Former Tesla engineer sues for defamation
latimes.com
latimes.com
Cristina Balan has a fundraiser page, at https://www.gofundme.com/f/a86fmm-fighting-tesla-for-defamin... and there is some text there from her, setting out some facts as she has seen them.
For me, the whole thing comes back to the news article. It is absolutely bonkers no matter the circumstance. Huffington Post should not have published anything without verifying that she was actually a criminal. Clearly Tesla thought they screwed up as well or they wouldn't have fired the guy responsible for it two days later.
I completely understand wanting to have her removed from the company and the way it was done. It's just that you cannot go around labelling someone a criminal for life if all they have done is make a few middle managers angry by going over their heads. If she truly is a "criminal" for secret recordings then it's on Tesla to take that to the proper authorities. Once the proper authorities (i.e. the justice system, jury of your peers, not power tripping middle managers) determines that you are a criminal, then feel free to share that for reference checks and write as many news articles as you want broadcasting it. But not until then, and if that kind of rule is broken, the penalty for those that do should be very severe.
What about the "1000 lawsuits" the article mentions? Unless it was done by collusion (ex: a union).
In terms of averages and probability, Balan's case does stand a point as a whistleblower, hinting a covert truth behind the company.
Elon has very good lawyers.
It will be nice if the article provided a reference to other specific employee defamation cases, by not lumping them altogether.
Ex: https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/11/news/companies/tesla-elon-m...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/19/21446587/judge-dismiss-de...
But who knows, in the US lawsuits are easy to make up, just expensive (lawyers getting the last laugh). Short sellers might just be doing that...The article could as well be fraud...or bad journalism (not checking sources), which sadly, happens more often than not.
Who is telling the truth? The short sellers and whistleblowers or Tesla and their fans/stockholders?
PS: this piece was initially flagged by HN users and since (thankfully) unflagged by moderator.
The floormats are stupid.
Each floormat has 4 round smooth patches about 3" in diameter underneath near each corner. Then 4 adhesive velcro patches 3" in diameter are stuck to them.
Then, there are 4 velcro hockey-puck things with screw threads that are screwed into the base carpet in the passenger footwell.
You put the removable carpet in place and the hockey puck velcro sticks to the under carpet velcro and it stays in place.
Except in a hot car the velcro to carpet adhesive gets soft and the carpet comes loose.
From seeing how the internet evolved from dial up days to what it is now, my initial reaction to any article written in a story-esque manner where the author tries to paint a certain bias with words like "unlighted, windowless room, draped in plastic, smelling of paint" is that its mostly just a very one sided account of things.
Its very popular to hate on rich moguls and big companies these days with the rise of online leftism rhetoric, and considering that most non subscription online media publication literally live or die by clicks, you should be suspect of them as much as you are of Tesla. Real factual stories with links are often very milquetoast and boring to read. Id imagine in this case it be something along the lines of "Tesla said this, Employee said this, we don't have proof of any of this stuff other than statements, so we don't know what really happened and likely never will"
For reference linked article here: http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11... paints a different picture of how the said employee acted.
It generally seems that the truth is most likely somewhere in between two extremes. Tesla is of course going to be corporate minded and not particularly care too much about employees, and its likely that the client in question is not fully guilt free either.
It came into the public view after an article from Inc. about Musk's famous email telling people to break with the chain of command. [1]
The HuffPo posted an article responding to Inc raising Balan's concerns [2];
> At the time Balan was working on the interiors design team at Tesla, where she identified and “tried … to solve two engineering issues,” she wrote recently on her blog — design flaws that needed to be addressed by the company. But when she tried to force management to fix the problems she was “bullied, humiliated, demoted and retaliated against in the most horrible way possible.” She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
> Balan attempted to go through proper channels but soon found herself “in an even more threatening situation.” She began recording her meetings with fellow engineers when they discussed problems within the company. One recorded meeting lasted more than two hours. The recordings were “for Elon’s ears only,” she wrote in her blog.
>> Then I made my mistake: I wrote an email to Elon Musk, in reference to the infamous ‘Communication within Tesla’ email, to let him know I must meet with him in order to show him evidence of … things going on inside the company that he needed to be aware of.
The original blog post that HuffPo references is gone, but Balan has since posted a long blog article to try to tell her side of the story, which is certainly an interesting read of it's own right. [3]
[1] - https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-email-from-elon-musk-...
[2] - http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11...
[3] - http://cristinaibalanstory.com/teslas-longest-comment-on-an-...
I understand why they feel threatened when this sort of thing is turned around on them, though.
That's a very "euphemistic" way of putting it. Kind of like putting someone in a wheel chair could be described as "allowing them to tackle different challenges".
