My partner worked for various solar companies (But not Solar City) as a canvasser hoping to get some sales experience. As a result we got to see first hand how corrupt and underhanded their sales departments could be.
Canvassers were exploited mercilessly and commissions never appeared as new requirements were added to the payouts. Paychecks bounced periodically. Canvassers would be told to go door to door in areas where solicitation was illegal even though the company knew it was illegal and risked getting their employees arrested. Managers would hire friends and use fake leads to make them look good.
I kind of hoped that Solar City would be an exception but I'm not surprised. It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting government subsidies than on creating long term revenue streams. I don't think management is very confident of the long term prospects of residential solar. Especially considering pushback from utility companies.
> It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting government subsidies than on creating long term revenue streams.
Some might argue this is the exact nature of government subsidies.
People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest. Either solar needs to be the most cost effective solution for their energy needs, or the government needs to artificially inflate the cost of other energy (or reduce any subsidies to other energy to make solar more competitive).
Every time a hurricane knocks out a town's electric grid and federal funds are used to repair it, that's a subsidy. When government authority to exercise eminent domain acquires easements or land to erect power distribution, that's a subsidy. Not to mention utilities being absolved from responsibility for the pollution they create.
Rationality, in the economic sense, doesn't mean making objectively correct decisions as perceived from the outside. It means to make decisions in the furtherance of a particular subjective goal. Making decisions that later turn out to be counter to those ends does not mean that person was behaving irrationality, just that they were wrong.
In other words, economically irrational actors are individuals who act consistently against their own self interest, even as they perceive it. Almost no one is irrational in that sense.
It's a loose definition, but it's all that is needed to make markets functional.
> It means to make decisions in the furtherance of a particular subjective goal.
The particular subjective goal is “experienced utility”, and economic rationality not only presumes that that can be meaningfully summed across time but also that the decision made will be made with perfect information as to resulting utilities and disutility and maximize the net lifetime experienced utility.
Why would economic rationality assume that the decision made will be made with perfect information as to resulting utilities and disutility and maximize the net lifetime experienced utility?
This seems like a non sequitur, and a really silly assumption. Wouldn't economic rationality assume that the decisions of actors are rational rather than based on perfect information about their consequences?
> Why would economic rationality assume that the decision made will be made with perfect information as to resulting utilities and disutility and maximize the net lifetime experienced utility
I didn't invent rational choice theory, so don't ask me to justify it.
Ok, well, I'll take a stab at it—the whole concept is exquisitely well crafted as a basis for the argument that liberal (in the classical sense) economic, and even political, systems are ideal in terms of experienced human outcome.
> Wouldn't economic rationality assume that the decisions of actors are rational rather than based on perfect information about their consequences?
Economic rationality is defined to include both perfect information and optimality given that information, so there is no “instead of”—your two alternatives are different phrasings of the same thing.
Where are you getting the idea that rational choice theory necessarily assumes perfect information?
That is the simplest model of rationality, but there are others. Wikipedia[1] lists three others in addition to perfect information:
> Perfect information: The simple rational choice model above assumes that the individual has full or perfect information about the alternatives, i.e., the ranking between two alternatives involves no uncertainty.
> Choice under uncertainty: In a richer model that involves uncertainty about the how choices (actions) lead to eventual outcomes, the individual effectively chooses between lotteries, where each lottery induces a different probability distribution over outcomes. The additional assumption of independence of irrelevant alternatives then leads to expected utility theory.
> Inter-temporal choice: when decisions affect choices (such as consumption) at different points in time, the standard method for evaluating alternatives across time involves discounting future payoffs.
> Limited cognitive ability: identifying and weighing each alternative against every other may take time, effort, and mental capacity. Recognising the cost that these impose or cognitive limitations of individuals gives rise to theories of bounded rationality.
China threw massive subsidies at solar, and they readily admit there was a great deal of waste and graft, but now that the dust has settled China is the industry leader.
> People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest.
Why does 89 octane gasoline exist?
The magic of solar city is simple -- they figured out how to market easy monthly payments for a big capital investment. People decide to go solar for all sorts of reasons, and financial is usually not the driver. I live in the northeast, and it's marginal value, you save like $20/mo in electric bills and are stuck with a lease on your roof. Many of my neighbors with solar could save $50/month with a much a $4,000 investment windows, and a few hundred in chaulk and spray foam.
You need to ask why does gasoline contaminated with ethanol still exist, when all it does is increase the cost of gasoline (per mile), decrease mileage (per gallon), and increase emissions (both per mile and gallon).
Drivers would save tons of money if they'd refuse to buy it, we would just need to get enough of us together to get such a thing done.
> You need to ask why does gasoline contaminated with ethanol still exist
The two mandates that together promote this are mandates for share of renewable fuel use and mandates for gasoline oxygenation to reduce carbon monoxide emissions; ethanol-containing gasoline helps meet both mandates (the latter is applicable to certain markets at certain times of year.)
> Drivers would save tons of money if they'd refuse to buy it,
Well, yes, refusing to buy the gas that is sold at the pump would save lots of money.
> Some might argue this is the exact nature of government subsidies.
I'm not sure why that's bad though. It's true it'd be nice if US science was unfettered by the constant funding-directed pressure to find novel ways to kill people (or support folks doing said killing), but it is true that it spurs research in a variety of areas.
> Either solar needs to be the most cost effective solution for their energy needs, or the government needs to artificially inflate the cost of other energy (or reduce any subsidies to other energy to make solar more competitive).
Solar's receiving less subsidy than most other forms of energy. The oil industry, in particular, receives massive subsidies (and military interventions abroad in some cases) and the current US government heavily favors the coal industry (which already receives a lot of monetary subsidy as well). SolarCity being somewhat unethical in defrauding sales is not unique to, you know, a subsidized business. It's a consequence of any insufficiently regulated industry where the penalty for fraud is less than the profit of fraud. It's a fundamental feature of capitalism when untethered from objective assessments of value.
> People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest.
I hope people understand that this is actually a religious point, not a scientific one. The science says quite the opposite.
> It's a consequence of any insufficiently regulated industry where the penalty for fraud is less than the profit of fraud. It's a fundamental feature of capitalism when untethered from objective assessments of value.
That is not a feature or consequence of capitalism. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for fraud are independent of the economic system itself.
> I hope people understand that this is actually a religious point, not a scientific one. The science says quite the opposite.
