To me it makes a lot of sense. I doubt they are reviewing the entire code base. It seems like Elon is particularly interested in the automated systems that control content and detect bots. To that end, Tesla has a lot of expertise in AI systems.
I’be been a software engineer for nearly 2 decades and have been involved in multiple technical due-diligence endeavors. At best, you’re just grokking the big-picture and looking for any major red flags. Getting involved in individual code reviews is not a useful exercise outside of understanding a team’s SDLC and various coding practices - for an org the size of Twitter all of that stuff should have been documented and shared during due diligence (which Musk waved) - injecting outside engineers into the code review process is just an expensive and sloppy way to uncover what could otherwise be gleaned in an easier fashion.
I do see one big red flag for Twitter: it now has leadership that doesn’t trust the engineering organization. For a technology company that can be fatal if not resolved quickly.
Do we have any reason to believe it was Tesla’s AI engineers?
How is this a counter point? How exactly doing superficial review of code they've never seen of a social network will help them with developing a phone?
1. Apple. Facebook. TikTok. It's a somewhat simple problem that at scale is often solved by simply spinning a PubSub channel per user because you no longer care.
2. To review that code you don't just grab people to spend an afternoon doing superficial reviews of code they've never seen.
How would you feel if he had Tesla assembly line workers renovate his house?
What a weird timeline we are living in..
This is basic, basic, basic corporate law. It's not a "weird timeline" and it is in no way specific to the tech industry.
Managers, directors, CEOs, etc. cannot have the corporation do services for them for free because this deprives the non-management shareholders of value. Using their position as manager to assign employees to work on their house is in effect causing the corporation to provide them with renovation services for free. This self-dealing would be grounds for a derivative suit.
Also, it only takes one shareholder (in principle) to make this an issue. Even if you and most Tesla longs think Musk earned the right to do a little self-dealing here and there, it is an open invitation for legal action by SEC and other shareholders.
If you owned 100% of the company then all of that wouldn't be an issue, but it's still not something any legal department would OK.
The comment above you is wrong to call it wage theft--that would refer to workers not being paid the higher of minimum or promised wage for the time worked.
You can only lose by trying to have a conversation with them.
What you’re describing as self dealing isn’t illegal, thousands of corporations are run this way every day as long as taxes are paid correctly on the fair value of any transactions between the companies in question. It doesn’t even have to be profitable, Tesla could categorize the work they are doing for Twitter 100 different ways; marketing, R&D, team building, training, whatever.
As for minority shareholders, they have completely arbitrary rights depending on the bylaws, articles of incorporation, etc. If they are lucky, they might be able to periodically vote for board members given the right class of shares. Otherwise they have pretty much 0 input into how a company is run.
Sure, but do you know this to be the case here? There are a whole lot of assumptions flying out here that Elon just went and poached a bunch of engineers from Tesla to work on Twitter on Tesla’s dime. Pretty sure no one commenting her on HN as any idea of what the deal and detail actually is, all we apparently know for sure from this article is that one or more Twitter folk think that one or more Tesla folks are looking at their code. Beyond that…no details are really known.
It may be poor options or even poor management but it isn't theft.
Unless Twitter is paying handsomely for the consultation?
or he just winged it and grabbed some engineers and said “come with me”…
Which is more in character for him?
Right? Tesla hasn't had General Counsel since 2019, and is not looking for one.
And... you approve of this? Or what? What exactly is your message here?
You are chastising me for pronouncing it bad?
This is literally a wint tweet lol 6/1/14 the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you f*%#% moron"
If its a dumb idea on Twitter/Musk's part but Tesla is fully compensated for their engineers' time, all is OK.
If its a great idea but Musk just assigned Tesla employees to do work that does not benefit Tesla and does benefit another company that he owns, that is an issue.
The scale of this is irrelevant. Absent fair compensation to Tesla, even one employee doing a day's work for Twitter is prohibited self-dealing. No one would bother filing a derivative suit over such a small amount, but SEC penalties could absolutely apply afaik.
Even if Twitter is paying much more than their salary costs, you still need to value the damage to the business by taking the crew away from the ship.
You can't just assume zero impact unless this was just a one-day workshop.
Self driving has a well defined, static problem space, with inputs that don't change often (how often do they come out with a new street sign?).
Twitter is combatting distributed adversaries who are constantly adjusting their approach in evading detection.
One of the things that makes safety critical applications like self driving so hard is they have such an abundance of low probability, high severity cases that it is very difficult to define/test them all.
Oh, that'll come.
They problem is so ill defined that it sometimes has to be modeled as random events instead of a deterministic physical process.
Bots on the other hand changes constantly - what is the definition of an abusive bot? What is the definition of spam? The adversaries on Twitter adapt not only their tactics but also their goals.