Engineer who quit Tesla sharply criticizes Elon Musk: “it’s about lying to the public, manipulating public discourse...”
After 8 years of working at the electric vehicle company, one ex-employee has hit out at Elon Musk.
It turns out working with a far-right, egomaniacal man-child who destroyed Federal spending for millions and recently dipped into UK politics to rouse the racists and tell them to “fight or die”, isn’t exactly a walk in the park. After 8 years at Tesla, Giorgio Balestrieri, a staff algorithms engineer who joined in 2017, has left the company, and he’s not putting Elon on his Christmas card list.
In a scathing LinkedIn post, Balestrieri wrote: “All this being said, I do need to address the elephant in the room: the main reason I’m leaving is that I think Elon has dealt huge damage to Tesla’s mission (and to the health of democratic institutions in several countries). Beyond that, Elon’s leadership and decision making seem seriously compromised.”
He added that he felt he could not “convince myself anymore that this is the right place to be” and that the decision was “not just about politics”.
The engineer then proceeded to list Musk’s dangerous behaviour that drove him out of the company: “It’s about lying to the public, manipulating public discourse, targeting minorities and supporting climate change deniers and political forces aligned with the oil and gas industry,” adding that “I think it’s fairly indisputable that the current US administration is slowing down the energy transition. Unfortunately, speed is critical if we are to avert the worst consequences of climate change.”
Musk’s flip from left to right at the drop of a hat has been heavily publicised (Musk tweeted in June 2017 that “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”), with the smell of power too much for his morals to overcome.
Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2017
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Alas, in the White House he met Donald Trump, a maniacal leader with an ego level too close to his own, and the heady days of cruising around the White House in a Tesla and wearing personalised MAGA gear quickly soured, with Musk being kicked out and left to send mean tweets about Trump from underneath his — presumably — Tesla-themed bedcovers.
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