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This is a reasonable, yet generous reading of the situation. But the situation stinks. Tripp raised what seemed to be sincere concerns, yet was retaliated again
by leoh 7y ago
This is a reasonable, yet generous reading of the situation. But the situation stinks. Tripp raised what seemed to be sincere concerns, yet was retaliated against by Tesla in an exceedingly heavy-handed manner. Tesla's current claim is that he caused them over 100 million dollars in damage. The trouble in my mind is that Tesla escalated and has continued to escalate an incredibly unpleasant situation involving Tripp. This situation, and others, seem to strongly suggest that company that runs deeply on principles of fear, going so far as to use incredible amounts of energy on going after a low-level engineer with a possibly reasonable complaint.
A more enlightened response from Tesla, in my mind, had the complaints by Tripp been untrue, would have been to have been to quietly dismiss him, address his claims in a press release, and use gentle language to address him, identifying him, sincerely, if possible, as a genuinely useful member of the team with whom Tesla had an irreconcilable disagreement.
Tesla is not taking this route, however. Their handling of the situation suggests that they may have something more serious to hide or, at minimum, that they are not committed to deeper humanistic means of engaging with individuals that challenge them (though Musk must not be exclusively defined by this, is it so surprising given the terrible names he called one of the Thai rescuers?). Tesla has and are continues to attend to Tripp with tremendous force (legal, and perhaps otherwise -- as suggested by this link) as opposed to just moving on and letting things be. They are proactively seeking to proactively discredit and arguably harm Tripp as opposed to contending with his contentions head on.
- zozbot234 7y ago> Tripp raised what seemed to be genuine concerns Were they genuine concerns, though? The overall impression from available sources is that he was overreacting to a situation that, while perhaps unusual, was basically par for the course given that Gigafactory itself is a newly-built facility, and one that's still largely under-construction. Why would you expect things to be 100% perfect and with zero unnecessary waste? Screwups happen all the time, most of the time it's totally normal and not a big concern.
- leoh 7y agoDefinitely, I agree that they may have been invalid claims and that screwups do happen. What concerns me is that may have been Tripp was truly sincere if not misguided. Tesla's 100 million dollar lawsuit, however, sends a chilling message that if you harm Tesla, they may go after you with incredible force.
- sjwright 7y agoChilling? That’s normal corporate behaviour. It would be more weird if they didn’t react.
- lordlic 7y agoWhat a depressing attitude. Just because something is common doesn't mean it's acceptable.
- sjwright 7y agoI didn’t say it was acceptable. It’s also not acceptable for alligators to bite humans, but the appropriate solution isn’t necessarily to kill all the alligators. Like the biology of a crocodile, this is the natural behaviour of a capitalist corporate entity under current US law. We have this set of incentives for corporations and we’re all surprised when they follow them to the letter.
- jakobegger 7y agoNope. It's pointless to sue a private individual for 100 million dollars. Even if those losses were real, there's no way to recoup them from an unemployed engineer. Tesla is going to spend a lot of money on legal fees with no potential upside -- except that they can fuck up Tripp's life. It's pretty clear that the goal of these lawsuits is not to recoup losses, but instead to silence critics, and to attack someone that alledgedly "betrayed" Tesla. This is not normal corporate behavior. Normal companies don't try to swat their ex-employees. Normal companies don't start lawsuits on the whim of their CEO. Normal companies either don't talk at all about employees that make crazy allegations, or they make a press release thanking the whistleblower, stating that they investigated the allegations and determined that there are no problems and everything is fine!
- throwawaypolicy 7y agoMoreover, even if they were legitimate, was the press a legitimate place to raise them? Generally, if you want to whistleblow you should blow the whistle to the regulators. Probably the EPA or a similar agency for any supposed environmental concerns, and the DOT, NHTSA, or a similar agency for any safety concerns related to vehicle's battery packs. You don't get to leak to the press in violation of your NDA just because you disagree with your employer. Maybe it becomes legitimate if you think that the government and your employer are conspiring to keep issues secret, but I don't see any suggestion of that here.
- trenning 7y agoIt feels like there's a common thread between whistleblowers working for Elon Musk and retaliation to their personal lives. https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/c7pmaf/yes_spacex_really_did_falsify_test_documents_no_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/c7pmaf/yes_...