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I'd be pissed off if I were a TSLA stock owner. Is Twitter paying Tesla to contract out these employees for their work? Otherwise, it's tons of thousands of dol

• 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  You'd arguably have a case that Musk is not acting in the interest of Tesla and is using his Tesla position to enrich himself rather than the Tesla company. Exactly what the "CEO is supposed to serve shareholders" is all about.
  • ajross 4y ago
    The counter argument is that Tesla has created more shareholder value over the past few years than any other single company, and in fact more than a ton of whole market segments. I mean, investors know he's sort of a loon, this is hardly the weirdest thing he done[1], and they're still on board. And FWIW: if you really want to structure this in a shareholder-friendly way, Twitter can just pay Tesla a consulting fee. Given that they're a private company now, that's almost literally as simple as just writing a check. [1] I mean, seriously, if "I'll buy TWTR for $40B!" didn't spook the market, you think they're really going to freak out about a few hundred hours of engineering time?
    • bitexploder 4y ago
      Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later. He can probably get away with it though.
      • geerlingguy 4y ago
        Many shareholders would offer their firstborn if Elon asked. He's a strange and unique character among the billionaires.
        • kaesar14 4y ago
          Proven track record gives you a really, really long leash. Only Steve Jobs has attained the rarefied air of being able to do whatever the fuck you want that Musk has.
          • dmitriid 4y ago
            • notjoemama 4y ago
              I recall Steve Jobs was known to blow up at his staff, sometimes seemingly randomly. He arguably created a hostile work environment. He also denied and estranged his own daughter. Let's not put CEOs on a scale. @kcplate Site isn't allowing me to reply, but I guess I can edit here? What I meant by scale was weighing CEOs or their behavior against each other. It sounded to me, and maybe I read it wrong, from the comment I replied to that Musk's issues were being levied against Musk with the implication (Their first sentence) Jobs didn't have issues like that. A better example of Jobs tanking Apple stock price was the partnership with Microsoft. At the time that was seen as Apple marrying the evil Jobs regularly criticized. So much for thinking different. But my point was the other things carried some form of risk and certainly didn't paint Jobs as not having character flaws. So I'm in agreement with you, he's human, Musk is human, mistakes are allowed to be made without, I don't know, "cancelling" someone I guess. Maybe it's just fashionable to pick on Musk right now? I don't know some people are so judgmental. I mean honestly, what does the average HackerNews user know about the nature of the Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code? While it could be a problem, it could also be legal and considered above board. No one here seems to know the contractual agreements and why would they? Companies don't publish every thing that runs across executives desks.
              • kcplate 4y ago
                Exactly what is the point here? I’ve seen fast food shift supervisors blow up at their staff and know at least one person who is estranged from a child. Are CEOs (including famous ones) not allowed to be human. I have never met a human that wasn’t to some degree or another a shithead at various points of time.
      • burnte 4y ago
        Yeah, it does.
        • tedunangst 4y ago
          Martin Shkreli returned a profit for his investors, and yet...
          • mikeyouse 4y ago
            Winning at the casino with money you stole from the gas station doesn’t make the original theft okay, even if you return more than you stole.
            • deaddodo 4y ago
              Exactly the point being made. Musk stealing Tesla's resources to buy an asset for himself is not ok, even if it later helps Tesla.
              • notjoemama 4y ago
                Isn't it the case people on news.ycombinator.com aren't familiar with the nature of the arrangement? Is there maybe a source that substantiates a perspective of "theft"? Or am I just missing that a rhetorical discussion is being had here?
                • tedunangst 4y ago
                  Given the timeframe, I think people are skeptical that 1. Elon arranged for twitter to contract with Tesla for code review and 2. Recused himself from the negotiations regarding scope of work and rate charged.
                  • ericd 4y ago
                    Who cares? The companies in his orbit benefit substantially from the cross pollination between them, and the PR opportunities that generates - much more than any arms-length negotiated rate would. Avoiding the type of fake work that you describe is very helpful for achieving the high iteration speeds his companies have.