Science can say whatever it wants, if you look at our world objectively, it's quite plain to see people are motivateed primarily by economic forces.
For instance, in the following article [1] (top relevant, second overall google search result for 'why buy an electric car'):
>Q: Why should someone should go out and buy an electric car right now?
> A: They can make a huge contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions—that's the most important reason. There are advantages in terms of going into the carpool lane. Electric vehicles are becoming (price) competitive with internal combustion engines. In our report we looked at the life-cycle cost of ... electric cars, hybrid electric cars, gas-powered cars and we found that, for example, the Nissan Leaf and the Smart car are competitive right now even without (government) incentives. What's driving down the cost of EVs is the reduction in the cost of the battery. Another important point is that the maintenance is minimal.
There are several reasons given. All but the first are clearly economic reasons meant to persuade people into buy an electric car. I believe this to be because, in the opinion of the answer, buying an electric vehicle has positive economic incentives that the reader might not recognize immediately, and they are providing a case for overall economic benefit to the purchaser.
The first point is not immediately about economics, but I argue that it is indirectly. The best way to decrease your carbon footprint is to not have a car and to sleep outdoors. Of course, that is not an economically viable or desirable option for most people. These people have made a self-interested economic decision to own a personal conveyance that operates on public highways at the expense of carbon emissions.
There will always be a cross section of personal motivations (tastes, preferences) and economic self interest. The wealthy can afford to pursue the former at the expense of the latter; the average person will be more adherent to economic self interest in for the future or marginal pursuance of the former.
> That is not a feature or consequence of capitalism. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for fraud are independent of the economic system itself.
This is a pretty lousy comeback to my argument. A better comeback might have been, "Why would economic penalties for fraud be effective if you're arguing that economic self-interest doesn't have a strong effect on the actions of humans?"
> For instance, in the following article [1] (top relevant, second overall google search result for 'why buy an electric car'):
The question is not, "Can humans rationalize decisions?" The question is, "On balance, is 'economic self-interest' a good model for predicting human behavior at any given scale?" No one here is arguing that humans can't rationalize.
> This is a pretty lousy comeback to my argument. A better comeback might have been, "Why would economic penalties for fraud be effective if you're arguing that economic self-interest doesn't have a strong effect on the actions of humans?"
The statement which I responded to, that capitalism begets fraud as a feature of capitalism, is wholly untrue. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for any crime, whether economic or otherwise, have nothing to do with an economic system. There isn't any other rational response to your claim.
> The question is not, "Can humans rationalize decisions?" The question is, "On balance, is 'economic self-interest' a good model for predicting human behavior at any given scale?" No one here is arguing that humans can't rationalize.
My stance is that economic self-interest is broadly irrefutable, it doesn't require perfect rationality or all (perfect) information.
To a consumer uninterested in something other than price (ie, all motivations in which they care about being equal), power company A (nuclear) selling power for $0.01/kwh vs company B (coal) selling power for $0.005/kwh, the consumer is likely going to choose power company B, due to cheaper price, unless they have some pathological reason for choosing A (it could be that a higher price in itself is perceived as being higher quality, which is the case for many products).
> The statement which I responded to, that capitalism begets fraud as a feature of capitalism, is wholly untrue. Fraud exists in any economic system, and the punishments for any crime, whether economic or otherwise, have nothing to do with an economic system. There isn't any other rational response to your claim.
You're projecting an argument onto me that I didn't make nor claim to have. I didn't suggest or imply that all forms of capitalism uniquely generate fraud. They do exist in every system. You're angry with my phrasing not sufficiently hedging your concerns. You're also strictly wrong about how legal and regulatory systems impact economic systems. It's neither true nor true of how the literature evaluates said systems.
> My stance is that economic self-interest is broadly irrefutable, it doesn't require perfect rationality or all (perfect) information.
I think you're wrong, and overreaching with econ-101. This is like saying "Supply and demand is never violated." It's violated all the time.
If we're in the league where "I cite a magazine article" is considered to be a useful citation proving your point, then I cite all of Dan Ariely's work meant for consumption by lay-folk.
> You're projecting an argument onto me that I didn't make nor claim to have. I didn't suggest or imply that all forms of capitalism uniquely generate fraud. They do exist in every system. You're angry with my phrasing not sufficiently hedging your concerns. You're also strictly wrong about how legal and regulatory systems impact economic systems. It's neither true nor true of how the literature evaluates said systems.
I'm not projecting anything, your statement reads as
> [companies will commit fraud when the] penalty for fraud is less than the profit of fraud. It's a fundamental feature of capitalism when untethered from objective assessments of value.
To me, you're saying that "fraud is a fundamental feature of capitalism, unless regulated", which implies that fraud is an unavoidable consequence of capitalism unless the authorities step in to prevent it. The tone of your phrasing suggestions specifically that capitalism is directly correlated with fraud. If you didn't intend to make this suggestion, I can understand your consternation to my rebuttal.
Capitalism has nothing to do with fraud. Capitalism has nothing to do with law enforcement and crime punishment.
> If we're in the league where "I cite a magazine article" is considered to be a useful citation proving your point, then I cite all of Dan Ariely's work meant for consumption by lay-folk.
To my point in that article, the 'evidence is everywhere' as illustrated by the broad availability of information to support my claim. Just look at the marketing around electric vehicles and solar in general; you'll see a strong unifying factor of 'economic motivation' in those mediums.
Here's the top result for 'why buy solar' [1]. Top factors are all entirely economic. Clearly, the marketing around these products would prioritize most people's primary motivation for acquiring those products.
> The tone of your phrasing suggestions specifically that capitalism is directly correlated with fraud. If you didn't intend to make this suggestion, I can understand your consternation to my rebuttal.
But not enough to not be defensive about your reading, it seems.
> To my point in that article, the 'evidence is everywhere' as illustrated by the broad availability of information to support my claim.
I don't think you've sufficiently proven the argument which the rest of your statements hinge on: "People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest". It's an attractive (if somewhat cynical) point, but it's no more reasonable than any other generalisation. Not very.
What? His argument doesn't require that statement to hold true. His statement only requires a very small percentage of people who're in the solar industry to make choices in their own economic self-interest.
Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory.
VC funded startups get the advantage of growing ahead of profit, and booking tax losses which they can carry forward.
Bootstrapping means growth driven by profit, which necessitates paying income taxes on the ever growing cash balance which flows from growing revenues & expenses (e.g. always having 3 months operating expenses in the bank)
> Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory.
