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Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

Sounds shocking... but having worked as a contractor for a goodly portion of my career, I'd argue that something is seriously wrong if you can't get at least one employee to vouch for you.

Really, every place I've worked, you could say this happens every month; almost always I've needed an employee to sign off on my hours, either the person I report to or the person they report to. I always took that as a vote of confidence, personally.

(I mean, obviously, even if I get fired, I expect to get paid for hours worked, but point being, the guy just signed off on spending $15k-$20K, depending on the body shop cut, for a month of my work, I'd assume that would trigger at least a few minutes of "what did Luke do for me this month?" and a phone call letting me know not to come in Monday if the answer was "Not much".)

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> I'd argue that something is seriously wrong if you can't get at least one employee to vouch for you.

The corollary to that is that if you get to the point where you need to check on the vouchsafety of all your contractors - en masse - something is seriously wrong with your company.

Something is seriously wrong with most large companies, and most of them simply ignore that. Good to see Tesla being different in that regard.

I dunno, GM and Ford build a fuck-ton more cars and have better build quality (which is shitty by int'l standards). Seems like Teslas's problem is bigger.

They have been building basically the same cars for far longer so that does not say much.

Tesla is attacking too many different problems at the same time IMO. Just building batteries at scale and low cost is on it's own a huge undertaking. Now add cars, self driving systems, charging network, home battery and solar etc.

It's over valued as a pure car company, but the other lines could also be huge companies on their own.

Having owned both a GM and a Tesla, I'm amused by the idea that GM's build quality is better. I actually liked my GM a lot, but quality was lacking to say the least.

year make and model?

I only ask, because honestly, I bought ( ordered and customized online really ) a new 2015 GMC Canyon and I love this truck like I've never loved another vehicle in my lifetime... and literally NOTHING has gone wrong with it, not even a loose screw... or burnt-out light bulb...

For a 3-4 year old car, having nothing break yet should be regarded as about par, not some outstanding accomplishment. These things should be lasting at least a decade with reasonable maintenance, and every component that can't last a decade should be on the maintenance schedule for preemptive replacement.

2005 Malibu. The side mirrors stripped their gears, the exhaust got a leak and needed complete replacement, the brake rotors got scored in a bizarre way that the shop couldn't understand, the tie rod ends went bad a couple of times, the instrument cluster stopped working spontaneously, then on my next drive started working equally spontaneously, the ABS system would occasionally go on strike for no apparent reason, from time to time it would somehow start badly and end up in a weird low idle state where it ran extremely rough, but the good ol' "turn it off and on again" would usually resolve it....

My Tesla has not been problem-free either, but it hasn't been that bad.

Having driven Fords, GMs and a Tesla, I'd say GM isn't international standard either, but Ford is definitely.

In terms of driving experience, most Ford cars I've driven (Contour, Focus, and Taurus, probably all from early 2000s; they are probably better now) handle like boats; turning radius comparable to an oil tanker, unresponsive brakes and gas, etc. So there are tradeoffs among all makes and models within those makes.

All the things you mentioned are design decisions not build quality related.

Weeelll... given that a modern car is a complex dynamic system I would presume it's not to trivial to state where exactly design constraints concerning build quality end and dynamics and handling start.

For the end user they both affect the 'feel' of the product - how it behaves on the detail level when in use. "I have a door I have a hard time closing" and "the dynamics feel a bit clumsy" deal with totally different things on the engineering level, but end users (generally) are not buying engineering but holistic products.

Namely, concerning this comment: Are there compromises made on the design of the handling to facilitate the build quality? And if there are, then those are not two different things, but systems which interact - hence, it's relevant to offer commentary on one while discussing the other.

> it's not to trivial to state where exactly design constraints concerning build quality end and dynamics and handling start

Maybe I'm being overly simplistic here but I'd say if the finished product doesn't match the design then it's a build quality issue, whereas if it does match the design and it's still crap then that's a design issue.

Arguably if they end product doesn't match the design because the design isn't feasible to manufacture then that would also be a design issue.

Unless the design is limited by build quality issues. The AK-47 is perhaps the most famous example, but most designs are a back and forth around the manufacturing process.

This is exactly what I've meant.

Ford doesn't compete with Land Rover, Mercedes and BMWs but deliver a good value-for-money nonetheless. Compare that to a Cadillac Escalade from GM: Worse quality than a Ford, priced at Mercedes level.

