Hacker News Reader

Comment by icambron | Hacker News Reader

When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly. It's great that they're selling lots of cars, but "exceeded the target" is a wholly artificial accomplishment.

View on HN

The target was set in a shareholder letter, so if Tesla intentionally mispredicted the target, they would likely be liable to a shareholder suit. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the target reflected all available information at the time and that Tesla sent out the press release. Therefore, the most probable event is that Tesla had an abnormally large influx of orders, which is a non-artificial accomplishment.

No, it depends on what your goal is. Here, the goal is satisfying shareholders. You want to satisfy shareholders because it's in your best interests to do so, the value of your company depends on it. The easiest way to satisfy shareholders is to underestimate (but not too drastically, just enough to be a little dramatic) your numbers, so that when you surpass your estimates, you look amazing. Underpromise and overdeliver. It happens everywhere, including with software project clients.

Right, you sandbag and then you look like a hero. That argues it's a good idea, but if anything clarifies how artificial it is.

To clarify, I wasn't replying to your statement on artificiality. I was replying to your statement that the target would have been set incorrectly in such a case. I didn't intend to comment on your statement of artificiality at all.

"When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly"

Something tells me that you find yourself failing to meet expectations a lot.

Especially since the penalty for missing your target is so great.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com