There's no doubt that we get better tax solutions in the short term. Long term, it makes government services we rely upon to sustain our business untenable. This is the problem with an "economic self-interest" argument: scale matters.
There's also the point that in the grand scheme of things, our companies don't matter and their short term windfalls shouldn't come at the cost of funding for education and social services that make it possible to sustain a healthy economy in the future. I certainly don't think my nascent company is more important than funding public education for the next generation in my country.
Ok. But the "working class" people who voted Trump in don't get to see any of those gains. They at best got a one time bonus, which is still taxed at higher rates, and in exchange, they get cuts to many of the services they rely on.
The gains to the working class is seen in the lowest unemployment numbers ever, a rising workforce participation rate, and starting to see the first wage growth for the working class in decades.
That’s because that extra 33% in our bank balance means more marketing spending, more inventory, more open reqs for hiring sale, marketing, support, and engineering, etc. etc.
E.g. This WSJ post which is also on the front page: “U.S. Workers Get Biggest Pay Increase in Nearly a Decade”
> E.g. This post which is also on the front page: “U.S. Workers Get Biggest Pay Increase in Nearly a Decade”
You mean this one [0] that was flagged off the front page afte the discussion thread pointed out it was using figures not adjusted for inflation, where the inflation-adjusted figured show a decline of 0.1% percent in wages?
"The gains to the working class is seen in the lowest unemployment numbers ever"
Which isn't being accompanied by wage gains, and were going up long before the tax cuts happened.
"That’s because that extra 33% in our bank balance means more marketing spending, more inventory, more open reqs for hiring sale, marketing, support, and engineering, etc. etc."
Which is great, except the vast majority of companies are using that 33% for stock buybacks.
"That’s certainly a popular talking point, but I think frankly it’s impossible;"
Think what you want, but you're not entitled to your own facts. And the facts show that, most publicly traded companies used the money for buybacks, and that wages did not grow very much in the last quarter, which one would expect if these tax cuts were going to go to wages. Which they didn't.
You may wish to look into behavioral economics [1], a system of psychology + decision making that looks deeply at how individuals often do go against their economic (and other) self-interests.
> Every time a hurricane knocks out a town's electric grid and federal funds are used to repair it, that's a subsidy. When government authority to exercise eminent domain acquires easements or land to erect power distribution, that's a subsidy.
This is anti-government fervor carried to absurdity. No man is an island. What is the point of government if not to provide care in disastrous situations? And yes this is the peoples self-interest in carrying on a stable society. I support this kind of "subsidy" 100%.
Precisely. Government manipulation of the energy marketplace strongly impacts the economic viability of some energy sources over others.
Current market conditions mean people will choose traditional grid-backed energy (most of the time) for economic self-interest reasons.
Whether these subsidies are good or bad is up to the reader to decide. There are plenty of people on the internet that are willing to tell others 'what to think.' I just like to highlight what I believe to be the causation so we can achieve an optimal outcome instead of endlessly parroting dogmatic beliefs of any political party.
Then I support this intervention. This idea that there is some "pure" form of undisturbed economics that is practiced outside the framework of achieving some larger social objective is also an absurd myth.
> Oh then, is the subsidy for fossil fuels and roads driving increased intensity of hurricane storms?
I am unable to reply to this directly due to comment depth.
Public highways provide certain economic incentives. Land that would be of marginal utility due to transportation costs without public highways now has greater economic utility. This utility provides economic incentives to private automobiles to capitalize on that land. These public highways create traffic and pollution via suburban sprawl that would otherwise be much less. Public utilities also help subsidize suburban sprawl.
Increased economic destruction by hurricanes (whether worsened by fossil fuels or not) is due to government providing economic incentives to construct in coastal areas subject to hurricane damage. The federal government subsidizes flood insurance for properties in these areas, make the actual cost of ownership lower for the developers and higher for others (tax payers). Perhaps it's cheaper to not erect suburban neighborhoods in areas prone to flooding in the first place.
It's all interconnected. Government subsidies in their various forms impact economic decisions for better or for worse.
> If you think so then what should we do with the increased destruction of property who at perhaps only peripherally participated in that subsidy?
Don't subsidize the reconstruction of properties damaged by hurricanes and flooding. The market will equalize the situation by
1) Insurance will be more expensive
2) Property value will decrease due to increased insurance cost (total cost of ownership)
3) Builders will be highly incentivized to build more hurricane resistant buildings in order to obtain lower insurance rates
4) Hurricanes will have less economic impact due to the aforementioned facts
> Increased economic destruction by hurricanes (whether worsened by fossil fuels or not) is due to government providing economic incentives to construct in coastal areas subject to hurricane damage.
No, infrastructure built to hurricane standards 50 years ago might be perfectly strong to stand against current storms of the time. If increased storm strength is cause by fossil fuels (and that likelyhood is strongly supported by scientific studies), then the fossil fuels (with or with subsidies) will have incurred costs to a lot of other externalized actors. Shouldn't that industry have to pay?
> Don't subsidize the reconstruction of properties damaged by hurricanes and flooding.
By leaving "the market" to contend with increased hurricane resistance alone you have just caused increased expenses for everyone building homes for ignoring fossil fuel externalities (some of which was encouraged by gov't subsisdy). And it's not just homes, it's maybe reworking entire metropolitan areas sewer or housing zones.
All of this underlines that the practice of "economics" has no such neutral starting point. Any action, even the action of letting "the market" decide is a social and political decision of helping some parties over others (or, better, helping many parties together). And these decisions often can't be disaggregated into neat isolated and individualized transactions or responsibilities.
The US government says they shouldn't have to pay. I doubt there is enough data to state empirically that storm 'intensity' has increased substantially over the last 50 years relative to the last 1000.
We don't have a system in place to account for every environmental impact made by people. Is everyone that has ever dug a hole in the ground responsible in some small way for soil erosion to contaminate waterways?
Similarly, what about crop irrigation and water rights? Farmers use public waterways to the detriment of estuaries and deltas. This might cause economic and ecological problems down stream. This may cause destruction of property such as an oyster farm.
It's clear at this point that coastal environments are subject to change, and sometimes dramatic change, irrespective of human influence. This should factor into the cost of the property and its insurance.
> By leaving "the market" to contend with increased hurricane resistance alone you have just caused increased expenses for everyone building homes for ignoring fossil fuel externalities (some of which was encouraged by gov't subsisdy). And it's not just homes, it's maybe reworking entire metropolitan areas sewer or housing zones.