I've never driven a modern for F Series but I have driven most of their Sedans and I can understand why they're withdrawing them from the US market. They're quite bad.

We took a road trip from Poughkeepsie to Niagra in a rented Ford Focus. It had a USB charge port in the center console that came out when we went to unplug the cable. This got me prodding about at the rest of the interior and most of it was too easily removable with my bare hands. It was scary to think who the whole passenger compartment might just explode in your lap with an accident.

I know many parts of the car are held together with retention clips and other tool-less mechanical fasteners but this Ford was exceptional. I don't know if it was down too the poor materials quality or the shoddy engineering of the fasteners but everything could be pulled apart with astonishingly little effort.

Wonder if that means it should be easily repairable? :)

Maybe, but that would violate the DMCA. :P

And good luck finding the proprietary parts. My friends motorcycle displays used encrypted handshakes to connect to the rest of the engine - ostensibly to prevent theft, but incidentally delivering lock-in.

Yes, but startups are shitty and wavy by nature, it stabilizes with time. While culling the contractors, they might lose sight of something important and get into the next crisis. I don’t think there is any other way around. Sometimes it’s even external factors like wars and financial crises like the dinosaurs of the automobile industry had.

Tesla is a public company founded in 2003, not a startup. It's a year older than Facebook.

While it definitely depends once your definition of startup... I bet most people in the automotive industry consider it a “startup”. Especially considering the age of the competition, Tesla is a brand new startup company with hyper growth in its plans.

I think Elon was pretty clear that he considers the situation to be seriously wrong, hence the extreme approach. It's a refreshing attitude; this sort of problem is common in most large companies.

I agree. Tesla is only worried about one thing right now: they are about to run out of money. If Elon has identified that contractors aren't providing the necessary ROI or at least traceability to the ROI, he's making a smart choice to let them go. Tesla is, in the view of some, on the brink of failure, where failure is defined as insolvency.

Yeah, a startup founder seeing a problem and having a clumsy, heavy handed, poorly thought out reaction is super refreshing. Hadn't been this refreshed since like, Friday.

you know he founded PayPal, right?

Which sold to eBay for $1.5b

His first company was acquired by Compaq for almost half a billion.

He’s listed by Forbes as one of the top 25 most powerful people on earth.

Tesla is a 15 year old company.

I feel like “startup founder” should not the operating phrase here.

Not to diminish his achievements but...

> you know he founded PayPal, right?

Confinity (Levchin, Thiel, Nosek, no Musk) launched PayPal in late 1999. X.com (founded by Musk) merged with Confinity in March 2000. In no way can Musk be considered a "founder" of PayPal.

> His first company was acquired by Compaq for almost half a billion.

Zip2? $340M. Nowhere near half a billion and that was in 1999 at the height of the ridiculous tech bubble.

The man's done a lot of stuff - there's no need to embellish them.

> Sounds shocking... but having worked as a contractor for a goodly portion of my career, I'd argue that something is seriously wrong if you can't get at least one employee to vouch for you.

That sounds reasonable, although I could see a need for some exceptions. For example, I could see a company using a contractor for its front end web development and another contractor for running the web server. The first contractor would be working with employees, such as sales and marketing that decide what is supposed to go on the site, and they could vouch for that contractor. The second contractor, the one running the web server, could easily end up only interacting with the front end web contractor.

The second contractor would surely have a hiring manager that could explain what’s what to upper management.

> would surely have a hiring manager that could explain...

This is a big assumption

Is it? Seems plain to me, but

1) I honestly don’t know what the org structure is at Tesla

2) assuming there are hiring managers, if they’re hiring people they wouldn’t vouch for (to boost their dept size (again not knowing the org chart)), then managers are gaming Tesla, and that’s another problem

Maybe the person who hired the web server admin, has since left to work with something else. And there's a new boss / hiring manager, who is a bit clueless.

I suppose this scenario is unlikely to happen, but still, in a really large company, then, low risk, times many many people = maybe shouldn't be ignored.

> Maybe the person who hired the web server admin, has since left to work with something else. And there's a new boss / hiring manager

yup, i've observed this happen.

Elon is addressing the "barnacle upon barnacle" problem with Contractors.

Sure, the Contractor on the front lines actually doing work may be "liked".

It's the middle manager/Contractor's boss sitting in an office 1,000 miles away that Elon wants to get rid of.