      • ilyt 4y ago
        Yeah, investors don't care about ethics
      • threatofrain 4y ago
        > Making a bunch of money does not give you ethical credits you can spend later. If this wasn't in the realm of how moral calculations work in society, then you wouldn't need to make this argument. People do accept funny moral trades and it's not clear how the calculus works. Tesla shareholders accept the fact that the guy in charge sometimes plays games like "FUNDING SECURED $420", so the fact that some Tesla engineers were borrowed/contracted/whatever is just a tiny detail in the big picture.
    • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Isn't the counter argument to this that he's also the guy who has lost the stock 43% of its value over the last year?
      • kjksf 4y ago
        • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
          Ah, so the good is Elon, the bad is Jerome Powell? Also, the whole stock market isn't down 43% - the S&P is only down 13%.
          • wfme 4y ago
            TSLA has underperformed the S&P 500 over the last year, but vastly outperformed it if you expand your time frame to 5 years - ~1,000% vs 50%. Perhaps comparing the 43% drop over the last year to other comparable companies would provide a better picture. 1 Year TSLA: -43.28% GM: -29.99% FORD: -26.13% STLA: -33.09% 5 Years TSLA: 1,019% GM: -8.24% FORD: 9.24% STLA: -25.23%
            • Klinky 4y ago
              Obviously Musk should go on Twitter and lie that he's taking Tesla private again to juice the stock. Maybe he'll get two slaps on the wrist this time.
            • spookie 4y ago
              You can't compare such a recent company, to others that were well established for decades. It means nothing. I believe the criticism comes from the volatility of the company.
          • cercatrova 4y ago
            Who says Jerome Powell is bad? Fighting inflation due to, well, inflated asset values is a good thing, not bad. Just because it makes numbers go down doesn't mean it should be considered a bad thing.
    • bagacrap 4y ago
      that announcement most certainly did spook the market and news about the Twitter acquisition has been a drag on TSLA all year. You may have noticed the stock trading for slightly more than half of its peak value.
    • ratsmack 4y ago
      > sort of a loon I prefer eccentric, which may be an advantage for him.
    • wwweston 4y ago
      > Tesla has created more shareholder value over the past few years Given the PE, seems to me the shareholders have created the shareholder value.
  • conductr 4y ago
    Shareholders already know he’s part time and has multiple jobs. As for leveraging talent, I doubt it’s effecting their productivity in a significant way or deadlines are slipping due to this.
    • ramraj07 4y ago
      Your doubts will not stand up in court, even if they are grounded in reality, which *I* doubt. These engineers took time off work during work hours to go somewhere and do things that are not in service of the publicly traded company they’re employed at. That’s not something you can just hand wave away.
      • jaxn 4y ago
        Unless Tesla is interested in adding social networking / messaging features to the car interface. It’s not hard to envision a potential business case
        • acdha 4y ago
          That’s not “unless” - it’s a translate post hoc rationalization. It’s a stretch that they’d be working on that feature - considering the distracted driving problem it’s something of a liability - but even if they were, that might mean that you send a couple of people from that specific team to talk APIs or something. Pulling random engineers over to review things outside of their specialty doesn’t make any sense.
          • eclipxe 4y ago
            Not to be used while driving. Tesla has a bunch of built in apps not to be used while driving. Ex: TikTok and Netflix.
            • acdha 4y ago
              Yes, and people use them while driving because the vehicle doesn’t prevent it. You can get away with that kind of legal attempt to dodge responsibility but at some point public awareness catches up with you, similar to how telling people to drive safely wasn’t enough to avoid generations of safety technology becoming legally required.
  • ratsmack 4y ago
    Do you believe that Musk is not going to push his cars on Twitter? Seems to me that you have access to a fairly large audience on there.
    • rtkwe 4y ago
      Just being tangentially related to the company isn't enough to justify it imo. You could also buy a lot of twitter ads for the cost of having devs come over.
      • dr_dshiv 4y ago
        I guess that’s the concept of a CEO, to decide if it is justified. He will answer to the board and shareholders.