The cost of homes is not necessarily rising but being more fairly distributed to those who choose to live in high-insurance areas. The marginal value of the land will decrease, more money can be allocated towards home construction quality versus merely owning the land, and the cost of housing will normalize.
Higher cost to insure will place deflationary pressure on housing prices to normalize total cost of ownership.
So which is it? Do we have to carefully consider "subsidy" of some activities, or are we throwing up our hands and saying "we don't have a system in place to account for environmental impacts"? I would say economic impacts (instead of environmental) made by political decisions?
> The cost of homes is not necessarily rising but being more fairly distributed to those who choose to live in high-insurance areas.
I would dispute that claim. If a 200 year old plantation house in the south now has to be rebuilt to handle more extreme weather due to expanded areas of storm incursions are we to blame the "choice" of the current owners? This is to some degree a pretend level of market "choice" by people living in regions of the nation. What if a family has handed down that house for generations. Did they make a choice of any sort? But they'll have to bear the cost of the upgraded durability of the building beyond that of regular maintenance. Public city infrastructure is the same way - incurring completely unneccessary upgrade costs due to non-choice climate change.
The future always holds some level of uncertainty. At this point, most people believe climate change is a certainty, so they have to operate based on those assumptions.
I don't think anyone had this information 50 years ago, so who are we going to hold accountable?
Oh then, is the subsidy for fossil fuels and roads driving increased intensity of hurricane storms? If you think so then what should we do with the increased destruction of property who at perhaps only peripherally participated in that subsidy?
Such things are common in sales in general. It's absolutely cutthroat. Salespeople, managers, everyone is in a Hobbesian all-against-all fight to the death for commissions. Crime and fraud are abundant. Personal attacks are not even that uncommon. Anyone who doesn't play this game tends to get muscled out.
It's obviously worse in some organizations than others, but it's probably harder to create a non-toxic sales org than to create a toxic one. Some organizations encourage toxic sales organizations because unfortunately it works, at least in the short term. It can do damage later but that's long after commissions have been earned.
I work at Elastic, and can honestly say, this is the second company I’ve ever worked for whose sales team is respectable. They’re a bunch of highly technical consultants, and their goal is to solve customer problems even if the solution doesn’t earn Elastic a dime. It’s refreshing.
Of note: some people I had known had gone there, and after looking at the SEC filings during the collapse of Solyndra, saw that they were handing out massive bonuses to employees and C-suite staff just prior to literally locking their employees out.
They had their IT lead shut down all accounts/remote access and email, then locked the front doors. Employees showed up to the office the next morning and the doors were locked, this is how they informed them that they were out of a job.
Here in Mexico we had something called "Reforma Energetica", basically a constitutional reform of how the electricity is billed in Mexico, one of the few and unknown rule of said bill is that now all the industry has to generate at least 5% of its energy from renewable resources, so almost every major company is installing solar panels... I am on the metal working industry I have a 150 kVa transformer and 20kVa of solar panels installed... There is no subsidies from the government, but if you dont comply you will be fined starting on December 01. I had to invest heavily on my electrical installation, and there is a boom on renewable energies on mexico because of this...
Also, I had to change my capacitor bank to a newer one, an active one.
So maybe its just the US that is lagging on renewable energies...
> It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting government subsidies
You made a long, correct rant about aggressive sales tactics, then shifted at the end to government subsidies. That is weird.
I think more generally in businesses where you are selling a commodity, aggressive sketchy sales and marketing come to the fore, since you can't really differentiate any other way. And certainly, as well, you seek out the best subsidies available, as do the Koch Brothers or any other good capitalist trying to survive.
Sales people are gross everywhere, and certainly it is something we should try to fix but its been like that for thousands of years.
Unfortunately, government subsidies were the focus of the entire sales process. When they signed a contract they would usually finance the cost of the installation with a third party then pocket the subsidy and use it for payroll and operating costs. A lot of the missed paychecks were because they didn't have the money until they received the subsidy checks.
The entire business model was sketchy as heck. I don't know if it's the same across all the solar companies, but that seemed to be the case with the two he worked with.
A trend that's been growing for quite a (long!) while now is exemplified by this article: "Tesla did not respond to Ars’ request for comment on Sunday."
Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?
The other major variant of this shyster tactic is along the lines of, "Company X failed to respond immediately when asked for comment." No company is able to respond immediately, particularly not on an issue that's likely contentious. Any response would need to be run by their PR and legal people at the very least.
It's a cheap and nasty way to make companies look/feel uncaring about the issue being reported, but imho it does nothing but reflect poorly on the reporter and publication using these smelly tactics, and leaves me wondering what other agendas they may have running.
> Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?
My company did it. Heck, we did it when it was just me and my cofounder answering email. I've worked for multiple companies that had folks who specifically had weekend comms duty, actually. When you reach a certain size this is as normal as having an operations expert on call.
It's... Weird to suggest that it's abnormal to be responsive to press within 24 hours for a company as big as Tesla.
>It's... Weird to suggest that it's abnormal to be responsive to press within 24 hours for a company as big as Tesla.
Exactly. It's laughable to suggest that the entire Tesla communications department doesn't check email on Sundays, let alone on Monday, another day in which they also had to draft a response.
> Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?
Jeez. Considering the story was posted today, what this probably means is that they requested commentary on Sunday, waited for the entirety of Monday, and didn't hear back until today, when they decided to post it.
In my experience, legit journalistic sources are also open to delaying a story to include commentary if the commentary source asks for some reasonable additional time to respond.
Far more likely is that it was written on Sunday, didn't get a response by Monday morning, was put into the publishing pipeline/queue right then and there, and cleared the queue and hit the site today.
I don’t think it’s done intentionally to make companies look bad. It’s just the inevitable result of two conflicting goals: to reach out for comment from the subject of the article, and to publish as quickly as possible.
ArsTechnica also does this routinely and they often post substantial updates (e.g. updating the title, bumping it back up on the homepage) once they get a response, so I’m really skeptical of claims that this is anything other than the balance you described.
Who's going to read the article in two days time when it's been corrected based on "new information" to say that all the claims are complete fabrications?
Nothing on the front page suggests that anything has been updated. Title is still “Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales.”
