A majority of Tesla employees believe that CEO Elon Musk’s tweets are harming the automaker, according to a Blind survey.
Blind is an anonymous professional network with over 3.5 million verified users.
They verify that users are from specific companies through work emails, but they keep posting anonymously.
Following Musk’s recent rants on Twitter regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and Tesla’s stock price, Blind decided to poll its Tesla employee users about their opinion of Musk’s comments.
They asked “50+ Tesla employees” the following question:
- How do you think Elon Musk’s Twitter activity is affecting your company?
- It is benefiting Tesla
- It is not affecting Tesla
- It is harming Tesla
- In your opinion, Elon Musk is:
- A genius
- Misunderstood
- An internet troll
- All of the above
- None of the above
Here are the key results from the poll:
- 53.7% of respondents believe Musk’s Twitter activity is harming the company
- 26.1% of Tesla respondents believe Elon Musk is a genius
- 10.9% of Tesla respondents believe Elon Musk is misunderstood
- 10.9% of Tesla respondents believe Elon Musk is an internet troll
- 43.5% of Tesla respondents believe Elon Musk is a combination of the three
Blind added about the results of their poll:
Tech employees are known for having their compensation linked to company value/stock price. So while Elon’s Twitter activity does generate conversation and media coverage, the impact on stock price does raise the question of how those directly work for him and compensated as such think of the situation. In other words, memes and Twitter storms can be funny from an outsider’s perspective. Still, one does wonder if the joke is less funny when the compensation you’re receiving after pulling long hours is significantly and quickly reduced.
Electrek ran its own poll last week about how Musk’s comments on COVID-19 shutdowns affected your opinion of Tesla.
Over double of respondents said that it negatively affected their view of Tesla vs. positively. Keep in mind our audience skews toward Elon Musk fans and this was before the “selling all physical possessions” and “TSLA undervalued” tweets. At the time 42.5% were neutral.
Electrek’s Take
I would take the results with a grain of salt since a dataset of “50+” employees is far from perfect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the general feeling at Tesla right now. Certainly the Tesla community here has been sharply divided.
The stock price comments didn’t sit well with a lot of people. Also, Musk’s credibility doesn’t seem to be helped by his many incorrect Tweets or Tweets based on bad science.
Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2020
As I wrote after he made the comment last week:
Either way, it is coming at a cost to Tesla’s shareholders and Tesla’s many employees who are getting a lot of their compensation through stock options. Whatever Elon was thinking, I don’t think Elon was thinking about them when he wrote that tweet.
However, I happen to think that overall, Elon’s tweeting has been a positive tool for Tesla, especially as a promotional tool.
But it was also poorly used on several occasions and you’d think that those could have been avoided. Elon and Tesla the company each paid the SEC $20M for the 420 tweet and the “Pedo guy” tweets put Musk through a lengthy court battle where embarrassing details were revealed.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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