        • rvba 4y ago
          Doesn't USA have the tax concept of "transfer pricing"? Musk (who is definitely the beneficial owner of Twitter and probably of Tesla too) is providing "free" consulting service of Tesla employees for Twitter -> without an invoice and without tax. (or maybe there will be an invoice?) In EU that should be taxed (and also invoiced) - with similar prices as a consulting provided by a consulting company that does code reviews. The tax office is interested most in the missing tax of course.
          • powerapple 4y ago
            Is it confirmed that it is "free" consulting service? The article didn't mention anything about it.
          • nerdawson 4y ago
            > Later, people inside the company reported that Tesla engineers were in fact reviewing the code. There’s very little here to make any kind of judgement from. Perhaps they were being paid for some private work outside of their employment. Maybe there’s some kind of arrangement in place to cover the costs of their time. From the outside we simply don’t know.
  • zackees 4y ago
    There’s the presumption here that Tesla is footing the bill. For all you know Tesla hired out of these workers on contract and the Twitter is footing the bill.
    • weinzierl 4y ago
      Either Twitter footing the bill or maybe he pays Tesla for the project out of his own pockets.
    • ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
      But surely at the very least there is an opportunity cost of the Tesla engineers not working. What is the point of them if they don’t work?
    • morelisp 4y ago
      If Twitter is paying under fair market rate, that's collusion to benefit Twitter at the expense of Tesla. If Twitter is paying above fair market rate, that's collusion to benefit Tesla at the expense of Twitter. If Twitter is paying exactly fair market rate, why does it need to be Tesla employees? That starts to look like self-dealing to make Musk's live easier. You can't really win in this situation, which is why any sane executive avoids such a conflict of interest in the first place. (I'm not claiming there will be any repercussions mind you - if Musk got away with SolarCity he'll surely get away with this.)
      • dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Collusion? No.
      • ratorx 4y ago
        Does Case 2 matter if the company is privately owned?
        • morelisp 4y ago
          Yes, because it's not really public vs. private that matters, in both cases it's whether the shareholders care. (If it's public they complain to the SEC, if it's private they complain to their contract lawyers who hopefully included some accountability in the contracts.) This is also why Musk can get away with it - he's got fanboys, albeit of slightly different types, dominating the shareholders in both cases. (In the case of Twitter he may even be personally the majority shareholder with no obligations beyond cash now, but who knows...)
  • dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    Curious, why would you think that a person who has trouble finding a group of banks (what is a group of banks called, a flight?) to produce the cash that he owns on paper, is solely interested in chasing more cash? Is it not more believable that he has a social agenda? At this very moment, I find it believable that Musk is drawing a line in the sand to be seen by folks who would have others irreparably silenced if their views aren't fashionable.
    • Jotra7 4y ago
  • fallingknife 4y ago
    You probably wouldn't since those engineers probably signed consulting agreements with Twitter, and are being paid by Twitter, not Tesla for this work.
  • marvin 4y ago
    He’s doing the reverse with SpaceX employees, so it’s a net win.
    • chris_wot 4y ago
      A truly confidence-inspiring move, to have Twitter developers work on mission-critical SpaceX systems. Bravo!
      • dhruval 4y ago
        Space X engineers are working on Tesla
        • broknbottle 4y ago
          Real life Rocket League?
        • chris_wot 4y ago
          A truly confidence-inspiring move, to have Twitter developers work on safety-critical Tesla subsystems. Bravo!
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• nightski 4y ago
  I'm not pissed and I am a stockholder. To me it makes a lot of sense. I doubt they are reviewing the entire code base. It seems like Elon is particularly interested in the automated systems that control content and detect bots. To that end, Tesla has a lot of expertise in AI systems.
  • bloqs 4y ago
  • JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      • JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
        TSLA is down 43% ytd, yes truly evolving before our very eyes. The DOJ criminal probe into the bogus self-driving claims three days ago bodes well also.
      • giantrobot 4y ago
        Based on Tesla's PE the only people responsible for the increased share price of Tesla are investors gambling on hype. There's nothing about Tesla's fundamentals that justifies even their current valuation. It's all irrational exuberance of gamblers. The only thing Musk has contributed to the stock price has been hype and vapor ware.
        • concordDance 4y ago
          And calling it too high.