That headline is still a literal statement of fact even if that triggers the emotional reaction which inspired you to donate your PR skills pro bono. The article clearly explained that these were claims made in a lawsuit brought by former employees and anyone who passed a civics class knows that someone can claim anything but you should wait to see what’s upheld in court.
That "reaching out" habit out of instinct should be curbed. I realize it's the game of journalism -- "we should report it first!" But just because the journalist's business model requires to "publish as quickly as possible", they shouldn't pressure companies, who already have to deal with mountains of crap.
(Not that I'm the "fondness for large, opaque corporations" kind; just trying to think fairly where it deserves to be.)
On the flip side, why do we need a comment from the company anyway? Assuming the journalist has sources for what they are writing, the 'official company PR response' is next to worthless. At this point I think journalists only bother contacting the company as a formality to try and defend against claims of bias.
I think you're adding an emotional component that might not be there. Journalism is always a race to break stories first and in our new world of web journalism that means immediately and not just when you have to send the paper to print. It also means they can do the normal "this story has been updated with XYZ's generic PR response."
The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday. Tesla was asked for comment about the lawsuit on Sunday. That's at least two full working days to have prepared a canned response to anyone who comes asking about the lawsuit. The story itself wasn't published until Tuesday morning, which is another full working day to respond to the request.
> It's a cheap and nasty way to make companies look/feel uncaring about the issue being reported, but imho it does nothing but reflect poorly on the reporter and publication using these smelly tactics, and leaves me wondering what other agendas they may have running.
You believe journalists include those statements as a form of attack?
It is pretty common for technical employees to be on call, why should PR be any different? In a Twitter-style world, I am surprised if a large corporation does not have someone available 24x7 to speak on behalf of the company.
And in any case, how often do companies actually have a comment for a journalist? If I were writing a news story, I am not sure I would be willing to wait all that long for a response that I knew was 99% unlikely to ever come.
> In a Twitter-style world, I am surprised if a large corporation does not have someone available 24x7 to speak on behalf of the company.
Even when they do, commenting on a pending lawsuit almost unequivocally requires conference with Legal to assess whether it's sane for them to make any statement at all.
Corporate counsel is most certainly not sitting around on Sunday waiting for opportunities to consult on press releases about tort claims.
Tesla's PR team is pretty responsive to journalists requesting comment, unless it's something like this where it's up to Musk himself to decide how to respond. He's probably resisting the urge to launch a personal vendetta against the whistleblowers (or saboteurs) right now, if past behavior, and the consequences of past behavior are any indicator.
"Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?"
Everyone. This is an on-demand world, where news is happening constantly. To not have someone available for comment at all times is borderline incompetence.
No. Far from it. But this "if I don't get an instant response" trick seems to me a cheap and shabby form of journalistic laziness. At the very least, if they don't get a response "instantly", "on Sunday", the very least they could do is follow up with a phone call on Monday and print an amendment, or better, a more balanced rewrite representing all sides fairly when they do receive a response in a more reasonable timespan. I've seldom seen any.
Besides, the court cases exist in isolation of Tesla's opinion about them. It's more a courtesy to give them time to respond than an actual requirement. Tesla's position on these cases might be interesting, but it's not required to understand them.
"Both sides" is the journalistically lazy approach, by the way. It's actually pretty rare that you get an "unbiased" view of the situation by simply quoting both sides, as we've seen in lots of other tech and science journalism.
It's interesting to me that you're more outraged about the lack of a documented timeline of callbacks to Tesla than the consistent allegations of abusive environments within Tesla. This is not the first time we've heard about this.
"This tactic allegedly resulted, this person said, in tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue."
SolarCity had revenues of ~$480M in 2016 [0]. "Tens of hundreds of millions" would mean billions of dollars of phantom revenue. Even if that fake revenue would be distributed over a couple of years, it would have been a significant proportion of SolarCity's revenue. Just seems unrealistic that the SEC or any other agency didn't realize that.
Or what do they mean by "Tens of hundreds of millions?". Did they mean to write "Tens OR hundreds of millions?". Even then the same logic applies.
Ok. So it could be either $40M or $400M - that's a huge range. Let's assume something in the middle, like $200m. Does it seem credible to you guys that nobody except the three plaintiffs noticed that SolarCity faked half of their 2016 revenue?
Well first off, I don’t see a time range here. This could easily be stretched over multiple years.
Secondly, if someone says “tens or hundreds of millions”, I assume that they’re giving a rough estimate based on incomplete information. If I’m evaluating the credibility of such an estimate, then I’ll consider the most conservative end of the range, which in this case is $20M. If we suppose that that was spread over three years, then we’re talking about 1-2% of total revenue. That doesn’t sound so implausible, right?
Finally, SolarCity’s 2016 revenue was $730M, not $400M.
I would wager that anything in a range 10%-50% of missing revenue, for a publicly traded company, would be caught by external auditor. And I’d im not mistaken, external auditors are required. If I’m wrong on either of those accounts, then I’d be seriously concerned about our stock market.
Not only this, but they state "'thousands' of bogus SolarCity accounts may have been created". The average install is $15K-29K [0]. So even is there was 1000 fake accounts at $15k that's $15 million in missing sales?
Add to that even though SolarCity's revenues were about $480M it looks like almost half of that was from leases and incentives [1]. So on the lowest end we are saying 5% of all revenue was faked?
I'm not trying to pass premature judgment on anything here but the article spans several broad categories. There is various verbal harassment mentioned, age discrimination is mentioned, perhaps some missing overtime pay or a misunderstanding about exempt employment, some cut backs on certain office benefits that a struggling company might normally do and then there is the "piece de resistance," outright financial fraud. Harassment is bad, period, I don't know what the girl running in her underwear had to do with anything, but it doesn't sound like something you want circulating in your workplace, these sound like really valid beefs.
So this company was bought and presumably some audits happened and there was some due diligence. From my personal experience, people who tend to get really wound up about not being paid overtime tend not to be the most knowledgeable about this sort of fraud. I might be wrong, but I think maybe some upset folks had some real complaints and they may have mixed in some rumors. If the fraud is remotely true, there is tons of missing money, companies tend to notice that.
From what I can tell, prior to mid-2017 (which would include most or all of the period that the lawsuit covers) SolarCity's residential products were actually 20-30 year leases rather than outright purchases. Following GAAP accounting rules, the revenue from the lease payments would need to be spread out along the whole length of the contract, so a lot of the fake revenue that they are talking about might actually be anticipated future revenue spread across the next 20-30 years rather than revenue when the sale was made. 50-500 million spread across 25 years would be 2.5-25 million per year, which seems much more reasonable as a proportion of revenue that could potentially be faked.
