Yeah, with what information the general public has, this could just as easily be spun as 'Engineering chief takes well deserved break after months of crunch successfully implementing Model 3 mass production.' Even if output production isn't as high as was initially planned, doesn't mean it's a failure.

I'm getting the impression that there's some kind of axe-grinding going on in the general region of WSJ when it comes to Elon. Not sure why.

But this article definitely feels like someone just trying hard to find an angle to cast a deprecating light on Tesla. Like a "vested interests" type of feeling.

Head of Sales Chief Financial Officer Chief Accounting Officer Treasurer Director of Battery Tech

All gone in the past year. That's a notable amount of turnover. Some of them left a lot of options on the table when they chose to depart.

It's odd, and probably what triggered an entire article about something as normally mundane as a leave of absence.

The electric car market is booming right now. All of these people would be in strong demand. And with the Model 3 now in production they might well be looking for a new challenge with, probably, much better pay.

Also their VP of Autopilot Software, out the door after 6 months.

WSJ doesn't have great love for most silicon valley companies. In Tesla's case, I think it's their continued over promising and under delivery. Currently the high cash burn plus low production volume on the model 3.

Wsj also has some nice pieces about Tesla, such as their recent tour of the production factory. https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-factory-in-a-fishbowl-15...

I lost respect for WSJ because of their continuous anti-Tesla editorials. I’m not at all a Tesla fanboy, but the WSJ commentary on subsidies are just trashy attacks that are devoid of any logic or context, given that the help that other industries and automakers have received.

For example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2015/02/16/tesla-sho...

For those interested in reading more on this

Source article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tesla-paradox-1423786534

Electric car site looking at subsidies across the industry: https://electrek.co/2016/11/25/tesla-subsidies-big-three-oil...

One complaint I have with both of you both is that neither provides breakdowns by dollar of subsidies per car produced or sold.

> WSJ ... editorials

Twice I conducted a study: I collected everything on their op-ed page over a week or two and coded them for their political stance. I think there were a couple pro-Democratic/liberal pieces out of over a hundred, and a few criticized the Republicans;[0] all the rest were pro-GOP/conservative or anti-liberal/Dem (plus a few that were apolitical). (And if you think the NY Times is the same, you're wrong: Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens (former WSJ editorial page editor) and David Brooks are all conservatives, and maybe others are too.) I encourage anyone to do the same; I feel I can almost guarantee results ever over a small sample like a day.

My conclusion: WSJ op-eds and editorials are partisan mouthpieces for the Republican Party and conservatives. I don't know how Tesla fits into that, but that's their motive. Denying climate change and demonizing any attempt at a solution? Supporting big oil? Musk pulling away from Trump? Others might have a better guess than I do.

[0] Criticizing Republicans is not necessarily pro-Democratic. For example, an editorial could criticize the Republicans for not cutting taxes enough.

It's owned by Rupert Murdoch, that shouldn't be a surprise.

From what I recall, the editorial page was much the same before the Murdoch era. However, the rest of the paper was a fairly stark contrast, and I didn't have the general impression that they slanted the actual news. After Murdoch bought it I lost faith in their reporting, but I never held the editorials against them too much prior to that. The opinion section seemed like a quarantine for the right wing types.

Back in Apple's pre-Steve Jobs era, though, I did get the impression that the news stories were consistently bashing Apple in a way that made it seem like they had some ulterior motivation. Apple would always be described as "troubled" or "beleagured" like a mantra. And it's passed into mythology that Apple was near bankruptcy when in fact they hoarded cash and abhorred debt.

So I'm not really sure if any anti-Tesla agenda is really coming from Murdoch.

> I didn't have the general impression that they slanted the actual news. After Murdoch bought it I lost faith in their reporting

There is (or was) a lot of internal conflict over what the reporters feel is favorable coverage of Trump.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wall+street+journal+trump+coverage...

Good journalists are like sharks and they're getting whiffs of Theranos or Enron and are rightly digging into the company.

Digging is good, that's their job. But this is borderline innuendo. Journalists are supposed to be dispassionate.

> Journalists are supposed to be dispassionate.

This has never been true, has it?

Look at it this way, journalism’s most prized.... award... the Pulitzer, is named after a man famous for introducing the original Fake News ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism )

> This has never been true, has it?

That's like saying everybody lies, therefore nobody has ever been honest. Sure, journalists are human and have emotions and make mistakes, but it's not a binary issue; it's a continuum. Journalists generally should strive to be dispassionate.

> Journalists generally should strive to be dispassionate.

But why?

Dispassionate people don't work 20 hour days for weeks on end for hardly any money, digging into a story that they know might not ever lead anywhere.

What in particular from the article seemed overly passionate?

If you don't follow US politics, most conservatives hate Tesla and the WSJ (part of News Corp) is probably the preeminent conservative paper in the country.