    • helf 4y ago
• abc_lisper 4y ago
  I’m a TSLA holder and I don’t mind at all. The everyday minutiae don’t concern me as long as the big picture for Tesla is in focus and with in reach
  • warbler73 4y ago
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • 1024core 4y ago
      You're confusing TSLA with TWTR.
      • warbler73 4y ago
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
    • jmillikin 4y ago
      You're thinking of Twitter (TWTR). TSLA is Tesla, which is still publically traded.
    • drakythe 4y ago
      No. It’s not. Musk bought Twitter and took it private. Tesla is still a publicly traded company that Musk (as I understand it) actually had to sell a non-trivially portion of his stock in in order to finance part of the deal. Tesla is not his personal fiefdom. Stop.
  • skellington 4y ago
  • 4y ago
• deltree7 4y ago
  • bobkazamakis 4y ago
  • zepppotemkin 4y ago
    this cracks me up lol
  • jefftk 4y ago
    I can't tell if you are being sarcastic?
  • mpenick 4y ago
    I hope this is parody. I agree with being pragmatic and not being arbitrarily constrained, but this comes off as fanatical.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bdowling 4y ago
  It would be reasonable for Twitter to pay Tesla for the audit work, because otherwise it would be a misuse of Tesla resources to only benefit the Tesla CEO.
  • howlin 4y ago
    Even if TWTR paid TSLA, this is still an obvious conflict of interest.
    • tsol 4y ago
      Plenty of companies with the same owner contract with one another. It's extremely common. When they're in the same industry, we call it 'vertical integration'
      • brookst 4y ago
        Musk doesn’t own Tesla. It’s a public company, and that comes with obligations to all shareholders.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • minhazm 4y ago
          This happens all the time between SpaceX and Tesla. SpaceX is a private company just like Twitter and Elon owns a lower percentage of SpaceX than he does Twitter. There are even people who are on payroll for both companies. For example Charles Kuehmann is VP of Materials Engineering for both Tesla and SpaceX[1]. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-kuehmann-00308a12/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-kuehmann-00308a12/
      • rhaway84773 4y ago
        Which is completely irrelevant considering Tesla and Twitter don’t have the same owner.
    • 4y ago
• nashashmi 4y ago
  Totally valid opinion. Tesla needs to be focused on delivering cars and software. They can't be distracted. This also hurts the banks who are looking at Tesla stock as collateral. By lumping their activities, both companies are now at risk.
• seydor 4y ago
  • squidbeak 4y ago
  • sojournerc 4y ago
    Yeah, making 20x on my investment really was foolish
    • dilyevsky 4y ago
      I once got 35x by betting on a zero
    • lukevp 4y ago
      You could’ve made 1000x on GME or bitcoin!
      • blaser-waffle 4y ago
        And then lost it!
• dmak 4y ago
  Um... free PR for TSLA which helps with recruiting for both organizations?
  • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    What is the Venn diagram of engineers who are aware of who is auditing Twitter, but not aware of Tesla? Or is the idea that people would want to join Tesla because they'll be asked to do code reviews of companies whose code bases they don't know?
• googlryas 4y ago
  It would be better to find out more details before having an emotional reaction. Maybe they're Tesla engineers, but they're moonlighting on Twitters dime?
  • dylan604 4y ago
    Are these the engineers that are dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight?
• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Is Twitter paying Tesla to contract out these employees for their work? Eh, there are marketing synergies between Twitter and Tesla.
  • inferiorhuman 4y ago
• tomschlick 4y ago
  Whos to say that these TSLA engineers didnt take PTO time and Musk is paying them a consulting rate?
  • rtp4me 4y ago
    Exactly! Just like I said in my comment down below. Most commenters in this thread just assume Musk told a bunch of guys just to show up on TLSA time to do some code review. My suspicion is he helped setup some sort of consulting arrangement between the two companies to make it legal. Why is that so hard to believe?
    • tedunangst 4y ago
      Because Musk ordering a bunch of TSLA employees to do whatever isn't so hard to believe?
      • wyclif 4y ago
        If you think Musk didn't run it past legal first, you're delusional.
        • drakythe 4y ago
          He signed a contract waiving due diligence, agreeing to buy a company at a frankly ludicrous valuation compared to their stock price and then tried to back out saying they wouldn’t let him do due diligence.