Employees can apparently hire/manage Contractors directly, but Contractors can't outsource the work they were hired to do.

I'm a regular employee, and I don't see it being any different. Figuratively speaking, my boss has to sign my paycheck every two weeks. If they don't like me, they can fire me.

see, I think there is a big cultural difference. Like, I always had that attitude as an employee, but I think that as an employee, it holds me back.

I think the key is that as an employee, you are expected to act in the interest of the company in ways that are different from what you are expected to do as a contractor.

My perception and experience is that as a contractor, I'm supposed to do what you tell me to do. If you tell me to do something stupid, I'm supposed to tell you it's stupid, and to explain why, but if you say do it anyhow, well, that's my job. It has more to do with task-based work.

My perception is that as an employee you are expected more to act in the best interest of the company.

I personally have a hard time seeing the difference between the two, because I'm not omniscient, I am sometimes wrong, and if the boss has heard my arguments for why the way they asked me to do a thing is stupid and still wants me to do it that way, well, maybe the boss knows something I don't know, right? The company, by making them the boss, has said that the company thinks the boss knows more than I do, so maybe the right thing to do is to go along with it?

(I'm mostly talking of "the right way to do it" in the sense of "the most efficient or correct way to do it" - I think of ethical dilemmas in a different sort of way.)

I tend to think of myself as a professional first, and employee second. The distinction between employee and contractor becomes a matter of accounting and tax law.

>>> The company, by making them the boss, has said that the company thinks the boss knows more than I do, so maybe the right thing to do is to go along with it?

I don't assume that for one minute. I work in a job where there is literally nobody else in the company with my expertise.

>I don't assume that for one minute. I work in a job where there is literally nobody else in the company with my expertise.

So, I've been there, and... the thing that makes me chuckle is that a few years later, in part because I thought the boss was such an idiot, I started my own company with my own employees.

The funny thing was, I found myself, at times, getting into the same sort of arguments with my employee, only on the other side. There are... other factors in play, when you are looking at things from a organizational or business perspective.

Indeed, and I run my own business on the side. I've also been in management. I have a very close relationship with many of the managers, so they are pretty open with me about their thought processes and the issues that they face.

And they face the same arguments with the managers above them, and so forth... "So, naturalists observe a flea..."

> My perception is that as an employee you are expected more to act in the best interest of the company.

As an employee, if you object to something your boss is really on board with, you can expect to be fired.

It is, in general, a career limiting move to tell anyone above you that what they're asking you to do is stupid. Maybe if you're a God-tier management consultant, you can propose changes and expect to have them implemented. As a regular employee or contractor schlub, no. If you want to keep your job, adopt their perspective.

(Illegal actions are another issue. While it's illegal in many jurisdictions to fire a whistleblower, in practice you're still risking your job to blow the whistle. Not that you shouldn't do it.)

>It is, in general, a career limiting move to tell anyone above you that what they're asking you to do is stupid.

My experience? unless you have like a bottom quintile boss, you can tell him/her almost anything, if you do it verbally, with the door closed.

I mean, in most cases, yeah, I'm technically more skilled than the boss... and the boss knows it, that's why I was hired. The fact that the boss hires people who are more technically skilled than they are means that the boss is good at their job.

Now, of course, there might be other issues related to the business or to other systems that I don't know about... the boss might not take my advice, but only a terrible boss won't listen to the advice of a technical individual contributor that they hired.

the places where I've seen people get in trouble for arguing with the boss is when they do it angrily and publicly, and when they don't get over it after the boss explains why it has to be another way.

I've only ever worked with a boss like that for two weeks. Since then I know the signs.

> something is seriously wrong if you can't get at least one employee to vouch for you.

It's not just a "vouch", the language used is: "a Tesla employee putting their reputation on the line."

It's like the tesla-mafia, watch out or cousin Elon is coming for ya!

Putting your reputation on the line is exactly what vouching is.

We are not- fired usually though. Ones contract is simply not renewed or ended ahead of time.

I always thought of us contractors as stateless mercenaries, and you cant expatriat (aka fire) a stateless mercenary.

Also regarding the useless middle management Elon mentions- thats the beauty of sub-contracting.

The poor fool at the end of the chain usually has to do the managment work and projekt-management too.

I don't think this is individual IT/DEV self employed contractors here.

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