GreenPlastic

How do you keep your employees in this market if you're lowering salaries across the board?

Curious what your team thought was a good exit and what your definition of win handsomely is. For me, I'm at a startup where I gave up 75k-100k in salary for the first 2 years. Owning 1.5% of the company, <20M exits only make sense the first 6-8 months. At 2 years, I would have done much better elsewhere.

The state isn't writing Tesla a 1.2B check. It's not like the state is starting out in a -1.2B hole. They're starting from a slightly negative and almost 0 position (some amount of state resources went to negotiate the incentives). They have almost nothing to lose and everything to gain. It's a tax incentive which means in order for Tesla to benefit, they would have to have developed property to pay property taxes on (which is good for the state), and had net income to offset (which again is good for the state). In very rare scenarios, some of the states resources are used and Tesla pays 0. In most cases, the state can only win in a deal like this.

Not to mention, there are now 6500 new jobs, and 6500 additional middle-income wage earners paying taxes that the state never had to begin with.

Hey, SendGrid got 65k from the city of Boulder.

Personally, I think the money is better spent in Tesla's hands than in the state government's hands.

Even if it's not completely equitable it doesn't have to be 0 or negative sum.

If I were making 15 an hour at the local casino, I'd be pretty happy to pay more taxes and take a 25 dollar an hour job at Tesla. Sure, Tesla isn't paying its full share but we're both better off.

How is a negotiated tax incentive, one that the other party has just as much say in as Tesla, cheating on taxes?

I'm not sure why a company has to pay 100% taxes to be considered noble.

In order to understand the US, you have to go back to the formation of the country. The US was started because of distrust in the British government. The constitution was setup on a system of distrust, not trust.

As such, mistrust of social systems and government is deeply ingrained in US culture. Contrast this to Scandinavian countries or European countries who fundamentally trust the government.

I disagree with this. The key isn't the technology but building the better driving experience.

If someone comes out with a vehicle with on demand torque, a 0-60 time under 5.5s, excellent handling, and most importantly, great styling and interior, I'd consider it. Tesla vehicles are able to stand on the merits of the driving experience, EV or not. That's not something no other EV manufacturer can currently say.

I don’t think you understand the point I was trying to make. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Tesla intends mass-market to mean targeted at the Camry buyer. The person who is looking at a Tesla isn’t looking at a Nissan Leaf as a fungible product, similar to how an iPhone 3G or 4 buyer didn’t really see Android as a viable alternative in 2008-2009 or even now. To a large extent, the target customer is price insensitive within the 35-45k price range and is an enthusiast looking at entry level luxury alternatives like the BMW 3 series, Audi A4, Mercedes C class, etc.

As someone who has driven a Model S, the experience is so much better than an ICE vehicle (acceleration, technology, not having to go to a gas station), that the other entry level luxury vehicles, while very nice, feel very obsolete and uninspiring.

I do, however, that the market will be much bigger than anyone anticipates because many will realize the cost is similar to a Camry after gas savings. I also think they’ll drive one of these vehicles and realize that it’s a much better experience than other vehicles.

Luxury car manufacturers are very good projecting who their customers aren't. To a certain extent, a car purchase says something about who you are not as well as who you are. A lot of iPhone buyers are saying I'm not an Android as much as they're saying I'm an iPhone user. A lot of Tesla's target customers for the Model 3 fall into the same category.

To drive my point home a little more, this car's sweet spot isn't really the Prius owner or someone who would consider the Leaf.

It's the guy who won't buy a car with a > 6 second 0-60 time. The guy who wants to step on it and be put in the back of their seat but for whom 50-60k is a little bit too much to spend. They can't afford an M3 but want an M3 performance so they buy a 335, a G37 / Q50, or an IS350. I've personally discounted the IS250 because the acceleration is too slow for me.

If the Model 3 gets 5.3 0-60 or better, it's a no-brainer.

People who would buy a Model 3 would never buy a Leaf because it performs like a Leaf. The target market is BMW 3 series buyers who buy the car because it looks nice, has tons of power, and handles well.

They're going after the guy who wants a 3 series with instant torque. Range is a secondary consideration as long as it gets over 200.

I'm the asshole who merges in at the last possible second. It's really annoying that they're doing this as I routinely save 10 minutes off my commute by jumping into lanes that will eventually merge in.

The thing about poker is most of the guys who have been very successful at it are fairly intelligent and would have been successful at a lot of different things. In 2004-2010 it was a little different as a really good player could expect to make 200-300k a year fairly easily.

As poker gets tougher, win rates decrease and a really strong player's expected yearly winnings might be reduced to 100k a year without any real applicable real-world connections or skills. 5 years from now, with the game losing popularity, that expectation might be 50k.

Whereas, if the player had entered the real world, their expected career earnings would increase over time. It'd be hard for me to recommend poker as a career to anyone with the state of today's games. 4 or 5 years ago, it would have been tough for me to convince someone otherwise - especially with the freedom it afforded.

If they can sell a nicely loaded III for ~45k, they wouldn't be able to produce them fast enough.

Besides the Cayenne, what other 80k car has sold as well as the MS? There are literally people who would never buy a Maserati or a Porsche who are buying Model S's. There are now 3 in our building.

I had a chance to drive a Model S down Mt. Evans in CO at an owner event. We need to buy a new car in August but have a hard time justifying the price of the Model S. We're looking at some fairly nice traditional vehicles (335xi, IS350, X3, Q5, etc) and it literally feels like we're buying obsolete technology. While other cars are advertising 9 speed transmissions I'm thinking why should I feel a car shifting? Why should the torque curve be non-instant and non-linear? Why should we ever go to gas stations?

In fact, I'm pretty tempted to just drive our oldest car into the ground and wait until the 3rd gen comes out as I can't imagine wanting anything else.

I forgot to mention that every time you change, assuming you have a PTO balance, you also get that paid out as a bonus.

The thing is a lot of people value the security or aren't aware of the difference between market and their pay. Let's say this is 80% of people.

If you're corporate HR, you can retain 80% of your top talent without big pay increases and promotions while knowing that you'll lose the top 20%. This may be palatable whereas it wouldn't be if you were only retaining 60%.

I think Google and FB were the first to figure out that you could get the top 5%, that they would make a big difference in your org. You'd have to greatly increase compensation but those individuals are probably contributing and worth more than that.

Agree with this. One of the side effects of this is your top performers are always jumping and the people who tend to stay the longest tend to be average or below average.

Top recruiters have known this for a long time and call it marking to market. The article nails what's going on but the implementation is a little more nuanced. You don't just switch jobs every few years to lock in pay raises.

When you're in a hot market where labor demand outstrips supply, you should leave multiple times. For example, most people are shocked at how high software salaries are when they actually take a look at GlassDoor. The market is hot, you should be using it to increase your pay. When supply outstrips demand, you should stay at your current company and your above market pay. The other thing is you should get what you can when you come in the door because some companies go multiple years without pay increases and, when they do, they use a percentage of your existing salary (1-3%).

If you're not leaving, you're getting screwed, plain and simple. At Oracle, there were high performers and they came in 5-10 years ago and only received small raises. You'd see senior developers at 100k after being there for 10 years and then you'd see a new grad from MIT hired in at 100k. You wouldn't really see VPs promoted from within but you'd see them hired in from the outside all the time. One woman left at 75-80k for maternity leave and got hired back in at 125k for the same position.

Moral of the story is be prepared to seek and get your actual market value because it's probably higher than you think.