        • lupire 4y ago
          Musk has in the last been officially sanctioned by the government for disobeying a direct order to...run things by Legal before putting them on Twitter.
        • FireBeyond 4y ago
          What 'legal'? Tesla hasn't had General Counsel since 2019.
        • 4y ago
• warbler73 4y ago
  • lol768 4y ago
    Tesla Inc is public.
  • Vivtek 4y ago
    Tesla, not Twitter. I misread it the same way.
  • wil421 4y ago
    Can’t tell if you’re serious or not. Allegedly, Tesla engineers were sent to evaluate Twitter code. Why would Tesla investors want employees to work on their CEOs side investment.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • scheme271 4y ago
    Tesla is not privately owned. And if their employees are working to review twitter code, then Tesla stockholders should rightfully be mad that Tesla is paying employees to benefit Elon Musk's private ventures.
• cma 4y ago
  He did it with SpaceX too and had to reach a settlement: > The arrangement alarmed some longtime investors in SpaceX, including its largest outside backer, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, some of the people said. The investors learned in recent months that despite the diversion of SpaceX resources and staffing to the fledgling Boring startup, it was Musk who was in line to receive almost all of any future profits, these people said. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-questions-over-elon-musks-use-of-spacex-resources-for-boring-co-tunnels-2018-12-17 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-questions-over-elon-mu... > In early 2018, The Boring Company was spun out from SpaceX and into a separate corporate entity.[27] Somewhat less than 10% of equity was given to early employees, and over 90% to Elon Musk. Subsequent concerns by SpaceX shareholders resulted in a December 2018 reallocation of 6% of The Boring Company's equity to SpaceX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#History Basically he tried embezzlement.
  • texasbigdata 4y ago
    This is a little aggressive. The boring company is unproven technology in a perpetually capex heavy delivery model. If I was a spacex shareholder I’d probably value it at $0 in 2018, and strongly prefer it to be not associated with spacex at all.
    • shapefrog 4y ago
      Yes but on t-1 your 1% of spacex also represented 1% of boring company - which you were paying to devlop. At t+1 you owned 1% of spacex and 0% of boring company. If you want to sell your shares for 0$ that is up to you. On the flip side, I am happy to look through your personal holdings, and anything I think is worth $0, take for myself. You wouldnt mind now would you?
      • texasbigdata 4y ago
        Fair. I’ve worked on divesting on unprofitable unit for $0 that ended up being worth $XXM and the distraction elimination it caused for management way more than outweighed the multi year ROI on the process. But your point stands. The counter argument to your point is taken to the absurd extreme you should be like those people on TV buying entire abandoned storage lockers full of junk in the hope of finding _something_. The fact that the boring company seems to partially be working (and many people on HN would likely disagree) is rear view mirror luck. Look at Facebook and oculus now, for an analogy.
• kmbfjr 4y ago
  Normally this sort of thing can be reported through the ethics hotline.
• colechristensen 4y ago
  You’d only be pissed off if you had a predisposition to dislike elon and then why would you be a TSLA shareholder? This is a tiny amount of money compared to the daily cost of running TSLA and would have zero actual impact to shareholder value. If it isn’t being accounted for correctly, there will be a tiny investor lawsuit and a tiny amount of money changing hands. This is latching on to just anything to complain about and really detracts from the ability of elon critics to be taken seriously because it’s just complaining about a few pennies worth of shareholder value.
  • drakythe 4y ago
    So you have no problems with employees stealing the odd petty cash here or there for their side hustle, right?
    • colechristensen 4y ago
      As a shareholder? No. Tiny losses are not of concern to me. I am concerned with large scale long term outcomes not obsessing over not losing hundredths of a percent of revenue.
  • acdha 4y ago
    > This is a tiny amount of money compared to the daily cost of running TSLA Software isn’t the same as making floor mats. Your major production factors are having people with the right skills, knowledge, and time to focus — while their salaries are a drop in Tesla’s daily operational cost, the real question should be how much it disrupts their development schedule. Given how far behind they are on features which they’ve already sold, to the point of having government investigations, I’d tend to think that the disruption of pulling them away from their planned work is a lot more expensive than just the time billed.
