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Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

What if adversarial systems result in asymmetric arms races and the game theoretic best move is to work for a corporation that is so short sighted as to go to battle against their own employees and to work for them diligently and intelligently?

Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors.

I'm not saying this is an all-or-nothing thing. I'd join a union if I was working for a certain type of employer (company town, federal government, etc) but when it comes to technology companies, I got to say it's pretty good here.

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Tesla: 5k review, 3.4 stars

GM: 9k reviews, 4.0 stars

GM is also higher rated on most metrics in the "Work Happiness" survey

https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla

https://www.indeed.com/cmp/General-Motors

Are these representative samples?

Probably more representative than "I see..."

They could be equally as bad if there's significant selection bias. It's unclear to me what conclusions I can draw from that data.

Obviously responses are self-selecting, but it seems reasonable to believe they’re equally self-selecting.

Two of my ex-Tesla contacts said it was pretty bad experience, actually.

>Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors.

are you just saying that or have you spoken to a number of employees of both companies? It's kind of interesting to me because I would have assumed the opposite to be the case.

My family worked in the automotive industry for over 60 years now most of them for Mercedes some for Toyota and in the newer generation a lot of them for Tesla. Everyone of them who switched from high profile positions at Merc or Toyota said that Tesla is without a doubt the worst employer especially for lower skilled labor. These are all lower or middle management positions not the poor guys on the assembly lines. Merc and Toyota have benefits for all their employees even the lowest skilled among them. From Tesla the only thing you can expect is an email from Elon to force your subordinates to come in over christmas because paraphrasing here from one of those emails "Without extra time Tesla will be in dire financial struggle." or retaliation because you said no.

Data better than anecdotes

Are they happier at Tesla? Because I hear it is pretty terrible place to work as a software engineer.

I assumed it must've been the non-manufacturer people who loved it. Because there have been an absurd amount of complaints from the people in manufacturing.

I guess, it could be awful at Tesla, but maybe GM is even worse?

I know GM had a REALLY bad reputation in the days of the NUMMI plant.

Note that "Software Engineer" is likely a small and skewed percentage of Tesla let alone GM employees :).

I think it just depends on if you like the kool-aid there. If you embrace their mission statement as your own, then other concerns might factor less for you.

given the job market, while it may 'suck', clearly nobody is making them stay. i.e. may suck on a day-to-day basis, but get rewarded richly after x amount of time

Almost anybody can complain about their job, but in this industry, in this job market right now - anyone staying is staying because the pluses outweigh the minuses.

That statement can apply to any company and doesn’t answer the question at all!

I'd rather an arms race than one side having all the arms.

> when it comes to technology companies, I got to say it's pretty good here.

At the moment yeah in some areas but I wouldn't say that 12 years or ago, and maybe not 12 years from now

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