[threeseed]

> Tesla's embedded developers did not understand the extremely simple concept of write endurance

Equally likely is that they do understand but just don't care.

From all accounts, Tesla seems to have a culture of move fast and break things.

[gkoberger]

Hmm I don't want to defend Tesla, but I do want to push back on this a bit!

Facebook made "move fast and break things" famous, which was Zuckerberg's way of presenting a tradeoff. Everyone company says they want to move fast, but Zuckerberg made it clear that the company should care more about velocity than stability.

I don't believe that's Tesla's attitude. Rather, I think their attitude is more "move fast and ignore regulations". It's not that things won't break, but rather that the tradeoff Tesla is making is around regulation rather than things breaking.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Regulations are all we have to keep things from breaking...ignoring them about something like a self driving car should be a criminal offense.

[dtech]

The other side of the coin as that they hobble 5-20 years behind tech possibilities. If you want to push boundaries, you sometimes have little choice.

Self-driving cars in the next 10 years have been a serious possibility for the last decade or so, yet governments and insurers don't have a policy ready and won't until a couple of years after the first self-driving cars are available.

[icebraining]

Tesla, Google et all are not little startups but huge corps with plenty of cash and the ear of any politician or CEO. If they can't get a policy enacted, maybe there's a reason for it.

[tuatoru]

Pushing boundaries is fine when there are no life-threatening implications.

Self driving is all about convenience and costs[1] and as such it's not necessary, nor is it advisable, to inflict the bleeding edge on the general public. Waymo's geofenced approach is less bad than Tesla's, and it's something that regulators can readily work with also.

1. But teh safeties!1! No. Just no. ADASes (advanced driver assistance systems), particularly autonomous emergency braking, remove the safety argument for self driving. With ADASes you have 95% or more of the (asserted) safety of self driving, and ADASes are available today, on a large and increasing range of cars. There are even retrofit kits.

[KptMarchewa]

There is nothing like self driving in current regulations, much less 10-15 years ago when people seriously started working on it. So, in your views, even starting working on this stuff should be criminal offense?

[bryanrasmussen]

>all we have to keep things from breaking...ignoring them about something like a self driving car should be a criminal offense.

I think it would potentially be a manslaughter charge.

[gkoberger]

I don't disagree! I just think people misinterpret "move fast and break things" and use it anytime something breaks. I realize it's a nuanced point.

[andi999]

Also I think it was just to cover the backs of FB engineers. Like you implement a new feature and you are afraid you get scolded because it broke something. You know you are covered. So you dare to change things. Actually was there even a handful of cases where things broke? (And I am sure FB will get rid of the engineer who breaks too many things)

[gkoberger]

Yup, that's exactly it!

So, the culture was "it's okay to break things as long as you're moving fast". I don't think Telsa explicitly would say "it's okay to break things" to their engineers, but I do think they'd say "it's okay to ignore regulations".

In the end, they may have the same results, however it's all about what employees know they're safe getting away with.

[WA]

Tesla might actually say: "Everybody, we need to push end of quarter sales. You gotta release the FSD as it is. App team, you gotta implement some butt purchase button for FSD that has no undo. Thanks."

[hef19898]

Safety critical regulations, it seems. That gets close enough to "brake things" if you aks me.

[lazyasciiart]

But things have literally broken.

[spicybright]

You have to kill a few people to make an omelette, as they say.

[gkoberger]

Sure, but I think you're missing my point.

[totalZero]

That can be forgivable in some situations, but Move Fast And Break Customers? Not so much.

[quicklime]

It's even worse to move customers fast and break innocent bystanders.

[crocodiletears]

Nah, not as bad. They aren't a source of revenue. Now if the bystander also owned a Tesla…

[dheera]

A lot of this also stems from a culture of quarterly earnings reports and idiotic "fiduciary" duty to some shareholders instead of the primary duty being to customers and humanity.

The incentives are fundamentally defined in the wrong way, and the system has just optimized itself for the those incentives.