Yeah this seems like a reasonable thing that might have happened. Putting it this way, it's still a bad thing but it's nothing of significance to SolarCity's overall performance or bottom line.
The way that I read it was that it was a huge guess and that it was largely in reference to bookings, rather than billings. It wouldn't be booked at revenue at that point, so it would show up as inaccurate revenue forecasting.
Of course, the statements themselves were so hand-wavy that its hard to say for sure.
This tactic allegedly resulted, this person said, in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue. He added that more than a dozen people reported the practice to the relevant human resources representatives, and CEO Elon Musk himself, who never replied.
So employees were pumping up projected sales figures for (at least) personal benefit in the form of bonuses. What happens when these figures don't materialize?
>Its a pretty common problem in sales. Lots of sales people are constantly moving jobs and pushing their numbers up.
HackerNews:
Wells Fargo presses sales people to fake sales: Send those executives to the guillotine! (this was literally said by a top comment on one of the threads).
Tesla presses sales people to fake numbers: Nothing to see here, standard operating procedure.
If/when these companies fold, I hope the rabid supporters are held to account.
Commission typically isn't paid out until the company is paid in my experience. Bonuses are different, but some companies I work for actually tracked how many orders were actually fully paid for vs. how many were entered into the system. A concerning number of salespeople would basically sign people up if anything the customer said could be construed as being interested, and their numbers would look great until you looked at the number of sales that fell through.
I never has the most sales in a single month when I worked sales, but I regularly had the highest realized revenue because every single person I signed up actually wanted what they were purchasing.
This was all over the cell phone industry when I worked networks side. This was pre-iPhone era, just to give an idea how long ago.
I traveled around metro areas measuring signal quality, simple upgrades or maintenance, often stopping at nearby retail outlets rather than laptop in the truck.
I’d get to know the store staff and they’d talk freely around me about “fake” signups to juice numbers.
The trick was sign em up at end of month, cancel them before a bill got sent. That way the store appeared to hit their monthly target.
They’d often do fleet style signups; construction company would come in legit looking for 10 lines, the store would sign up 20 phones for construction company. Then return half before the 14-day no questions asked period.
This was going on all the time, across multiple stores, as far as I could tell. The details would change, from construction to startup or new business needing phone in a hurry.
When everyone pays bonuses on unrealized revenue it puts you at a hiring disadvantage to pay bonuses off of realized revenue only, or to cut future bonuses when revenue doesn't materialize.
Realized revenue will always be a percentage of unrealized revenue less than 100%. So by definition paying off of realized revenue at the same rate means you're going to be paying less in commissions to your sales staff.
If I'm a salesperson looking for my next gig you're going to have to prove that you're paying a high enough commission for it to be worth it to me.
But most importantly, why would a salesperson who can make a $15k commission immediately work someplace where they need to wait for the sales and billing cycles to complete? That could easily be 30-60 days after start and will put you tens of thousands in commissions behind your competitors. And if a salesperson quits or is terminated do they still get commissions 30-60+ days in the future? Unlikely, especially if there's any bad blood.
From a business standpoint it's easier to pay on unrealized revenue and decrease the overall commission amount such that it's still profitable even when you're paying commission on money the company doesn't see.
Back in the early days, Ben & Jerry's had a policy limiting upper management salary to a (small) multiplier of the pay of line workers. They were subsequently "unable to hire qualified management" and removed that policy. It was a minor kerfluffle.
There can be a lot of weird bonus structures kicking around too. For a while, my girlfriend worked in sales at Oracle, and while they were trying to push their cloud offerings, the had some crazy-pants bonuses for any cloud sales; on the order of $4-6000 a quarter if you sold cloud subscriptions. So she got her dad to buy $300 worth of hosting for his auto parts side business, and collected 20x that in bonus.
I think Solar City didn't have a great reputation when they were independent, and I think those problems linger.
In Tesla's defense, they have trimmed back sales considerably and it seems like they are moving to a retail model in the future. I think that has the potential to be a lot more sustainable and less ripe for abuse.
Keep in mind that the only reason for why non-utility deployment of solar makes economic sense was due to extremely generous subsidies, and net meter billing.
We just had solar installed (yesterday, actually!)
I worked with 3 companies; a local large-ish San Jose company, a much smaller local company, and SunRun (national).
Ultimately most of the quotes and sizing came back near identical; the very local company had a really nice guy come out and pitch pretty convincingly and ultimately tell me "even if you don't go with us, don't use SunRun, please.." and showed me some negative Yelp reviews and stuff.
Well, I was leaning towards that guy because I liked the idea of using a local company, but after a fair bit of digging I started finding some suspicious stuff.. I had contacted one company, but he presented a business card from another contracting company, and so on. Ultimately there were 3 company names, it was hard to find reviews, the address looked more like a freight forwarding company.. and when you start digging into contractor licenses the guy's associated with companies in SoCal that had been apparently sued out of existence.
I think the problem is, there's such a gold rush in solar, that everyone is just jumping in. The margins must be good, and demand is high. I don't actually think the guy was an outright scammer, I just think there are a lot of third rate contractors trying to set themselves up as solar experts and just over-promising and under-delivering.
Thankfully, this helped me end up with the larger, reputable local company that seems to have the size and professionalism that comes with it, while still helping me feel like I'm able to support a local company, with real local employees, everything under one roof. But you have to look.
So, I have no idea what the truth is, but didn't Solar City get bought out by Tesla? In that case, it would seem like it would have been better to clear the books with an audit of past sales, so as to make the price Tesla would have to pay for Solar City, something easier for Tesla to pay. But, I am not a finance person.
The Tesla purchase of Solar City cannot be thought of like a normal purchase- because of Musk's role. Solar City had all sorts of problems before the purchase - it lost >20% of its workforce in 2016 and cut the salaries of it's founders to $1. There was also some really questionable self-dealing like SpaceX buying SolarCity bonds.
It makes perfect sense for Musk as a person to use Tesla to support Solarcity - one of his enterprises supporting another. But that's not how public companies work, you can't force Tesla shareholders to overpay SolarCity shareholders for a buyout simply because Musk personally wants to see SolarCity succeed.But when you view it in that context is makes perfect sense to see why Musk didn't try very hard to drive a hard bargain purchasing SC.