She was more than just let go, she was bullied, humiliated, demoted, threatened, retaliated against, and blackmailed among others. Evidence was tampered with, destroyed, or manufactured, along with quite the list of irregularities even judges observed.
There's nothing to justify that except an incredibly toxic company culture coming straight from a brilliant but extremely toxic leader. But people like him don't have to worry about any court. They can always buy their escape from a court of law with money, and buy their escape from the court of public opinion with charisma, PR, and their loyal following.
Real quick: all of this information exists in your head because of online articles. You haven't seen the full proof of this happening. Be careful of making conclusions based on stories rather than evidence.
Im just saying not to form hard conclusions on things unless you have pretty hard evidence available that presents a certain picture. Its too easy to fall into the trap of manufactured outrage.
And first person accounts from people I trust all confirming things along the same lines. On the other hand there are people defending Tesla or Musk because they genuinely haven't observed such issues but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In practically all such cases it just means they never got on the wrong side of your company or CEO. A company should never treat you like garbage because you pissed them off. Or ever.
Imagine sexual harassment cases where the vast majority of men will genuinely say they haven't witnessed any foul play. But it's clearly not a sign the issue doesn't exist, just that some people never got to see it.
Whether she is telling the truth is for you to judge. The details and tone of voice sound genuine.
Seems ... justified.
So if she admits that she did record these meetings without informing the other participants, then in this defamation case - a key part of which is about the claim in HuffingPost "She also illegally recorded internal conversations within Tesla without anyone’s permission, which is clearly criminal conduct" - she has a good chance to lose, as it's not defamation if it's true.
This would be different if it were the police illegally procuring evidence, under the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' theory, but here it's just a private citizen. So while she could surely be punished for breaking laws related to recording people, that doesn't seem to foreclose the possibility that she could use the recordings in court to prove her case.
That's not the only defense, this is example #25360432 showing how necessary labor unions are.
I think arbitration protections and restrictions on employment contracts to preserve employee rights should be handled through legislation since it should be universally applicable to all workers. This would remove the variance in protections from one union to another.
I wonder if the major unions have banned together to get that bill introduced and voted on? It could be possible that they wouldn't support legislation like that because more legislative protections can make the union seem less useful.
If the unions don't have incentive to push the bill and more workers are covered by unions and don't see the benefit of the bill because they are already protected, then could that delay or even prevent the passage of those protections? It may end up as a long term fix that leaves non-uninonized groups and groups that seem unlikely to organize, like IT. Of course with widespread existing adoption, a counter point could be less opposition to it.
From an article mentioned in the LA Times article
> She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
I would understand from a corporate perspective Tesla wanting to remove this person. A company, especially one on the brink of bankruptcy as Tesla was in 2014 has to have a high degree of cohesion and minimal dissent from employees.
> Instead, Balan said, she was forced to resign, an event that launched a six-year legal journey leading to where she is today: about to face off against Tesla — on her own, without an attorney — in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
I can't understand how someone can be let go from a company and make it their life's work over the next 6 years to grieve and fight publicly. Right or wrong, it seems like an utterly destructive process on the personal level.
> Balan says her professional reputation suffered damage so severe she can’t find a company willing to hire her. “They tell me, ‘We’d like to hire you, but we can’t afford to be on Musk’s blacklist,’” she said.
Employers aversion to hiring Balan may have to do with her lawsuit, at least a little bit
Weeks earlier, in a companywide email, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had dumped on the concept of corporate hierarchy. Find “the fastest way to solve a problem to the benefit of the whole company” and don’t worry about your boss, he told them. Go straight to the top, if need be. Balan took him up on it.
I had a department head tell us his door is always open and to contact him about stuff (company policy supports the open door policy). I took him up on it. When I showed up, he had another manager there in addition to himself (it was supposed to be a scheduled meeting with just me and him). I was later rated poorly, both in an interview and at year end, for a lack of leadership (following the hierarchy).
https://thehustle.co/hot-cheetos-inventor/
> In the video, Enrico encouraged every worker at the company to “act like an owner.” Most employees brushed it off as a management cliché; Montañez took it to heart.
> “Here’s my invitation… here’s the CEO telling me, the janitor, that I can act like an owner,” he later recalled. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Didn’t need to. But I knew I was going to act like an owner.”
(Predictably, his manager was pissed.)
Case 1: An actual smart and caring employee bypasses the chain to give me evidence of a manager not acting in the companys interest. Usually that's not the first indication of such a thing and listening around reaffirms the conclusion quickly. The manager is approached as quickly as possible and since at this paygrade it's in no-one's best interest to burn bridges, they suddenly decide to spend more time with their family, a sweet severance package changes hands, employees are happy again and you don't read about this in the news. It's exactly why I said this in the first place (and meant it).
