asshole? Steve Jobs? Asshole. Winston Churchill? Asshole. Stanley Kubrick? Asshole. Bill Gates? Quieter, but judging from MS's behavior in the 80s and 90s, asshole. I could go on. I'm a founder and have been trying for quite a while to build something great without being an asshole or a total workaholic. It's hard, and I sometimes worry that I'm failing. Anyone got any good inspiring counterexamples? I have a speculation about why this might be. The human brain is wired for the much slower, simpler life of a hunter-gatherer. In a modern context most people exist in a state of low-grade depression. We're not really all that driven and our appetite for opportunity and action is calibrated for a world where opportunities for those things are much more rare. There are ways of tweaking oneself chemically (pun intended): caffeine, amphetamine, cocaine, modafinil. Unfortunately all these have side effects. They accelerate thought but they also muddle or impair it. But... Occasionally you get people who are naturally wired with an extreme degree of drive and charisma. It's not that these people are necessarily smarter than everyone else, though some are certainly smart. It's that they operate naturally at a pace that fits the modern world. Here's where the magic comes in. Humans are deeply mimetic. We pick up and unconsciously mirror the states of those around us. It's part of why concentrated centers of excellence such as those found in urban settings are often so mysteriously alluring and powerful. When we are around people who are driven to excellence, it increases our drive to excellence. So you get this positive emotional-mimetic field around these people. Everyone else around them gets tweaked up too. Unfortunately these traits seem coincident with narcissism, antisocial personality disorders, even full on psychopathy in some cases. So you have these inspiring, driven, animating assholes that seem superhumanly powerful simply because they are not (in modern terms) naturally depressed and anhedonic. Like I said it's depressing. This is one of those thoughts where if I were proven to be wrong I'd celebrate.
hopefulengineer 8y ago
Musk is a great marketer and communicator, he convinces people that making luxury cars is saving the world because they are electric. The people buying them also feel like they are heroes saving the world. Humans have a need to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves and Musk provides it. Steve jobs did the same thing, their marketing was all about pushing how apple users think different and are changing the world by being mindless consumers
- standerman 8y ago
  Seems to me they're being mindful consumers.
njarboe 8y ago
I would be quite useful for this conversation to see what the wages/overtime pay and stock options are for past employees and new hires. Without that the conversation is just wild speculation and not really worth pursuing.
whiddershins 8y ago
I didn't read the article, so perhaps I'm missing something: > How much of this money did the employees get for all the overtime they were forced to work? Did someone somehow compel someone else to work those hours? I imagine most Tesla employees are at the top of their field, and have many jobs to choose from. If someone chose to work like that, there must have been a motivation, it doesn't seem like they would have been forced.
- gurumeditations 8y ago
  You believe that they wouldn’t be fired if they chose to perform normal working hours?

Aromaisn 8y ago

When working for Tesla I can only assume the dynamic is different. For many it IS worth it, and will work crazy hours without recompense, because in their eyes it pushes humanity further forward. They work for the joy of innovation.