SolarCity was founded and run by Elon Musk's cousins. The conflict of interest has been a topic of discussion for quite some time, and some claim that Tesla intentionally ignored problems at SolarCity when deciding to do the deal.
Although this is just hearsay, this is something the company will need to react to. High commission sales orgs frequently create bad incentives. It’s hard to work around this, because the most aggressive tend to thrive in this kind of world, until they cross the line. But if you give up commissions, you will lose the highest producing salespeople to your competitors.
Kinda hope these accusations are mostly true in a way, since Ars doesn't seem to show any compunction about naming names filed in a lawsuit. Would suck for the named persons if it turns out to be entirely false. I miss when journalists at least pretended to have standards.
Ok, I can write out the script for this knowing only the headline.
- Elon defenders will jump in and claim it's all lies
- Elon haters will chime in with "j'accuse!"
I honestly don't know the truth about this (few would) but let me point some things:
1. I would find it strange if sales people were paid bonuses (let alone commissions) on non-real sales.
2. Even if bonuses were paid when no money was paid by the customer, this would eventually get reconciled and at some point pretty quickly that salesperson would get flagged.
3. Knowing that "tens or [sic] hundreds of millions of dollars" was in nonexistent sales would make an officer of the company guilty of any number of securities infractions. Not that this isn't possible of course but the severity of this has to be weighed against the benefits to make it more or less likely that it occurred given the potential outcomes.
4. Was SolarCity a public (note: "public" != "publicly listed") company? If so, there are financial reporting issues too. As well as any obligations to shareholders or financiers.
5. SolarCity was no stranger to lawsuits or government investigations [1].
6. The buyout by Tesla is, on paper, suspect. One way to describe it is: one of Elon's companies (Tesla) bought (arguably "bailed out") a second of Elon's companies (SolarCity) that owed a lot of money it would arguably default on to a third of Elon's companies (SpaceX). Not much happened here remotely resembling at arm's length.
7. People who get fired, rightly or wrong, have their own motivations for speaking out and rarely is it ever to say "yeah, I screwed up" but that's the case at least some of the time. Not that I'm saying it is here (again, no knowledge of the specifics) but just bear that in mind.
8. Ex-employees might be suing (or considering suing) their ex-employer for any number of reasons which may or may not be valid. I suspect if they had good counsel they'd say nothing. If they had bad or no counsel they'd speak about this publicly. So which is it? Who knows.
This behaviour is happening in sales departments in companies all over the world. The only reason it's of any interest here is because SolarCity has Musk's name associated with it.
Certainly a lot of short sellers ( and bulls ) spreading rumors online, but this seems more like the continuation of the war between elon musk and journalists.
There have been a surprising number of hit pieces by a number of news companies against musk and his companies lately. I think I've seen more negative news articles concerning elon musk in the past 4 months than the 4 years before that.
There seems to be a pattern that whenever someone challenges journalists or their industry, they gang up and pile on.
I think it's going to be an interesting couple of months for elon musk as I think these journalists are just getting warmed up with their anti-musk hit pieces.
Elon is attempting to maneuver Tesla through a tight operating and financial envelope. He is doing so with public funding. Of course you're going to have a lot of debate about what he's doing. Journalists being critical isn't them launching a war, it's them attempting to leave no stone unturned.
> Elon is attempting to maneuver Tesla through a tight operating and financial envelope.
He's been attempting that maneuver for more than a decade.
> He is doing so with public funding.
You mean private funding? Raising money on the stock market isn't public funding.
> Of course you're going to have a lot of debate about what he's doing.
That's my point. He's been doing everything you've said forever. It's just the past 4 months where journalists have started to write hit pieces. How come they were so quiet in the past?
> Journalists being critical isn't them launching a war, it's them attempting to leave no stone unturned.
No. Considering some journalists have openly asked their fellow journalists on twitter to come forward with sex abuse or negative stories on elon musk after musk criticized the media, I don't think your argument holds much water.
It's obvious musk despises the news media ( he openly stated so ). And it's obvious journalists hate criticism and will lash out at anyone. The question is whether vindictiveness on both sides will subside. I highly doubt it will from journalists considering their terrible track record and of course their desire for ratings. So I expect a lot of hit pieces on musk and tesla. The question is will elon musk back down. My hope is that he will focus on his companies and his goals rather than being dragged into a neverending petty argument with journalists.
>Journalists being critical isn't them launching a war, it's them attempting to leave no stone unturned.
When you only do your job some of the time, it's reasonable to question your motivation. We've had years of Tesla and Musk puff-pieces and it's only in the last few months that journalists have decided to leave no stone unturned en masse.
> we've had years of Tesla and Musk puff-pieces and it's only in the last few months that journalists have decided to leave no stone unturned en masse
You're complaining about the disease and then complaining about the cure. When Tesla was flush with cash and the recovery was young, the operating and financial envelope was wide. Tesla had the room (i.e. capital and investors' patience) to screw up.
Elon has said he won't raise more capital. He has more investors than before. Many of them have been holding for years. In that midst, he has announced ambitious (i.e. expensive) schedules. That combination creates a precarious envelope. Combine that with being later in the economic cycle, and heightened attention is warranted.
> You're complaining about the disease and then complaining about the cure
In the ebbs and flows of positivity/negativity frequency, all flows look like cures for ebbs. Really, it's just the another symptom of the same disease that there are intentionally large peaks and valleys at all (unintentional is a different matter of course).
>You're complaining about the disease and then complaining about the cure.
I'm not, I'm saying when someone treats you badly for ten years then suddenly changes their attitude, it's reasonable to wonder what motivated the change.
Tesla stopped being flush with cash and the recovery stopped being young years ago. He's announced ambitious production schedules (and missed them) multiple times. The 'we won't need more capital' thing? He first said that in 2011. Since then he's come back to raise money several times.
The real difference I see this time is a perceived closeness with Trump and general misbehavior on twitter.
Hmm, seem to have struck a chord here. Anyone want to actually say what you disagree with so strongly?
> The real difference I see this time is a perceived closeness with Trump and general misbehavior on twitter
Financial markets aren't known to be sensitive to leaders' political proclivities. Yet the bonds are down and stock's volatility up.
