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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I guess I'm jaded from my week spent there. It was a whole different world to me. One lady talked to me about how this is her second job today and that she can barely make it on time to today's safety training because of the bus schedules. The parking lot was an ocean of beat up cars. The perception I got was that nobody on the production floor would ever own these cars.

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That just seems really sad. I've read that Tesla doesn't pay exceptionally well, expects people to work really long hours, and doesn't offer an employee discount because Elon doesn't believe in it.

Despite all this I've always imagined it to be a great place to work because of the world-changing potential of the work.

But the idea of all these people toiling away on an amazing product they can't even hope to own just seems incredibly depressing. I guess it's no different to all the people making iPhones in China, it just hits closer to home.

Elon is a capitalist, through and through. Treating workers well isn't even on his list of priorities, similar to Amazon.

Musk created a company that gives around 15,000 workers a job. The company he created is not just a capitalist endeavor, but an attempt to start an environmental movement aimed at making electric cars viable in the world market. At multiple points during the company's early days, Musk put everything he had on the line; assuming huge levels of risk.

Meanwhile, Tesla is not making a profit and one wrong move could destroy it - ending the jobs of thousands and an environmental movement in one fell swoop. Giving luxurious benefits to Tesla employees just isn't possible at this point.

Your criticism that Musk is just a capitalist who doesn't care about his workers and treat them well seems completely unfair.

Boo hoo, not treating your workers like shit isn't some impossible, gargantuan task. Working your engineers & labor 60+ hours a week makes for great sound bites, but significantly below average productivity. Combined with an employer that won't even take basic suggestions on improving workflow from their floor staff, Tesla obviously has a certain level of arrogance about how to build a car. Fuck the employees who actually do it day in and day out, they don't know shit according to Tesla.

Please. A shitty, low-paying, long-hour job with a great mission is still a shitty, low-paying, long-hour job.

I imagine there is a huge difference in the employee pool between their Fremont factory location and their Palo Alto office location. Of course, Tesla is not exactly known to pay even their engineers very well: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/03/08/working-tesla-meaning-str...

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