Case 2: An employee with issues not bringing the company further (usually one or more of paranoia, toxicity, not-seeing-the-big-picture, searching for problems instead of solutions or emotional health issues) bypasses the chain of command with "evidence", but listening around almost nobody shares this employees' opinion. You fire them. Suddenly all problems disappear, employees are happy and then you read about this in the news, because the only person left unhappy did really not get the memo.
Judging from the type of problems here (something something starship about floor mats at a time when Model 3 just wasn't ramping up production and cashflow almost ruined the company), I do have my opinion about the type of "privilege escalation" in this case but I obviously won't share it.
I'm mostly playing devils' advocate here, as newspapers, lawyers and shortsellers usually have their own axe to grind and are continually searching for good David against Goliath stories.
Just dropping in that having a toxic effect on the company and being respected / appreciated by peers are absolutely not mutually exclusive. Often times they rather go hand in hand and you've got such people rallying up others over non-issues (in the big picture of things). As others already said in the comments, cohesion and alignment are far more important to a high risk / high growth company than "solving all the problems".
He told me that we have a real-time backup system so he didn't think it was worth fixing. I then asked if we ever ran tests of that system and if we had documentation on how to restore from it. We don't. This is for financial trading application handling billions of dollars. Being down for even a few hours could be catastrophic.
The big man spoke. I don't agree with the outcome, but I'm not the boss. So that was the end of it (except for in discussions like this on here). I left for another team because there's no way I'm going to be the security champion for a system with that level of risk. And thank God you weren't my manager or I would have been fired under your #2 scenario.
On a side note, just because a small number of people are complaining doesn't mean their opinions are invalid. Minorities are often disenfranchised due to this thinking. Also, managers may not know all the policies for the company and may be violating them.
For a real life example combining these, company policy states that a person be evaluated against the standard and recieve a rating that way. Some departments mandate that if a manager pick a higher than average rating for someone, then they must pick someone else to balance it out with a lower rating. This would only affect 10% of the population and the number unjustly affected would be lower than that. So the other 90% recieved good rating, so why would they complain? The objective way I know that I was unjustly rated was because I had a manager friend who told me what happened in the meeting and said it was wrong.
#2 seemed more fitting since no action was taken. And it resulted in me leaving that area of the company (voluntarily thankfully).
I'm sure there's more to the story.
Tesla's PR claims that it's a non-traditional, innovative company, where if someone finds a serious problem that can't be resolved by the chain of command, they should e-mail Musk.
The reality of course, bears little resemblance to the myth.
She would be in a totally different situation if she had a tape of Tesla's AGC threatening her friends through their immigration status. That is straight up mafia tactics.
Brings to mind this case [1].
With criminal statutes, it significantly raises the bar about how to "leak" something to the press, the press who needs to verify the source and can be subpoena'd for records.
A private person recording someone illegally is a crime. In some circumstances (for instance to prove a witness in lying), it can still be admissable. [ref https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/secret-recording-con....]
Now is it is worth admitting to a crime that can carry fines of up to $2,500 and/or imprisonment for up to a year (misdemeanor) is a hefty question. In addition, the violator may be subject to civil liability in the amount of $5,000 or three times the amount of any actual damages sustained as a result.
If this was a lawsuit due to serious, career ending malfeasance against you, where a key witness would be trivially proven a liar and you could end up with millions in a settlement? Maybe? Could they turn around and sue you for 3x the settlement? Sounds like you'd want to talk to a lawyer first.
Not happening most of the time though.
We shouldn't be afraid.
I personally sued big corporations, as an individual, two times, and won. Granted, this was in Europe, not the US, but the warnings and hand-waving of people telling me one should never do that were similar.
If you care enough about the issue, and don't care much about the risks, which are usually wildly exaggerated, the odds are actually in your favor.
The article suggests that unlawful recording is the criminal act that Tesla is alleging she committed.
Gregory Reyes $5,000 (shortseller) Donna Walker $1,212 (shortseller) NetflixAndLamp $1,000 (shortseller) DIP Harambe $500 (shortseller) Machine Planet $500 (shortseller) Paul Shust $250 (shortseller) Naked Shortseller $100 (shortseller) Oslo Skeptic $100 (shortseller) Bones ThreeZero $50 (shortseller)
Since someone downvoted me, above are known TESLAQ folks and some are confirmed shortsellers while others tweet incessantly anything negative on this company but I cannot confirm 100% that they have short positions in this stock right now.
Being funded by short sellers does not imply her case is false: they can be independent, albeit the same goal ("your enemy is my friend").
