>>7317381 (pb)

Interesting Anon, I hadn't noticed that before, you are correct, perhaps there is a connection here.

Tesla Ex-Employee: Production Was A "Circus", Company May Be "Infiltrated" By Ford, Chevy, And Short Sellers

The pro-Tesla cultists over at InsideEVs published an article Friday morning highlighting an ex-employee who revealed "what it’s really like to work for Tesla". But instead of highlighting the interview's content right off the bat, the article starts by immediately making excuses for Tesla at the expense of short sellers, claiming that "instead of dealing just with production and sales issues, [Tesla] also has to deal with the so-called shorters." The article claims that short-sellers are "everywhere," even in the media. You know, because public conventional auto makers like Ford and General Motors don’t have people shorting their stock. Perhaps InsideEVs felt like they needed to cover for some of the statements the ex-employee made.

The article goes on to present an interview with an ex-Tesla employee from the company's solar, delivery and customer support department. He opines on several topics during his time at Tesla. While talking about wait times for customer service, he says: "The long wait times. I could coordinate those directly with the number of people available to take calls. You could see an entire department. An entire row of computers and phones on Monday - and then on Tuesday, that whole row is empty." He talks about his customer support training, where he's flown to California, only to witness the current customer support team "pulled off into another room and told they were going to be let go after 30 days. He continued, talking about layoffs: "They took a 12 person team down to 2. It's just ridiculous. I don't know how they expected me and my colleague to handle the workload ourselves. It was ridiculous. We got back to Utah, we watched all our friends that we had been working with get fired, which was a horrible day. I came back to Utah and I cried."

When talking about why he stayed at Tesla for so long, he said: "Elon had the right idea. His mission is not to make a bunch of cars, it's to save the planet. That's why I was on board. That's why I put up with all the crap that they put me through. Because that was the true message that Tesla was about. It's not about making a car." He also claims that many people at the company are on their way out the door: "I still have plenty of friends who still work there and they tell me it's just getting worse. Most of them are just trying to wait it out - to get their full year in to get their stock options, then they're gonna leave. I can't say that I have a good feeling about it."

In describing Model 3 quality, he said: "I kinda made the joke that when a car would come in and there were parts missing off of it, I'd say that one came out of the tent. I had to remove tape [from cars being taped together]. They would deliver Model 3's on a diesel, the driver would unload the cars, hand me the keys and I would take the cars down to parking storage. I had a list of customers that were coming in that day. I would have to move the cars down and prep them so they could be washed. Half of that was just me taking tape off the car. I found interior door panels were not held on by anything. No clips, just tape. It was a circus. It's true. " He claims that he faced some "very strange hiccups" at delivery that he couldn't attribute to simple mistakes or plain stupidity. We have to ask: has he checked the tone at the top of the company yet?

The employee points out that he is suspicious that "a big part of the current employees" are just there to sabotage the company. “It would not surprise me if there was about 25 percent infiltration from other companies, like Ford, Chevy… That is just there throwing monkey wrenches into it,” he says. The notion was immediately ridiculed by hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, who Tweeted out "#FacePalm". And in describing the future outlook, he offers this ominous sounding take: "I'm scared, I'm hanging onto all the little trophies I got while I was at Tesla because I'm afraid that one day they're going to be valuable because there's not going to be any Teslas. I don't have a great feeling."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-02/tesla-ex-employee-production-was-circus-company-may-be-infiltrated-ford-chevy-and

Mike Pompeo fires top State Department official accused of abusing staff

A senior State Department official has been fired from one of the most prestigious positions in the diplomatic corps after clashing with subordinates and colleagues, the Washington Examiner has confirmed. Kiron Skinner, tapped as the director of policy planning last August, has been working to develop a long-term strategy for the intensifying geopolitical competition with China. But Skinner’s time in the State Department ended in acrimony, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded that her leadership of the policy shop was too flawed to tolerate. “She was hurting the mission of that particular division, and of the department, and so she had to be let go,” a source familiar with the circumstances her Skinner’s firing told the Washington Examiner. “This all had to do with her behavior as a manager, and how she got along with members of a team, and things she did — to her own subordinates — which would get you fired from almost any job.”

Skinner, 58, was accused of yelling at subordinates, threatening her staff, and trying to keep a tight grip on the team’s communication even with other components of the State Department. The clashes reportedly included “making homophobic remarks and accusing people of having affairs,” according to Politico, which first reported her ouster.

Pompeo investigated the charges and decided to fire her in the face of a mass exodus from the policy shop, bringing an abrupt end to the tenure of his top foreign policy strategist even as he travels in Southeast Asia to rally allies and partner nations against the threat of an “imperial” China. But the accusations don’t ring true to at least some people who have worked with Skinner in the Trump administration. “It’s laughable that unnamed sources would claim that she was abusive to staff,” a former administration official, who also discussed the issue on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. “Anyone who had worked with her knows that she’s a calm and deliberate thinker. Moreover, it’s offensive that anyone would make an ‘angry black woman’ argument to push her out.”

A State Department representative declined to discuss Skinner’s departure, noting that the agency doesn’t comment on personnel matters. Another State Department official said Skinner had struggled with the pressures of the job, despite being widely respected as a foreign policy thinker. “She just let the pressure and paranoia and other things get to her,” the State Department official, discussing the issue on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. “She was so afraid of what people would say and what would leak out that she tried to restrict all communication both within and beyond the organization. And that’s just not State Department culture.” She has been singed at times when she found herself in the limelight. Skinner described the brewing confrontation with China as a “fight with a really different civilization … the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian” at a foreign policy forum in April. Skinner, who is African American and has emphasized the need for ethnic and intellectual diversity at the State Department, was trying to make an argument about the need to avoid conventional thinking about how to compete with a rival power. But her comment was a gift for Chinese Communist propagandists, who cited her performance as evidence that President Trump is pursuing a racist agenda in his trade war with Beijing. The backlash to those comments did not cause Skinner’s departure but did not improve her relationship with colleagues either. “It's gotten increasingly worse over the last couple of months and so it just became difficult to maintain,” the source familiar with the circumstances added.

Skinner is the third senior State Department official to leave under a cloud this summer, after the chief protocol officer was ousted amid allegations that he had mistreated subordinates and “even was known to carry a whip at work” as an apparent intimidation tactic. Another official left Foggy Bottom amid allegations that he was using his government post to advocate for controversial arms sales that benefited a defense contractor that he previously represented as a lobbyist, although the arms sale was supported by Pompeo.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-pompeo-adviser-fired-after-unhappy-staffers-revolt