> successfully implementing Model 3 mass production

For comparison on mass production: "more than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured in all, reaching a rate of 9,000 to 10,000 cars a day in 1925, or 2 million annually" [1]. Toyota was producing 13,400 units per day in 2014.

Model3 is currently somewhere around 300 to 500 per day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

What’s the point of the comparison? Model T manufacture started in 1908 and by the end of 1910 they had produced 12,000. By that comparison, model 3 is crushing it

Ford literally invented the assembly line. Tesla has a century of expertise to learn from. Tesla has also been producing ~2000/wk S&X's for almost two years now; however they just recently (last week of March) exceeded 2,000 3's in a week, 9 months into production.

> Ford literally invented the assembly line.

No, he didn’t. The assembly line existed before Ford applied it to cars.

The Model S came out in what, 2012? So by your own numbers it took 4 years to get to 2000/wk. 9 months is killin it!

Poor examples - Ford produced only the Model T for two decades. Toyota has been around for 80 years.

Why is it a poor example? I'm comparing a car company that, over 100 years ago in 1914, was producing 714 vehicles a day by hand with 13,000 workers [1] to a company in 2018 with 37,000 employees utilizing robots yet manages to only produce half that amount?

[1] https://www.wiley.com/legacy/products/subject/business/forbe...

It's poor example because the Model 3 has 1000's of parts some of which have supply chains that spread around the world. The model T had 1481 parts almost all built in their factory. The model 3 is orders of magnitude more complex to the point that it's more similar to a business jet than it is to a model T. But then, you knew that.

How many total employees did Ford have, total? How many of Tesla's total employees are in line work/production? How difficult is the relative assembly of a Model T vs a Model 3 (ie, how many parts, welds, fasteners, etc)? I honestly have no idea how to compare them fairly, but I am not impressed by your analysis so far.

I can't speak to the relative complexity of the two machines either (obviously a Tesla is vastly more technologically complex but that doesn't mean it's necessarily more difficult to assemble: assembling computers today is extremely easy compared to 30 years ago) but I can however point to:

* Tesla produced ~250k vehicles (cumulative as of Q2 2017) prior to the first production Model 3, so it's not appropriate to compare them to a brand new company: They know how to build cars by the time Model 3 rolled around. This is their 4th vehicle model.

* Tesla has stated many times how the Model 3 is a far simpler and trimmed down vehicle compared to the S or X: production should be easier.

* Tesla had a goal of 2,500/wk by December 31st (they managed 793 the last week by shutting down S&X production) and a total of 2,425 for that entire quarter.

* Tesla had a goal of 5,000/wk and a revised goal of 2,500/wk by March 31st but only managed to hit 2,020 by that point, again which required shutting down the S&X lines.

* The new goalpost is 5,000/wk by June 30th.

* Elon said that "excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake" and that "Humans are underrated". [1]

If Musk himself is suggesting that the Model 3 delays would have not occurred due to human assembly instead, I think it's quite fair to compare against Ford's Model T assembly line a century ago. Not to mention a few advancements in technology since then which should give Tesla the upper hand.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/984882630947753984

You didn't answer any of my questions, though.

Sure, but a 6-week sabbatical in a company struggling to keep up with planned production goals is largely unheard of.

Which is a tragedy - people occasionally need to take breaks to be more productive.

Sure, and I think the reason he's taking a 6-week break now is that he failed to take sufficient breaks earlier.

I've burnt out myself, and it's no joke. I wish him only the best. But to me the real risk here isn't "senior leader out for long, possibly indefinite period". It's "Tesla has been running a sprint, not a marathon." If somebody this high up is burnt out, what's it like for everybody else?

Given Tesla's precarious cash position this is the time when they really need for things to go smoothly. But if people are at or near burnout, they'll be making mistakes, cutting corners, etc.

Silicon valley likes to pretend you can run a marathon in 45 minutes by breaking it into subsequent 100 meter sprints. Dashing without breaks burns people fast.

I’m on an ongoing campaign to eradicate the word “Sprint” in relation to software delivery from the company I work at, so far with some success. It seems pedantic at first, but using the word “Iteration” in its place does actually seem to be driving an understanding that we’re not going to get everything done in a week, and should instead work steadily towards completion.

6 weeks is quite the break, personally. Does that increase productivity more than 3 or 4 weeks, for example?

Not saying we don't deserve that sort of time off, but it seems somewhat excessive given the circumstances.

Given the pace and pressure of everything they've been through and everything they're about to go through again, I'd say six weeks sounds about right.

Wasn't Tesla's issue over-automation? Maybe the leave is symbolic of dedication to improving other capabilities - letting the other managers take time to balance things out. I'm sure Field appreciates the break, imposed or not. Startups are hard work and stress causes problems in the rational mind. I've been experiencing that myself, lately...