
Tesla loses three vice presidents in a week - evo_9
https://electrek.co/2019/07/02/tesla-loses-three-vice-presidents/
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radicalbyte
Now that Tesla have broken ground there are a lot of electric car startups. So
these people are in demand.

~~~
steve76
That's good!

I'm routing for Mr. Elon Musk. There's plenty for everyone. It's not a zero
sum game.

~~~
nick_kline
One good thing about Tesla is they always said their goal is to kickstart the
ev transition, and Musk even specifically said it's okay if tesla loses out as
long as society moves that way. So that's a noble thing. They actually have a
goal. In the mean time they've made a fantastic vehicle that should improve
the world.

Separately from that, by all apparent news Tesla is a gosh dang hard working
place, and people can't take it forever.

~~~
p1mrx
I will believe that Tesla has society's interests in mind when they sell
vehicles with standard J1772 connectors, and deploy CCS connectors at their
supercharger sites.

Until then, they're just emulating Apple's vendor lock-in.

~~~
ostbahnhof
They already do exactly this in Europe. Model 3 ships with CCS, and the super
chargers have now 2 cables, one of them is CCS.

~~~
xur17
Can non-tesla cars use their superchargers (I thought payment was done through
the car, so I wasn't sure how that would work)?

~~~
natch
Only if the non-Tesla car manufacture accepts Tesla's offer to enable it,
which means just making their cars capable by following Tesla's specs, and
paying a fair share of supporting the supercharger network, proportional to
usage. So far no manufacturer has accepted this offer.

~~~
de_watcher
Somehow dozens of other EV charging networks don't need to talk to the car
manufacturers.

Can that supercharger myth finally die?

~~~
londons_explore
Superchargers are DC and match the car battery voltage.

Pretty much all other chargers are AC. Even if they were DC, they would need
to match the battery voltage or you're going to get wierd things like "this
charger can charge your car up to 70 percent, but no higher because the
charger can't go to a high enough voltage"

~~~
de_watcher
The CCS chargers here are DC.

~~~
natch
It's easy to make claims about them now, but the the CCS chargers were just a
vaporware proposal back when the Supercharger network was started. I find the
Supercharger connector to be pretty nice compared to the CCS connector fwiw,
but whatever works for you is fine.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
>All three execs that left this week seem to be significant losses for Tesla,
but it might be for the best if Tesla’s fast-paced, startup-like business
environment wasn’t for them.

But is a fast-paced, startup-like business environment the best environment
for producing thousands of expensive, multi-ton, high speed vehicles that can
seriously maim or kill their occupants or bystanders if something goes wrong?

~~~
gwbas1c
As much as I love my Model 3, it has quite a few quirks that a car from a
traditional automaker wouldn't have: (nonstandard charging connector, snow
falls off the rear windshield into the trunk, no power shades over the
sunroof, no place to store sunglasses, ect.)

And, as much as I want Tesla to succeed, they really need to figure out how to
get some know-how from standard automakers. I never had a pile of snow fall
into the back of my Leaf when I opened its trunk! It also had a sunglasses
holder, and I didn't need to use a dongle to plug it into a standard charger.

~~~
mauvehaus
2005 Honda Civic: Water drains from the trunk lid into the trunk when you open
it in the rain. If you open the trunk when there's snow on the rear window, it
gets jammed up between the trunk lid and the window.

The traditional automakers aren't immune from this sort of thing.

~~~
dahfizz
Turns out making a car is really complicated and full of tradeoffs. A car with
no compromises is going to cost 6 figures at least.

~~~
farisjarrah
Turns out even cars that are over 6 figures are still totally full of trade
offs and compromises. This is a particularly insane example, but luxury cars
are still in no way perfect.

Doug DeMuro Reviewing a $200000 hummer:
[https://youtu.be/UqKUExgryXo](https://youtu.be/UqKUExgryXo)

~~~
magduf
Exotic cars usually have a lot more quirks and compromises than normal cars.
They're also not known for being terribly reliable; the ones that are are made
by divisions of much larger automakers, so they can raid the parts bin of
their cheaper siblings. Jaguar used to be infamous for how unreliable their
cars were, until Ford took them over.

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jedberg
> I would assume that Tesla’s pace clashes with what people are used to in the
> auto industry, and it might be hard for them to adapt.

Or that Tesla is playing fast and loose with the rules and compromising
safety, and they felt ethically compelled to leave.

It's sort of hard to make either assumption from the outside. But it
definitely says _something_ about Tesla.

Edit: My point here is that three VP departures implies nothing in particular,
only that something is changing, and it's quite a logical leap the author is
making assuming it is their "fast paced environment".

