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Comment by graybeardhacker | Hacker News Reader

At this point I have to believe that any significant tech talent is looking at Tesla as a poison workplace.

They are going to have to pay pretty damn well to get anyone with a brain.

I'm pretty averse to working in any of Musk's companies, not just Tesla.

It's not his (pseudo?) conservative views, I'm actually somewhat politically conservative. I just have a ton of antipathy toward him as a person. I'm not proud of this, but he's a person I actively want to fail.

I'm curious how common my viewpoint is.

Pseudo conservative… I like that phrase. Of course it’s also worth saying that the guy hangs out with neo-reactionaries (people who literally want to install a monarch).

Even if he didn’t espouse whatever the hell he’s espousing publicly, his companies are known as incredibly toxic work environments—one friend of a friend talks about hiding whenever Elon visits their building so they don’t get randomly fired for no reason. Not to mention safety hazards, stupidly long work hours for no real reason (if they’re not succeeding, why are they working so hard?)

He’s gotten himself surrounded by some real nutjobs, then reveals some beliefs that he believes are left-of-center. But that’s true only if you measure based on what he exposes himself to.

> Pseudo conservative… I like that phrase. Of course it’s also worth saying that the guy hangs out with neo-reactionaries (people who literally want to install a monarch).

Honestly, I wouldn't call him a conservative in any real sense. He pisses off liberals, but that doesn't make him a conservative. He just has a few shared points of opposition.

And I'm with the GP, he's someone who I think should fail, but I'm also torn: I also don't like a lot of the people who dislike him, and I wouldn't like the schadenfreude they'd feel if he fails.

I share his views on many things, but I won't work for him as I need time to be with my family. Eighty weeks aren't for me.

I don't want him to fail, however. I'm happy we live in a world where some people work hard to advance our technology.

The guy has a dozen children with how many woman and seems to take any drug that anyone offers him. This is not what I'd have considered a conservative about 10 years ago, but now I don't really know. It certainly paints a picture of someone who is deeply unhappy despite (or perhaps because of?) his unfathomable wealth. I don't like him, but antipathy isn't exactly what I'd call my feeling. I'd almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't so rich and smug.

I admire Elon’s resolve in making the environment obvious why those left should unionize.

> At this point I have to believe that any significant tech talent is looking at Tesla as a poison workplace.

Wasn't that already clear, like, five+ years ago? When they were trying to get the Model 3 in production, I remember stories of Musk visiting the site, getting into people's business, and firing them impulsively if he didn't like something. Stuff like that and the repeated lies about FSD led me to write them off years ago.

Outside of the MechE space, I don't think they were that great of an employer anyhow. The wages at Tesla were always much lower than peers despite having most of R&D in the Bay Area.

They also seemed to overhire on boondoggles and not concentrate on execution.

Back in the day, I was constantly getting pinged to be a PM for their ML Infra team, but the pay was meh and they probably could have done better by acquihiring additional companies (similar to what they did with Deepscale).

It's a bit like video game companies isn't it? Exploiting people who want to work on their passion.

That's what it felt like - they were really marketing on the brand. When their stock was rising like crazy it made sense, but now it doesn't.

Where would they go instead? Massive layoffs seem to be happening widely enough across the board that any real alternatives probably aren't hiring that aggressively.

On the supercharger side, there is a lot of battery tech work and providers now in the US, because Sequoia went gung-ho on GreenTech funding and most automotive companies are now working on charging tech too in order to avail IRA subsidies, so there is a growing Battery Tech and charging tech scene in the US.

everyone that was part of lay offs knows they are never as bad as media describe them. They will be alright.

And you would be wrong. Any half decent mech/electrical/aero engineer begs to get a role at SpaceX / Tesla.

For MechE, AE, and parts of EE you are not wrong - they definitely paid well above market rate because of the stock, but plenty of companies like Toyota, Ford, GM, etc began recognizing this and have begun raising salaries around the 2020-23 period while Tesla's remained stagnant, and we'll probably see the result in the next 5-7 years as these are lagging indicators.

> And you would be wrong. Any half decent mech/electrical/aero engineer begs to get a role at SpaceX / Tesla.

Oh come on. Anyone talented doesn't have to beg for anything, and certainly not a role at a falling company.

Ah yes, the HN bubble. The role at these companies are hell to get into, its not a 3 month bootcamp role. Web Dev being hilariously easy to get into was a function of free money.

Woooooooooosh.

I wasn't saying a web dev could. Context is key.

"Woooooooooosh"

Still not responding to the argument.

Oh, I did. "Context is key".

Ok, "Context is key".

For most of the 2000s and 2010s, salaries were fairly low in the automotive and aerospace industry compared to software or pure hardware, so Tesla and SpaceX absolutely paid miles above competitors, but that's changing in the 2020s now that there's more money in both spaces.

The comment I was replying to wasn't talking about the past.

The salary dynamics for those industries changed only recently (last 2-3 years).

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