• jmyeet 4y ago
  If this sort of thing concerns you, you should already be pissed because it's not the first time it's happened. Remember SolarCity? SolarCity was one of Elon's companies. SpaceX had bought a large number of solar bonds. One interpretation of this was to keep the company afloat. A court disagreed [1]. When SolarCity became insolvent it was bought out by Tesla. So one of Elon's companies bought out another of Elon's companies to save the third Elon company. There is this myth that exists of Elon being some kind of tech deity but there's a much better case to be made that he's simply a highly privileged technocrat who has quite successfully failed upwards his entire career [2]. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/27/elon-musk-wins-shareholder-lawsuit-over-the-companys-2point6-billion-solarcity-acquisition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/27/elon-musk-wins-shareholder-l... [2]: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-many-failures-of-elon-musk-captured-in-one-giant-infographic-2017-05-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-many-failures-of-elon-...
  • WalterBright 4y ago
    Musk failed so badly, his rocket company handily outshines all the government rocket programs in existence.
• salmonet 4y ago
  I am surprised this is the top comment. Yes, I am sure they have done the paperwork for these "tons of thousands of dollars." I think it is unlikely that many shareholders are concerned about this exercise
  • duxup 4y ago
    What paperwork?
    • spuz 4y ago
      They would have to sign NDAs at the very least.
• dehrmann 4y ago
  Once Tesla bought Solar City, Musk's cousin's company, it became clear that he's prone to this sort of misuse of resources. I agree that he shouldn't use Tesla resources like this, but it's not out-of-character, either.
• ManWith2Plans 4y ago
  It's perfectly plausible to believe that Elon Musk paid them to take vacation days off for this purpose. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions.
• bemmu 4y ago
  Maybe it’s an opportunity to spot Twitter employees who could be adding more value working at Tesla instead?
• kcplate 4y ago
  I’m sure it’s not reported (because it lessens the impact of the story), but I guarantee Twitter will compensate Tesla if Tesla resources are used. However, I bet it it’s contractor engineers that are used who might have also worked at Tesla. Been there, done that.
• Cypher 4y ago
  Aren't you also pissed that Elon works on spaceX ?
• exabrial 4y ago
  Huh? Free national press time for tesla for a few thousand bucks of dev time send like a good deal, no? The fact we’re sitting here talking snot it pretty much proves that….
• alfor 4y ago
  There is a lot of cross pollination between his companies, that’s is fine: - new materials from SpaceX make it into Tesla cars - productions techniques from Tesla goes into SpaceX rockets - Semiconductor teams from Starlink probably connected to Tesla It mean the best engineers get even more opportunities. win-win Less red tape, more work get done. I think we should all embrace that. Our goal should be to make things better first and then to make money second to help us out make things even better at larger scale.
  • riffraff 4y ago
    Has SpaceX developed any new materials? It was my understanding they use pretty standard steel alloys.
    • xcskier56 4y ago
      I’m not sure if they developed them themselves, but the alloys SpaceX uses in the pre burners in the raptor engines are really advanced and likely have not been known (in the US) before. They have to be able to withstand pure (nearly) oxygen gas at very high temperatures and pressures. I wouldn’t be surprised if these super specialize alloys were developed by spacex. The Soviets figured it out during the end of the space race and US engineers basically assumed they were lying bc they thought the metallurgy was impossible.
      • shapefrog 4y ago
        SX 300 & soon SX 500. Kind of a modern version of Inconel superalloys Inconel is known in the US as it was invented there in the 1930s - well before Musk was born. They might be called superalloys, but there is nothing particularly sophisticated about them from a scientific perspective. SX300 / SX500 are minor revisions which take some R&D but technologically it is 1930's stuff.
