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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

High-level executives at Tesla are bailing out. Back when Musk announced his overoptimistic production schedule for the Model 3, his two top production executives quit.[1] Nine more high-level executives have left so far this year.[2]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/two-tesla... [2] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/08/02/tesla-ts...

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I'm not sure you can read into these three you linked.

Josh Ensign left to become COO at a different company and his stint at Tesla was the longest in his list of experience: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-ensign-3604431/

Greg Reichow worked at Tesla for 5.5 years and switched jobs to become an investor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregreichow/

Kurt Kelty was at Panasonic for 14 years and Tesla for 11.5. As far as we know from LinkedIn he hasn't got a new job, which you could see as fine (left for personal reasons or simply burnt out) or bad (left because he saw doom ahead, even though he didn't have another job lined up). https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-kelty-5604bb/

What is so bad about these departures? Simply the timing?

I may be conservative, but I don't consider burnout to be on a "fine" side of things.

11.5 years in a fast paced company that makes very ambitious deadlines is an incredible stint for anyone IMO. I'm just saying burnout after that isn't surprising, no?

If they are regularly burning out key executives, then I'd say we should definitely be reading into that. That's a sign that the operation isn't sustainable in the long term, or at least will plateau at lower levels of performance than it otherwise could hit.

So the startup mode will have to end? How is that surprising?

Because it's been in this mode for 14 years already.

That's really interesting. The Economist ran a story earlier about how aggressive Musk's finances are and how there was weird finance going on and that Musk was simultaneously trying to keep things afloat, keep on a super aggressive schedule and keep control.

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21709061-entrepreneu...

Perhaps the wheels are starting to come off. Even if they do, it's been amazing what has been achieved.

From afar, it seems that's just how musk did about everything. SpaceX was a potential catastrophy, but they passed the tipping point successfully. Everything Musk does is "adventure" like, which is unsurprisingly good for employee stability. It's a bit like Jobs at Apple. You're gonna suffer, maybe get fire but you worked on "that" project.

Space-X has the advantage of competing with high-cost producers. Tesla is trying to move downmarket, where they have to compete with Chevy. Tesla should be able to make a good car. The question is whether they can make money on the Model 3.

In reality, Tesla's pricing strategy is to charge $50K-$60K for the Model 3.[1] This is BMW / Mercedes-Benz territory.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/06/surprise-the-real-...

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