pell 8y ago
I think, this might be true for some people in the beginning, but according to this article and other similar articles, a lot of people are leaving the company. So I'm not so sure this idealism is all that accurate. Also, you don't need to treat your employees with that level of disrespect if you want to "push humanity forward" with them.
- Aromaisn 8y ago
  Perhaps I kept my comment too brief. I'm not endorsing Musk's behaviour in the slightest; it's abhorrent. I was speaking solely in reference to the initial comment about the obscene hours these employees seem to do, and conjecturing a reason as to how the employee might justify it to themselves.
  - dkersten 8y ago
    Obviously they’re rationalising and justifying it to themselves or they wouldn’t be doing it. I get it. But that doesn’t make it a bad decision. I’ve heard a LOT of stories where people went way above and beyond what they had to and then got dropped like they were nothing when it didn’t suit the employer anymore and very, very, very few stories where it worked out well for the employee.
    - dkersten 8y ago
      Too late to edit, but I meant “that doesn’t make it a good decision” not “bad decision”
cmrdporcupine 8y ago
It's a luxury car. For wealthy people to show off. Don't get me wrong, I drive an EV. They're great. But let's not exaggerate what Tesla is.
- pvarangot 8y ago
  Is Tesla really on the "for flexing it" side of luxury? I'm in Argentina and never met anyone who owns or drives one, let alone get into one save for on a trip and it was in a showroom. I was under the impression it's the kind of luxury were your money is worth because no one else does an EV that's as comfortable, dependable, fast and with good range. I mean it's luxurious as eating wagyu beef is, there's a barrier to entry but not as artificial as in for example buying Gucci loafers, and if you really want the taste/experience you have to cough up the money.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    I work at Google, and there's a lot of them (both S and 3 and a few Xs) in the parking lot here, but that's because of Google salary. They're bloody expensive. The "$35,000" model is nowhere to be seen, and even when it comes, it'll be stupidly expensive still here in Canada. Working class people buy used cars, below $15k at least.
- berberous 8y ago
  That’s true about the buyers, but go read Elon’s grand plan. He has no interest in making luxury cars, but you can’t launch a mass market cheap car from nothing. He has gone from a 250k roadster, to a 100k luxury sedan, to a 55k fully loaded sedan, and soon to a 35k sedan. As soon as he can drop it further, he will. And in 20 years, the car transportation landscape will have been transformed. This is the typical cycle for a new good. You could have said that the first cell phone, which cost a fortune, or the first smartphone, were each luxury goods for wealthy people to show off. Which was true, but now years later, all that money drove innovation to the point where nearly the entire world has one, interconnecting humanity to a much greater degree than before.

taneq 8y ago

> This story is a good reminder not to do this. The company will usually not return the favour, you rarely get properly rewarded for crazy hours, yet it has a major impact on your health (both mental and physical) in the long run. Not worth it. And yet it's also a perfect example of the one time it does make sense to do so, which is when you own a decent chunk of the company that you're doing it for. > No wonder things were going to shit. Nobody can do good work if they don't get enough rest and have too much stress. Yeah, that kind of effort is not sustainable for more than a few months at most. Trying to push too hard just burns out your best people, even (especially?) if they're part owners.

wpietri 8y ago
I would be amazed if it were sustainable for even that long. My recollection is that it's a couple of weeks before productivity ends up back where it would be if you were just working reasonable hours. And then you rapidly descend into less and less productive states. (There used to be a great presentation with linked research about this here [1], but their website seems shaky.) I think it's an especially bad idea at high levels of the company, because of the long feedback loops. If a line worker makes a mistake, they will hopefully catch that within hours. If they make a bunch, somebody's going to come talk to them in short order. If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious. But the more tired I am, the more my focus shifts short-term and the less I notice subtleties and small mistakes. increased error rates and long feedback loops are a very bad combination. [1] http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  > If a line worker makes a mistake, they will hopefully catch that within hours. > If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious To finish the parable: If an engineer makes a mistake, it might not be noticed until users start to die while operating the product.
  - 8y ago

baldfat 8y ago

> at-will employment laws I just don't get how we just can't over turn them politically state by state in State Elections. How is this not a thing? I live in an At Will State (PA) and it pretty much sucks to have the knowledge I can be fired for any reason and sure I still can sue but I can still lose even though I am 100% in the right.

