Tesla Fires Female Engineer Who Alleged Sexual Harassment (theguardian.com)

Tesla has fired a female engineer who accused the company of ignoring her complaints of sexual harassment and paying her less than her male counterparts. AJ Vandermeyden, who went public with her discrimination lawsuit against Tesla in February, was dismissed from the company this week. The Guardian reports: Vandermeyden had claimed she was taunted and catcalled by male employees and that Tesla failed to address her complaints about the harassment, unequal pay and discrimination. "It's shocking in this day and age that this is still a fight we have to have," she said at the time. In a statement to the Guardian, Tesla confirmed the company had fired Vandermeyden, saying it had thoroughly investigated the employee's allegations with the help of "a neutral, third-party expert" and concluded her complaints were unmerited. "Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Ms Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press," a Tesla spokesperson said. "After we carefully considered the facts on multiple occasions and were absolutely convinced that Ms Vandermeyden's claims were illegitimate, we had no choice but to end her employment at Tesla."

Comments

The lawsuit

[Areyoukiddingme]

We might actually get to hear all the nitty gritty details on this one, rather than the usual handful of accusations in the press followed by the company settling the lawsuit with a gag clause. If Tesla's lawyers think they're on firm enough ground to fire her after she filed suit, they must also think they're on extremely firm ground regarding the suit itself, in which case they should fight it out to a conclusion. Which is damn rare. We're going to get an unusually detailed look at the HR practices of a billion dollar company. Should be fascinating.

I wonder what the market will think of it tomorrow... Their stock hit a new 52 week high today of $344.88. Which happens to also be an all-time high. The previous high was $342.89.

Re:The lawsuit

[Areyoukiddingme]

Tesla has yet to turn a profit, claiming growth - yet every other firm manages to grow while it is profitable. Tesla has significant governance issues, so it isn't being managed well at all.

Firms which are profitable while growing are typically growing at single digit percentages per year, while not being in one of the most capital intensive industries in the world. Did you know there's a battery factory in Nevada now? It was empty desert a few years ago. Do you think that was free? Or even cheap? They spent half a billion dollars on capital expenditures in the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, then did it again in the first quarter of this year. They expect to spend an additional $1.5 billion on capital expenditures by September. The incumbent car companies thought they were completely safe from new competition because they knew how much money somebody would have to spend in order to actually compete with them. They believed that everybody was just like you, too cowardly to spend that money in order to build factories. Turns out they were wrong, just like you.

I read your links. They're both a year old, and almost totally obsolete. The SolarCity buy is a done deal. There is no SolarCity anymore. It's all Tesla now. I'm not so sure it was a good purchase, but all "will they/should they" analysis is irrelevant. They did. Meanwhile they made $2.7 billion in GAAP revenue in the first quarter of this year, up almost triple what they made a year ago. They did it by producing cars 64% faster than they did a year ago. And that's with zero ZEV sales in the quarter. Nobody has to buy the zero emissions credits from them anymore. The whining about the board of directors is nothing more than a naked attempt at a power grab. I consider Tesla's ability to tell the usual suspects to go to hell a serious strength, not a weakness. Those people only know how to fuck up old companies by gutting them, not grow new ones.

Badly managed? Not even close. You just don't have any idea how to evaluate them because what they're doing hasn't been done in your lifetime. They're spinning up a global car company from scratch. Fifteen years ago they didn't exist. Of the top 15 car companies in the world (by manufacturing volume), 7 of them are over a century old and 2 of them aren't global (neither SAIC nor Peugeot Citreon sell into the US market). None of them were founded less than 40 years ago. Groupe PSA, formerly Peugeot Citreon, is the youngest, founded in 1976. The rest date from the 1940s or earlier. Two of them, Fiat and Renault, date from the 1800s. When Tesla is a century old, maybe you'll be able to understand them.

Tesla Motors isn't one of the top 15 in the world and may never be, but they're competing directly with those top 15. That's expensive. Really expensive.

I can't deny that markets are delusional though...

Re:Ballsy

[phantomfive]

Looks like they hired a neutral third-party to investigate. They presented some of the evidence:

The investigator had access to Tesla’s compensation data and found that Vandermeyden’s salary was in the middle of the range and while some new hires were indeed paid more than her as her lawsuit claims, the highest paid new hire was a woman and several men were paid less than her. Therefore, Hilbert determined that gender discrimination had nothing to do with her compensation.

It doesn't say why she was fired, but most companies won't say that.