Elon Musk reportedly sets trap for loose lipped Tesla employees
The breathless style of writing at which Valleywag has made a name for itself isn't the sort of thing we often link to, but we'll make an exception today. According to the Gawker team, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not making any friends in his own company; in fact, Valleywag claims that Musk recently tried to pinpoint people on his team who may be leaking confidential information to the media. The tactic - sending each employee a slightly altered version of an email about stopping the leaks and then checking to see which version made it to the media. It reportedly backfired in a pretty big way. Valleywag reports that Musk did not let his own executives know of this plan to smoke out the leaker. One of them unknowingly forwarded his version of the email within the company, which made it clear to the rest of Tesla's workforce that they were being set up.
We contacted Tesla about this story, but got a simple "No Comment." That's fine for us, but it might be a long, long month before the Model S unveiling on the 26th. Follow the source link to read a version of the email, presumably one of many, that Musk sent to his employees. Thanks to Yanquetino for the tip!
[Source: Valleywag]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Bill Clough 1:36PM (3/05/2009)
Regardless of whether the leaker is caught, it would seem the effect will be the same - at least for now the leaks will end, unless the person letting the news out is incredibly stupid.
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gt-racer 1:38PM (3/05/2009)
but how do we know this isn't the leak? Hmmmm.
Polly Prissy Pants 3:29PM (3/05/2009)
Or unless they just summarize the memo instead of blindly forwarding it along.
Alex 3:43PM (3/05/2009)
see, now this would get me cross and i would leak info just for revenge.
majortom1981 10:54AM (3/06/2009)
Alex but if you did that you wouldnt have a job and i ncalifornia you would be lucky to find a job in the next year.
Kumar 1:43PM (3/05/2009)
I wonder if the absent minded executive will shortly become an ex-executive with Tesla? ;)
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Mike P. 1:46PM (3/05/2009)
Not absent-minded, just uninformed.
teamkitty 1:45PM (3/05/2009)
Tricky, tricky. Reminds of the everybody's favorite late-night favorite tv show, Cheaters.
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trusnowboarder7 1:58PM (3/05/2009)
Wow, what a passive-aggressive way of handling what he feels is a problem. No doubt he's realizing that karma's a bitch :P
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Joe K. 2:06PM (3/05/2009)
Fisker Karma at that...
Jake B 3:16PM (3/05/2009)
I would rather snag a Karma any day of the week. Fisker really came through on this one, with the support of Lotus and Magna of course ;)
dsharp23 4:46PM (3/05/2009)
HAA! I'm sure he hates Henrik!
Blacksabre 2:05PM (3/05/2009)
Elon Musk is not a paragon of common sense. His attitude is basically "I'm worth a billion dollars...thus I'm God, and anyone who doesn't like it...is fired."
Admittedly, being worth a billion dollars isn't a bad way to attain godhood, but Elon never figured out the part about working behind the scenes. He basically acts as his own Gestapo, and the hell with the results.
I'm actually amazed jhe can keep enough talented people together to produce the car, and that's assuming he will actually manage to produce more than a few crippled prototypes.
But hey, I don't work for him, and there are people who do...and they seem happy enough, publicly....so maybe Elon is really a good guy, but misunderstood. Think of him as the Mark Cuban of the auto industry. Two guys with names like that, as handicaps, whattya expect?
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Rocketboy 2:29PM (3/05/2009)
Usually it's the other way around, become a 'god', get a million dollars.
It worked for L.Ron.
Joe K. 2:08PM (3/05/2009)
It is Elon Musk's world, we just receive slightly tweaked versions of it to see who is paying attention...
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Jared 2:39PM (3/05/2009)
Tesla is such a train wreck.
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Paul 2:51PM (3/05/2009)
What an idiot... i could swear i saw this done on TV once to similar results.
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Level 3:11PM (3/05/2009)
doesnt he know that some leaks are made to create buzz about an on coming model and some leaks are strategically "leaked" out lol "I guess thats what happen when dot comers run an automotive company" lol
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jake 3:59PM (3/05/2009)
Yeah, but so far ALL the leaks to Valleywag were damaging leaks and not one to generate buzz. Seems that the leaker deliberately wants the company to fail for some reason and I can understand why the company would want to smoke the leaker out.
Obviously this isn't the best way to do it, especially since it backfired. But from now on the leaker has to be more careful and not post the whole message, but rather paraphrase. If you read the message in the link, it's pretty funny considering it's being used to smoke the leaker out.
Tim 4:33PM (3/05/2009)
Is it really that big of a deal? The bad thing is that it backfired but if he doesn't want employees leaking information that they agreed to not, then what's wrong with firing them? I side with Musk on this
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