pjc50 8y ago
There's going to be a lot of money thrown at propaganda to convince voters that requiring employers to treat employees fairly will reduce jobs. And as soon as anyone mentions unions, it's all over. Every (right-of-centre) American knows that they're the only hardworking person in the country and the entire rest of the workforce is lazy good-for-nothings who need the constant threat of firing to achieve anything. /s
- svantana 8y ago
  > as soon as anyone mentions unions, it's all over Isn't there a technical solution to this? Something like an outwardly anonymous social network with "proof" of employment from LinkedIn, where you can pledge to unionize once participation reaches critical mass for your workplace. Yes laws are better, but this could be a decent workaround.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Too easy to infiltrate, too difficult to enforce participation internally. And you've got to advertise it somehow to the workforce. I don't think it's achievable without outside help and political organisation.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      What is not achievable? We're talking about collective bargaining, how is that not achievable without outside help and involving the government? People got it working just fine 100 years ago... Of course back then laws were not favoring corporations that much (in my country where it worked then, not the USA).

api 8y ago

... yet Tesla pushed the entire world to electrify transport. I remember years ago reading article after article and forum post after forum post about how once we finally deplete oil transportation will revert to the 19th century. I don't read that anymore. I have little doubt that without Tesla you wouldn't see a dozen other EVs on the market. You might have one or two crappy "compliance cars," but nobody else would be striving to make EVs anyone actually wants to buy. I am not arguing with you. I don't disagree with much of anything that you wrote. One of the things that keeps me up at night and frankly depresses me is the question: can you lead or otherwise achieve great things without being an asshole? Steve Jobs? Asshole. Winston Churchill? Asshole. Stanley Kubrick? Asshole. Bill Gates? Quieter, but judging from MS's behavior in the 80s and 90s, asshole. I could go on. I'm a founder and have been trying for quite a while to build something great without being an asshole or a total workaholic. It's hard, and I sometimes worry that I'm failing. Anyone got any good inspiring counterexamples? I have a speculation about why this might be. The human brain is wired for the much slower, simpler life of a hunter-gatherer. In a modern context most people exist in a state of low-grade depression. We're not really all that driven and our appetite for opportunity and action is calibrated for a world where opportunities for those things are much more rare. There are ways of tweaking oneself chemically (pun intended): caffeine, amphetamine, cocaine, modafinil. Unfortunately all these have side effects. They accelerate thought but they also muddle or impair it. But... Occasionally you get people who are naturally wired with an extreme degree of drive and charisma. It's not that these people are necessarily smarter than everyone else, though some are certainly smart. It's that they operate naturally at a pace that fits the modern world. Here's where the magic comes in. Humans are deeply mimetic. We pick up and unconsciously mirror the states of those around us. It's part of why concentrated centers of excellence such as those found in urban settings are often so mysteriously alluring and powerful. When we are around people who are driven to excellence, it increases our drive to excellence. So you get this positive emotional-mimetic field around these people. Everyone else around them gets tweaked up too. Unfortunately these traits seem coincident with narcissism, antisocial personality disorders, even full on psychopathy in some cases. So you have these inspiring, driven, animating assholes that seem superhumanly powerful simply because they are not (in modern terms) naturally depressed and anhedonic. Like I said it's depressing. This is one of those thoughts where if I were proven to be wrong I'd celebrate.

hopefulengineer 8y ago

Musk is a great marketer and communicator, he convinces people that making luxury cars is saving the world because they are electric. The people buying them also feel like they are heroes saving the world. Humans have a need to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves and Musk provides it. Steve jobs did the same thing, their marketing was all about pushing how apple users think different and are changing the world by being mindless consumers

standerman 8y ago
Seems to me they're being mindful consumers.

njarboe 8y ago

I would be quite useful for this conversation to see what the wages/overtime pay and stock options are for past employees and new hires. Without that the conversation is just wild speculation and not really worth pursuing.

whiddershins 8y ago

I didn't read the article, so perhaps I'm missing something: > How much of this money did the employees get for all the overtime they were forced to work? Did someone somehow compel someone else to work those hours? I imagine most Tesla employees are at the top of their field, and have many jobs to choose from. If someone chose to work like that, there must have been a motivation, it doesn't seem like they would have been forced.

gurumeditations 8y ago
You believe that they wouldn’t be fired if they chose to perform normal working hours?