PS: Tesla fans or stock holders could be the reason why this story was initially flagged
Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) successfully sued Gawker with the backing of investor Peter Thiel, who had a well-known grudge against them. That doesn't take away from the fact that Gawker grossly invaded people's privacy in order to turn a profit on harmful gossip.
They just want to make a buck and posture as if they have some moral quandry with the company or their leadership.
I never could understand how what he said wasn't considered defamation. If that's not defamation, what is?
The legal system has a concept of "no harm no foul," (i.e. the concept of a "tort"), and if nobody believed Elon's obviously stupid tweet, there would be no tort to sue on.
Bottom line is that it's very hard to win defamation cases in the US. The Tesla engineer might have a shot because she was not well known, and Tesla accused her of very specific acts (moonlighting, unapproved travel) and they knew those accusations to be false. On the other hand, these were not exactly crimes, so who knows.
Likely Musk got her communications and asked her management if there was any merit; and if he had indeed done this, it would be contradictory to his previous communication encouraging employees to go around their management.
If they needed to go around management then likely going through management is not the correct response.
"Sorry about the smell; forget what you saw on Dexter, sheet plastic doesn't always work, and sometimes we have to repaint, haha."
I wonder whether the theatrics was at all for intimidation, or just an accident of the combination of legitimate physical security policy, and of wanting a meeting room where other employees wouldn't see the commotion (which happened to be new office space being prepared).
It looks like one of the core issues is that it seemed to Tesla that a recall just might kill the company at that time. So they felt that in order to protect the existence of the company, they really needed to be quiet about the floor mats at all costs. They probably rationalized it as "well, how hard is it to check if your floor mat is curling up" or something.
So that seems to be a structural issue. When it comes to the existence of your job or your company, it's too easy to rationalize unethical acts. At least for most people. Especially if their boss tells them to do it.
http://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-autr...
For example, in the company I work for, sometimes I slip into the mode of feeling like I "own" the product we're making, making an extra effort, being emotionally invested, etc. But then I remember, I would just be a fool who works for his employer for free. Also, achieving change requires a lot more effort and often fails, which can be demotivating. In general, I feel like I could run things substantially better if I had the power. Seeing the mediocrity at fairly successful companies makes me really think about working at a startup.
This hits close to home.
Starting a company does nothing to prevent others from stealing your work. Just puts more effort on the business owner to source business and protect their IP.
"That’s a reason Balan, with a stated net worth of $50,000, gives to explain why she is representing herself — she doesn’t have to pay lawyers, so time is her only expense."
Articles critical of Tesla always get flagged, and most of the time dang unflags them, especially if they're from newspapers like LAT.
If I found a reliable way to automate the recognition of bad-faith user interactions I would sell it to google and retire before bringing it to HN.
edit: Also, apparently, users can "vouch" for posts which presumably is just the inverse of flagging a post.
Marketing tricks are the most important thing in the business world as shown by Tesla, Jeep, Apple, and Nintendo.
Not that I buy their stuff, but some people still do.
> For example, Ms. Balan was unhappy with a particular supplier that was selected by an internal group of subject matter experts who extensively studied the issue. She took it upon herself to find an alternative supplier that [...]
She herself confirms it (from original article):
> All seemed to be going well until Balan came across what she considered sketchy dealings on supplier contracts and the curling floor mats.
From her fundraiser page, she tried to spin the business disagreement into a "hot topic" gender discrimination issue:
> Soon after I’ve got into an arbitration lawsuit with Tesla based on misclassification, wrongful termination And gender discrimination.
Not knowing the details, this leaves an impression of an opportunistic person who would try all means possible to achieve what she wants, rather than trying to persuade others. The problem with such people is that they can be right in some decisions, wrong in others, but if the rest of the team has to spend 50% of their time catering to that 1 person, it's a net-negative effect on the team. You can call it unfair, but diplomacy and compromises are important if you are working with other people.
Given that, I would be skeptical about other claims she makes:
>Under duress, threatened that if I [did] not sign my resignation I would be handcuffed and dragged to the parking lot …
It's a her-word-against-his case and in such cases both sides are typically trying to bend reality in their favor.
Also, worth noting that Musk has recently announced that he's moving away from California [2], so LA times would have very good reasons for a hit piece like this one.
[0] http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11...
[1] https://www.gofundme.com/f/a86fmm-fighting-tesla-for-defamin...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22163805/elon-musk-texas-...
I don't know what else there is to spin? It looks to me she cared too much about doing a good job and tried to mingle with a manager chain that cared more about themselves.
I would love to see some facts here, but all that is currently presented is just words. And I don't like that if you play the minority card, whatever you are saying is perceived by the public with more credibility than what your opponents are stating, regardless of the facts. This opens huge possibilities for abuse by opportunists and increases division in the society.