My own anecdotal contribution, based off the constant bickering of people I know who work for engineering firms that have Tesla as a client, is that they do not have any of their shit organized in a manner which could be remotely described as "together".
There are many words I could use to describe my limited interactions with Tesla manufacturing, but "together" is not one of them.
After being harried to hurry up and build something exactly to the 34th revision of their ever-changing specs (the inside of the electrical panel was powder-coated the wrong manufacturer-original color and therefore unacceptable, and on and on...) and warned about the severe penalties for late delivery and downtime, we got it all finished only to find that they weren't actually ready for it yet. The production floor where it was supposed to go has no room, they haven't gotten permits to even start to pour concrete where it's going to go later...
The one good thing I can say is that at least they paid on time, even though they didn't take delivery yet - better than a lot of "net 30...months" OEMs out there.
That may have been a slight exaggeration. But slow payment is pretty common; we're not particularly bottlenecked by cash flow (rather by engineering) but it's just annoying. "Tricks" in B2B like 1%/10 net 30 only go so far, the norm is that the more powerful companies take advantage of less powerful ones, even when those less powerful tier-1-2-3 suppliers build the equipment and parts that keep their business functional. I guess I don't know why I ever expected anything different.
Should have known all the Tesla masters would dogpile on me defending their SOFTWARE ENGINEERING team.
I’m in no way talking about their manufacturing and assembly teams, strictly software.
Everyone is so hostile towards Tesla, settle down. There’s a ton of ex-meta, apple, uber swe’s at Tesla, they are not some unskilled and unprofessional engineers.
I really miss the old HN community, all anyone does here now is complain and disagree