It came into the public view after an article from Inc. about Musk's famous email telling people to break with the chain of command. [1]
The HuffPo posted an article responding to Inc raising Balan's concerns [2];
> At the time Balan was working on the interiors design team at Tesla, where she identified and “tried … to solve two engineering issues,” she wrote recently on her blog — design flaws that needed to be addressed by the company. But when she tried to force management to fix the problems she was “bullied, humiliated, demoted and retaliated against in the most horrible way possible.” She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
> Balan attempted to go through proper channels but soon found herself “in an even more threatening situation.” She began recording her meetings with fellow engineers when they discussed problems within the company. One recorded meeting lasted more than two hours. The recordings were “for Elon’s ears only,” she wrote in her blog.
>> Then I made my mistake: I wrote an email to Elon Musk, in reference to the infamous ‘Communication within Tesla’ email, to let him know I must meet with him in order to show him evidence of … things going on inside the company that he needed to be aware of.
The original blog post that HuffPo references is gone, but Balan has since posted a long blog article to try to tell her side of the story, which is certainly an interesting read of it's own right. [3]
[1] - https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-email-from-elon-musk-...
[2] - http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11...
[3] - http://cristinaibalanstory.com/teslas-longest-comment-on-an-...