That's a very "euphemistic" way of putting it. Kind of like putting someone in a wheel chair could be described as "allowing them to tackle different challenges".
She was more than just let go, she was bullied, humiliated, demoted, threatened, retaliated against, and blackmailed among others. Evidence was tampered with, destroyed, or manufactured, along with quite the list of irregularities even judges observed.
There's nothing to justify that except an incredibly toxic company culture coming straight from a brilliant but extremely toxic leader. But people like him don't have to worry about any court. They can always buy their escape from a court of law with money, and buy their escape from the court of public opinion with charisma, PR, and their loyal following.
Real quick: all of this information exists in your head because of online articles. You haven't seen the full proof of this happening. Be careful of making conclusions based on stories rather than evidence.
And first person accounts from people I trust all confirming things along the same lines. On the other hand there are people defending Tesla or Musk because they genuinely haven't observed such issues but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In practically all such cases it just means they never got on the wrong side of your company or CEO. A company should never treat you like garbage because you pissed them off. Or ever.
Imagine sexual harassment cases where the vast majority of men will genuinely say they haven't witnessed any foul play. But it's clearly not a sign the issue doesn't exist, just that some people never got to see it.
Im just saying not to form hard conclusions on things unless you have pretty hard evidence available that presents a certain picture. Its too easy to fall into the trap of manufactured outrage.
Whether she is telling the truth is for you to judge. The details and tone of voice sound genuine.
Seems ... justified.
So if she admits that she did record these meetings without informing the other participants, then in this defamation case - a key part of which is about the claim in HuffingPost "She also illegally recorded internal conversations within Tesla without anyone’s permission, which is clearly criminal conduct" - she has a good chance to lose, as it's not defamation if it's true.
This would be different if it were the police illegally procuring evidence, under the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' theory, but here it's just a private citizen. So while she could surely be punished for breaking laws related to recording people, that doesn't seem to foreclose the possibility that she could use the recordings in court to prove her case.
I understand why they feel threatened when this sort of thing is turned around on them, though.
It came into the public view after an article from Inc. about Musk's famous email telling people to break with the chain of command. [1]
The HuffPo posted an article responding to Inc raising Balan's concerns [2];
> At the time Balan was working on the interiors design team at Tesla, where she identified and “tried … to solve two engineering issues,” she wrote recently on her blog — design flaws that needed to be addressed by the company. But when she tried to force management to fix the problems she was “bullied, humiliated, demoted and retaliated against in the most horrible way possible.” She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.”
> Balan attempted to go through proper channels but soon found herself “in an even more threatening situation.” She began recording her meetings with fellow engineers when they discussed problems within the company. One recorded meeting lasted more than two hours. The recordings were “for Elon’s ears only,” she wrote in her blog.
>> Then I made my mistake: I wrote an email to Elon Musk, in reference to the infamous ‘Communication within Tesla’ email, to let him know I must meet with him in order to show him evidence of … things going on inside the company that he needed to be aware of.
The original blog post that HuffPo references is gone, but Balan has since posted a long blog article to try to tell her side of the story, which is certainly an interesting read of it's own right. [3]
[1] - https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-email-from-elon-musk-...
[2] - http://deleter.net/index.php/news/5541/Business/September-11...
[3] - http://cristinaibalanstory.com/teslas-longest-comment-on-an-...