        • dotancohen 4y ago
          This is plain wrong. In the US it was assumed that Oxygen-rich preburners would erode any manufacturable material - metal, ceramic, or exotic. When the RD-170 (If I remember correctly) was found to have an oxygen-rich preburner, very knowledgeable people called it a lie, misrepresentation, or proclaimed that is was severely wearing (possibly ablating) and thus had to be very heavy. The Raptors are reusable (even air-ignitable, with centisecond timing precision to achieve a specific thrust) engines with an oxygen-rich preburner, and to boot they have the highest chamber pressure of any rocket engine ever. Thus, they also have a very high (possibly highest, we don't know) pump pressure (the preburner _is_ the pump), and they're doing that with oxygen-rich combustion. There is some crazy material making up that preburner chamber, and the pipes down to the pintles. Materials that until recently were though to be beyond manufacturing capability. And this is in a reusable engine that costs less than an RD-68. Frankly, it looks like magic.
• throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  Would you also be outraged if those engineers were given an extra day off instead?
  • everfree 4y ago
    A day off improves an engineer's work-life balance in a small way. A day at a different company is different - it's a day that's neither productive to the original company nor restful to the engineer.
• sfmike 4y ago
  This is true, yet Musk has proven to be asynchronous. It could have second order consequences that actually benefit Tesla in the long term. Of course that's hypothetical but there could be some game theory here the truth is we don't know.
• TeeMassive 4y ago
  > Otherwise, it's tons of thousands of dollars Tesla is pissing away on behalf of the CEO's side-hustle. Seems like a drop of water. For something to be legally relevant it has to be significant.
  • iboisvert 4y ago
    That's probably what Martha Stewart was thinking as well
• voidfunc 4y ago
  Musk has made TSLA stock holders fabulously wealthy over the last decade. He's gonna get a long leash from TSLA shareholders.
• paganel 4y ago
  Love him or hate him, without Musk Tesla would have been dead in the water as a company and its shares would have been worthless by now. Those stock owners knew what they did when they got into TSLA.
  • onion2k 4y ago
    I don't think there's any doubt that Musk has grown Tesla significantly and had a very positive impact on the share price, but that's something he did in the past. You can't just accept everything he does in the future because of past wins. Tesla shareholders don't owe him anything. He's there to do a job, and if he's not doing it well then they should complain. There's a lesson here for all of us. If you think you're safe in your role because of some good work you did in the past you are wrong. You were paid for that work. It's gone now. Hopefully your employer recognises your ability and talent and believes you'll do good work again, but of they believe it was luck, or that you're now too old and stuck in your ways then your previous victories won't help you at all. What happened in the past is a sunk cost. Using it as a basis for future decisions while ignoring the present is a terrible, terrible way to move forwards.
  • hota_mazi 4y ago
    > without Musk Tesla would have been dead in the water as a company and its shares would have been worthless by now I don't know how you could possibly know that, that's an unfalsifiable claim. I could make the opposite claim (that with a different CEO, Tesla would be worth ten times as much as it is now) and you couldn't disprove it.
    • paganel 4y ago
      Tesla is literally a unicorn in the car industry, in terms of stock valuations, that is. If that isn't verifiable I don't know what else is.
      • hota_mazi 4y ago
        What's not verifiable is your claim that it couldn't be valued higher with a different CEO. That is unfalsifiable.
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  How do you know Twitter or Musk aren't paying for those contractors to come and assess the code?
• eterevsky 4y ago
  As an actual TSLA stock owner, I'm ok with this. It's a pretty trivial amount of work in the grand schema of things and it will probably be compensated to Tesla in some way.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• gvv 4y ago
  Like you assume ALL the engineers at Tesla are on site at Twitter or what? Maybe it's like 4-5 principal engineers for a couple of days.
• theteapot 4y ago
  They should be happy. Get your engineers out and about for a bit, dump on some disposable soon to be ex Twitter developers to boost their morale while at it. Genius.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ekianjo 4y ago
  Why do you care enough to comment as a non stock owner? Got an axe to grind?
• bbarn 4y ago
  When you invest in a company like Tesla, you're investing your money and your trust that ultimately there will be a return. Would you be angry if he gave everyone a 2 week vacation as recognition for doing something good? Part of what motivates engineers is recognition, and being asked to work on some project outside the company for a few weeks is recognizing that your input as an engineer is that valued.
• dhruval 4y ago
  Tesla can bill Twitter for the work at a fair market price.