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Comment by misja111 | Hacker News Reader

Why is this news? This happens in pretty much every company.

I think this kind of submission shows how favorably some business leaders are treated when they've passed a certain threshold. After that point anything they do or touch is considered newsworthy, no matter how trivial. Furthermore, everything under the sun is attributed to this person's personal and direct influence.

Yeah exactly. Compare the self-driving fatalities from Uber and Tesla and see the immense bias.

There are other variables at play in that disparate treatment. Uber has a much longer track record of actively malicious behavior - sabotaging competitors, stalking journalists, building tools that blacklist inspectors and law enforcement, plus the overall toxic culture that got Kalanick pushed out.

Thats the bias though! I dont care about those things, I care about the safety of self driving cars.

I don't really like putting my safety in the hands of malicious actors.

Did you actually read the fine article? This was not your average intern experience. They had guts, insight, and (probably) luck and got the personal recognition of the CEO. This is obviously different.

Because this is Canadian news, and you'd be surprised how little happens in a country with gun controls, Police who take protect and serve seriously regardless of your skin color, and a tenth of the population of our neighbors to the south. The bar is pretty low for news in Canada, and that's the way we like it.

I have great respect for Canadian law enforcement. But its not all roses. Canadian native women have a shameful unsolved murder rate - the 2nd worst in the developed world. So some room to improve.

Well there ain't been anything new on that front for quite some time.

Canada's native population has suffered. But it's important to put things in perspective. In 2016 there were 142 female aboriginal homicides total in all of Canada [1].

In comparison it takes Chicago alone only 2 months to hit that number.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/54879/...

What a strange comparison - apples to gang war zones.

If Chicago is too violent then it's equivalent to 6 months in NYC which most people consider safe these days.

There seem to only be 718500 Aboriginal females in Canada and there are 8.5 million people in NYC and in 2017 there were 334 murders.

So 1 murder per 5000 Aboriginal females in Canada and 1 murder per 25000 people in NYC.

With those numbers it sounds like Canada's police force needs a lot of help in lowering that murder rate.

Ever hear of the Highway of Tears? Canada has its own racial issues.

As a fellow Canadian, you're way overstating things. Canada might not have the same problems as the US, but oh boy, do they have problems.

As my (Ontarian) friend said just now: "Smart Newfies is always news".

(sorry)

Hahahahahahaha! Making fun of people because of where they were born is so funny!

And this is the reason some of us Newfoundlanders don't like the word "Newfie."

The negative stereotype exists regardless of the word.

It is nonetheless _reinforced_ by it.

Getting personally hired by the CEO of a $50B company happens in pretty much every company?

As an intern, no less.

If that CEO micromanages the company the size of the company doesn't matter.

AFAIK he is known to fire all micromanagers, and let the engineers solve the problems in their style. On the other hand GM is known to be union infected. No certificate to turn that knob? Sorry, not me. Will have to wait.

I doubt he personally supervised and hired them. He probably never met them but someone else recommended them being hired. This is just PR.

GM is worth $50 billion. Do you really want to claim that Tesla is as big as GM? Tesla has 1/5 the employees of GM, 10% of the revenue, and has sold about 200,000 cars total compared to the 9.6 million GM shipped last year alone. The story is the same for any other big manufacturer.

Tesla is a pipsqueak. It's just ludicrously overpriced.

Worth doesn't always correlate against size. Worth is what someone is willing to pay for something. Tesla may be overpriced but to disregard Tesla's value based on a size comparison is ill-conceived.

We're talking about size here. Supposedly the CEO of a $50 billion company is too busy to concern himself with a lowly intern. But that $50 billion company is actually pretty small, just with a disproportionately high market cap.

But also, hell yes does worth correlate with size. It's only in postmodern Silicon Valley economics that a company with twenty employees and no revenue can be worth a billion dollars. All the standard ways of pricing a stock I know of take size into account, either directly or indirectly.

You are talking about size. The person you're replying to was obviously talking about market capitalization. It'd be nice if people talked to each other instead of talking past each other.

BTW, the standard ways of pricing a stock includes growth potential, which is why Tesla has that crazy valuation. It's totally fine if that's not the valuation technique you prefer, but it exists.

Your valuation approach would have suggested that Facebook was ludicrously over priced at its IPO and that it was a pipsqueak compared to Google. Investors were betting the Facebook business would do what it has done: grow dramatically and more than offset the valuation having been pulled forward. Your approach collapses in the face of accounting for high rates of persistent growth.

Tesla is growing radically faster than GM, which hasn't increased its sales or global market share meaningfully in 15 years.

Tesla, 2016 -> 2017 sales growth: 67%

GM, 2016 -> 2017 sales growth: Negative

That kind of growth by Tesla universally gets you a huge valuation adjustment vs a company with zero or negative growth.

Investors are betting that GM's future is not particularly bright, that there is no growth in the business. It is discounted accordingly, which is why it has such a hilariously low PE ratio (six times earnings in real terms).

When Amazon passed Walmart in market value, it had minimal profit profit and 1/6th the retail sales of Walmart.

The market isn't primarily valuing Tesla based on what it's doing today. It's a bet that Tesla will continue to produce considerable growth for many years to come.

>Tesla, 2016 -> 2017 sales growth: 67%

>GM, 2016 -> 2017 sales growth: Negative

If I sold my car on craigslist today, I'd have an ∞% sales growth rate.

Tesla has 10% of GM’s employees? That’s nuts. Does GM have a lot more contractors?

This is based on the wikipedia stats, but GM built ~9,600,000 vehicles with ~180,000 employees in 2017. Telsa built ~100,000 vehicles with ~35,000 employees in 2017

Tesla is weird as a car company. They build more stuff in-house than usual, and they have a huge luxury car division.

I've got plenty of friends who works at the Big 3. Doubt that any of their interns solve production problems in their car factories. Then turn around and solve problems in an entirely different type of factory that is as far away from cars as you can get. Usually the interns get coffee and deliver paperwork from one floor to another.

Which Big 3? No one delivers coffee in tech.

The "Big 3" in the US usually refers to Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler

I assume he meant GM, Ford, and Chrysler/Fiat

Ford - GM - Chrysler.

because they are canadians and this is a canadian newspaper

And not many people live in Newfoundland.

Hey there are tens of us.

I spent a summer in Newfoundland a while back. Really wonderful place. I would not want to be there during the winter though.

Tesla/Musk has incredibly good PR.

Reality is catching up though.

Seriously.

this is paid advertising at most.

i can count 100s of companies that hire interns. that is the point of companies offering internships.

flag this to oblivion.

This story is just Elon trying to attract employees who're willing to work 60 hours for a shit salary.

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