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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

> Tripp raised what seemed to be genuine concerns

Were they genuine concerns, though? The overall impression from available sources is that he was overreacting to a situation that, while perhaps unusual, was basically par for the course given that Gigafactory itself is a newly-built facility, and one that's still largely under-construction. Why would you expect things to be 100% perfect and with zero unnecessary waste? Screwups happen all the time, most of the time it's totally normal and not a big concern.

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Moreover, even if they were legitimate, was the press a legitimate place to raise them?

Generally, if you want to whistleblow you should blow the whistle to the regulators. Probably the EPA or a similar agency for any supposed environmental concerns, and the DOT, NHTSA, or a similar agency for any safety concerns related to vehicle's battery packs.

You don't get to leak to the press in violation of your NDA just because you disagree with your employer. Maybe it becomes legitimate if you think that the government and your employer are conspiring to keep issues secret, but I don't see any suggestion of that here.

Definitely, I agree that they may have been invalid claims and that screwups do happen. What concerns me is that may have been Tripp was truly sincere if not misguided. Tesla's 100 million dollar lawsuit, however, sends a chilling message that if you harm Tesla, they may go after you with incredible force.

Chilling? That’s normal corporate behaviour. It would be more weird if they didn’t react.

What a depressing attitude. Just because something is common doesn't mean it's acceptable.

I didn’t say it was acceptable. It’s also not acceptable for alligators to bite humans, but the appropriate solution isn’t necessarily to kill all the alligators.

Like the biology of a crocodile, this is the natural behaviour of a capitalist corporate entity under current US law. We have this set of incentives for corporations and we’re all surprised when they follow them to the letter.

Nope. It's pointless to sue a private individual for 100 million dollars. Even if those losses were real, there's no way to recoup them from an unemployed engineer. Tesla is going to spend a lot of money on legal fees with no potential upside -- except that they can fuck up Tripp's life.

It's pretty clear that the goal of these lawsuits is not to recoup losses, but instead to silence critics, and to attack someone that alledgedly "betrayed" Tesla.

This is not normal corporate behavior. Normal companies don't try to swat their ex-employees. Normal companies don't start lawsuits on the whim of their CEO.

Normal companies either don't talk at all about employees that make crazy allegations, or they make a press release thanking the whistleblower, stating that they investigated the allegations and determined that there are no problems and everything is fine!

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