Could part of the negative coverage be motivated by Elon's personality and politics? Sure. But the risk profile of the company changed with the SolarCity acquisition and Model 3 announcement in 2016, bond issuance in 2017 and CAPEX and production delays in 2018. One representation of this risk profile is runway, i.e. TTM operating burn + CAPEX / Cash on hand. It is compressed. That concerns existing investors, excites bankers (who might get a stock or bond offering out of it) and entices new investors. Increased attention + narrow envelope leads to concerned/cautious/negative coverage.
(It is also difficult to disentangle the increased `general volatility in the markets post-tariffs from Tesla's inherent volatility, which is also linked to the tariff discussion.)
It's interesting that there's been a massive delay between risk profile change in 2016 and 2017 and the recent drop - a drop that it appears may be temporary. I know a lot of people that have been shorting Tesla for years and have been continuously surprised by its seemingly irrational rise in stock price.
If you look at their cash burn in Q4 2016 and Q2-Q3 2017, it doesn't fit with the press on the company or its stock performance at the time. Instead, the price hit all-time highs over that period and press was glowing.
I get that as the production numbers didn't increase along with capex there's a crunch in Q1-Q2 2018, but it doesn't seem to me that this is the reason behind tech news' change of heart.
I don't believe I did. It's not a conspiracy to point out that if the press is doing their job now by investigating things, they were not doing their job for years previously. If you don't do what you're supposed to for years, then suddenly change, is it a conspiracy to think that something caused that change?
It's not crazy to point out that the press hates Donald Trump, and that Donald Trump loves Elon Musk. It's also not crazy to point out that there's a general cooling of the public's feeling towards tech, and that journalists, particularly hacks, just go where the wind is blowing. It's not due to them suddenly doing their jobs, and it doesn't make them anymore correct now than they were six months ago. Elon Musk is now an easier target, that's all, and he's done them a service by provoking them at the same time.
The press hates Trump? I can find no shortage of press that loves him. How are you defining this mysterious group "The Press" and who is a member, who is not?
I think you are just seeing what you want to see.
I am also curious why you think there is a general cooling of the public's feeling towards tech?
You're right, you found them. Two of those were written by PR consultants, all of them are opinion pieces, and one was written by a republican speechwriter. How about something written by a person on staff as a writer representing a journalistic organization? You know, like these:
No true Scotsman, eh? I didn't know the author mattered, but now it does. What's next? Written at the wrong time? Then at the wrong place? Not long enough? Too obscure? Sigh... I'm done with your treasure hunt.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel rather dirty and I need to go take a shower.
Not really no true Scotsman. Opinions are sent in by people to be published in a part of the newspaper that is not actually affiliated with the newspaper's staff, and Forbes is famous for selling article space to PR.
It's not changing the goalposts to point out that these are not journalists, and they themselves would not call themselves journalists.
Using the true scotsman example, this is more like you brought me an example of a welsh person in Scotland.
> It's not changing the goalposts to point out that these are not journalists, and they themselves would not call themselves journalists.
What? You asked “could you easily find 5 articles or clips that are genuinely supportive and praising Trump?”
You never mentioned whether they had to be written by journalists or not.
--
All I did was search for “positive Trump articles” in Google and this came up. I spent all of 5 minutes.
How about this, you find me 5 articles written by 5 “true” journalists at Breitbart and Foxnews supporting Hillary Clinton and I'll find a way to say you didn't do as I asked.
No evidence that hacks go where the wind is blowing? That's just the history of journalism.
No evidence for the press hating Trump? Have you been alive for the past year and a half? Multiple journalists have compared him to Hitler and Stalin. I don't remember that happening before. It's understandable and clearly mutual in this case, though - check out how many places talk about his 'war on the press.'
No evidence for people souring on tech? Maybe you haven't been seeing the same things I have, but the narrative went from 'criminals are using facebook to target grandma' to 'facebook is criminal and rigging elections, and your apps might be too.' There's a reason for this and it's pretty justified, but it should really have happened years ago, when every startup was collecting every bit of data it could without any protection or thought to what they would use it for.
When tech started dominating the S&P 500, it went from being the land of outsiders and upstarts to the new robber barons. Check out how many articles talk about a new gilded age now.
No evidence for Musk provoking journalists? Just look at his twitter.
Maybe there is some meat behind these allegations; it seems that Musk has been losing his cool recently; like with the Thai cave incident when he called one of the rescuers a pedophile. Could be a sign that things are not going well.
I have yet to meet a "fossil fuel supporter" or any person looking to destroy any alternative fuel source.
The closest I've ever come to that is people I know who actually work in oil drilling that defend fracking...
Aside from that, there is the crowd that wants more nuclear power if people are serious about getting off of fossil fuels...but I really can't say I've ever met somebody who was ANTI "energy sources".
Why are “baby boomers” looking to destroy Tesla? What evidence is there that there is actually a generation of people opposed to Tesla? Fossil Fuel supporters don’t have any hatred of Tesla — perhaps they just object to the unfair tax advantages that make a Tesla cost less than the market would actually support.
If we'd have a carbon tax to level off the economic incentives indirectly received by oil companies and ICE vehicles manufacturers, those products would be much more expensive. Then we can honestly compare which car is cheaper.
Apart from that, I also don't get the 'baby boomers against Tesla' argument.
Seems like nothing more than mud-slinging from disgruntled, fired employees.
If SolarCity would have had "...tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue that would put them at over a billion in revenue, which I'll leave to you to look up how inaccurate that statement is.
If your neighbor was one of the salespeople, then sure go ahead and slag her for it. If you're a prosecutor with jurisdiction and you think there's a case, jump on it. Since most of us don't personally know any of the people involved, there's not much point in selecting these nobodies for our two minutes of hate. The character we're going to have to deal with again is the dude at the top, so naturally he's the one whose behavior we'd like to affect.
Would you please stop posting inflammatory comments to Hacker News? The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
Solar City commits fraud to make Elon's stock look good. Nice.
Side note: just watched Back 2 the Future again and saw what 2015 is supposed to look like. I didn't see anything about putting explosive batteries and flammable material next to every house.
Canvassers were exploited mercilessly and commissions never appeared as new requirements were added to the payouts. Paychecks bounced periodically. Canvassers would be told to go door to door in areas where solicitation was illegal even though the company knew it was illegal and risked getting their employees arrested. Managers would hire friends and use fake leads to make them look good.
I kind of hoped that Solar City would be an exception but I'm not surprised. It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting government subsidies than on creating long term revenue streams. I don't think management is very confident of the long term prospects of residential solar. Especially considering pushback from utility companies.