~~~
WhompingWindows
One of the VPs had left after 4-5 years like clockwork after every position
with 5 different automakers. Guess how long he'd been at Tesla? 4+ years.
Sometimes, it's not about Tesla magic/curse, sometimes it's just a regular
company experiencing regular phenomena.

~~~
LoSboccacc
exactly. like, first question should be something along the line of "how long
does Tesla exec shares take to vest?" \- Occam razor and all that.

------
refurb
I'm trying to remain relatively unbiased in my assessment of Telsa, but can
anyone come up with a reason for all these executives leaving other than poor
business prospects?

Maybe Elon's management style? Maybe I answered my own question.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
The few folks I knew who worked at Tesla told me it's basically 60 hours a
week at a minimum. It's not uncommon to find someone sleeping in the office or
folks going out to dinner and coming right back to work.

The last person I talked to was looking for a new job. He loved what he was
working on and felt proud of his work but was also feeling extremely burned
out and wanted to stop working every weekend and evening. He also told me they
use _literally every_ technical stack. He had worked on a Ruby app, a Python
app, a .Net app, a .Net Core app, and many of them are supposed to work
together they were just written that way because whoever started it was more
familiar with a specific language.

It doesn't sound like a great place to work for to me. I talked to someone at
SpaceX who told me similar things but it sounded like their usage of random
tech stacks was at least lower than Tesla's.

~~~
gist
For a young person 60 hours should not be a big deal. If it is don't work for
a hard charging company. Go do something easier. Or don't work for a company
'like that'. Believe it or not some people are not impacted by that kind of
lifestyle (of working so much)

~~~
Balero
I disagree, no one should be expected to, week in week out, work for more than
40 hours a week. Of course there is regrettable crunch from time to time.

Anything over that, is just unproductive in the long run. People will burn
themselves out, which isn't good for a company, and certainly isn't good for
the employee.

~~~
gist
Nobody is 'expected to' it's what you sign up for. It's like saying you decide
to be a policeman or firefighter (not something I would do) and then that they
shouldn't be 'expected' to do what the job requires.

Nobody is required to take a job at a company that thinks people should work
long hours. And actually new college graduates in some professions (law,
medicine, finance) work longer than 60 hours. And if they don't want to work
those hours there is someone who would in many cases be glad to take their
place.

Simply saying that 'nobody should be required' implies that everyone thinks
it's bad.

When I was out of school I was involved in a situation where I worked much
longer than 60 hours and did so for at least 5 or 6 years. No vacation
nothing. And guess what? It didn't bother me to do that. At all. Just like it
doesn't bother some people to be hanging off a rock cliff (not me that is not
something I would do).

Bottom line: You are free to choose whatever job you want. If you don't want
to work what is required then pick another job. And if enough people don't
want to work long hours the company can decide then to change their practices.

The law does not even prevent long hours for most salary workers either by the
way (there are labor practices that cover some situations of course.)

~~~
gamblor956
Firefighters and policemen get paid very generous overtime for working more
than 40 hours a week. And their are caps to how much overtime they can work.

Attorneys get paid lots of money to sacrifice their social lives. Especially
at the "biglaw" firms, they get paid well into the six figures and generally 2
years in will make more than a programmer with the same experience. Doctors
eventually make far more than programmers after their residency. Finance guys
(and gals) nearly 7 figures a year or two into the job...

 _The law does not even prevent long hours for most salary workers either by
the way (there are labor practices that cover some situations of course.)_

Again, why should a salaried worker work long hours so that their company can
make money if the company isn't going to pay them for the extra work?

~~~
brianwawok
> Firefighters and policemen get paid very generous overtime for working more
> than 40 hours a week. And their are caps to how much overtime they can work.

I do not know any firefighters or policemen who make even what a mid level
developer makes.

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mandeepj
The average tenure for an executive in the USA is around 2 years. So, it's
alright

~~~
killerdhmo
Citation needed?

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anigbrowl
Time to revive [http://fuckedcompany.com/](http://fuckedcompany.com/)

~~~
css
This site is blocked for "pornography" on my corporate network

~~~
MegaButts
To be fair, it has the word 'fucked' in the url, so that's not an unreasonable
result from a simple spam filter.

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sprafa
I think the biggest worry looming is the financials. Everybody is freaking out
on their burn rate.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Who is freaking out about their burn rate? Do you know their burn rate for Q2?
Q1 had logistical problems which reduced deliveries made, Q2 is going to look
good in comparison.

~~~
threeseed
Everyone. Their stock price plummeted last month.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-tesla/tesla-
st...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-tesla/tesla-stock-and-
bonds-tumble-as-investors-fret-about-costs-and-safety-idUSKCN1SQ1WY)

~~~
x2f10
It did? Google is reporting a 26.93% gain. $178.97 on Jun 3 to $227.17 on July
1. That's not much of a "plummet".

~~~
new_realist
Cherry pick.

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davidw
Have they checked behind the couch cushions?

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darkpuma
I don't know if all smoke indicates a fire, but there has been a lot of smoke
coming out of Tesla.

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izzydata
I'll gladly do whatever their job was for half the salary. Unless there is
some kind of illegal activity involved that I could be implicated for later.

~~~
magduf
Watch out with statements like this; a lot of corporate executives don't make
as much salary as you're thinking. You might be better off with whatever
you're doing now than getting half of some executive job that only pays
$200-250k.

~~~
Balgair
I've seen structures where they pay ~$50k in cash and then you get ~$150k in
stock. But the stock is restricted such that you only can sell it in ~3 years
time. Good incentive to keep the stock price up, as you 'bought' it at ~150k
but could sell it in 3 years for much more than 150k.

~~~
magduf
Yeah, but the OP only offered to work for half their salary; he didn't say
anything about the golden handcuffs.

