[ak217]

I am not a fan of Elon's more exotic behaviors but I think Tesla is as committed to excellence in manufacturing as Toyota or Honda. They are just at an earlier growth stage where they have to stand up processes from scratch.

Toyota and Honda have a reputation for reliability, but it is by no means a given. Toyota had to low key rebuild a division after the unintended acceleration scandal. Honda has had persistent issues with their transmissions. It's a never ending battle and there is a limited number of employees who understand how to build the culture necessary for it. If someone manages to poach them or somehow impede your global operations (all automakers have intercontinental supply chains), you're in trouble.

[genericone]

Toyota and Honda, being Japanese companies, also treat their older employees as indispensable, and keep them on typically for a lifetime. The institutional knowledge that these employees have is beyond invaluable. Having experienced older employees on the floor and the lab allows them to sidestep a lot of what might be called "obvious issues at a glance that can be fixed in an hour" to an older employee, that would otherwise be a reverse-engineering nightmare plaguing a newbie for a month.

These same older employees will be less effective if "poached" into another company though, since so much of the experience they have gained is with proprietary tech. Institutional knowledge is very real, and Tesla has only just started accumulating lifers with whom they can leverage that knowledge.

[decafninja]

I think it works from the other side too. Many Japanese employees have come to expect a system of lifetime employment and do not tend to jump ship as easily or often as say, American employees. Even if this means lower compensation, the stability is considered to be a better factor.

Except for some of the earliest employees who are literally invested into the company, will Tesla really have "lifers"? Even amongst these, I think most of them will act in a much more mercenary way (both in terms of compensation, as well as career ambitions) than their analogues at Toyota or Honda.

On the opposite side, I don't think many of the non-Japanese employees and executives at a Toyota or Honda expect their gig to be lifetime employment either.