The head of the company wants people to work in office. What is so dramatic about this? They did it for more than a decade. Was office work undermining Tesla strategy then?
I feel like there are many more interesting stories in tech.
I have a bunch of friends who work at Tesla. They do work hard, one of whom works waaaaay too hard, but it's meaningful work. They're changing the world.
It's a similar feeling I get from people I know who work at Apple.
I’m actually surprised they allowed remote work at all.
I’ve had a few friends and coworkers work at, and subsequently leave, Tesla. It’s not a place you choose to work at if your goal is to have a relaxed job.
Not everyone in Tesla (or at any other automotive company) produces cars in a factory. Some write software, some write specifications, some do SIL/HIL testing, some do procurement, some work on legal concerns. A lot of these jobs can be done from home - maybe 50% of the company size (and I know from references from Daimler where I formerely worked that those things are still done in a WFH style). It seems like Elon wants nobody to work from home, independent of whether it would be possible or not.
At the same time there's even some things in MAGMA companies that can not be done from home. If one is working in a datacenter to fix hosts which broke down, then it's simply not possible to the same from home.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the “Tesla engineers” brought in are former social media company engineers in the early days. It’s an incorrect assumption that all they’ve done is program for cars.
A friend who worked on the charging system for the Model S reported that a few weeks before the vehicle shipped they were way behind schedule for building vehicles and falling further behind as the release date approached.
One Sunday morning the entire engineering team was on the manufacturing floor helping the struggling manufacturing team build vehicles and Elon appeared trailing a gaggle of execs. They started poking about and work started to grind to a halt. The engineering lead went over and asked what was up. Elon said that they were wanting to see first hand what was holding up production.
The engineering lead loudly told Elon to get the fuck off the manufacturing floor if he wanted any vehicles finished that day, that the engineering team didn't come in on a Sunday to dick about with execs and they would walk out if the execs didn't leave. If they wanted to talk they could schedule a meeting for Monday morning. Elon shut up and left and the team went back to building vehicles.
The engineering lead left the company several months after the Model S shipped as did most of the powertrain group. Tesla continues to burn through engineering talent, but like Apple, has a still continuous stream of bright eyed naive true believers willing to sign up.
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.
Every single engineer and executive working at Tesla right now needs to grab a copy of The Design of Everyday Things and read it cover to cover before returning to work.
Johnny Ive and company are ruining the firm that and people reportedly being overworked. They should have bought Tesla and made the model 3 their iCar and not gimped the pro-sumer laptops with midrange GPUs and 16GB of ram.
Considering they need to answer to, try to communicate with,
and rely on, a bunch of Computer execs, and moreover execs primarily interested in the project for financial reasons...
that's a list of 17 employees who are at high risk of burning out.
Is there not a fundamental difference between Tesla and MAGMA-type companies?
MAGMA, and the industry in general, produces software. Software doesn’t care about its location, and you can “touch” the product you’re working on from home.
Tesla produces cars. I can see a strong argument for Tesla workers getting benefit from being near the (physical) product. This may not be true of, say, the finance people, but I think it’s safe to say Elon is not very interested in the non-technical sides of his businesses.
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