I did some contract work for Tesla last year over the course of ~8 months. If I were to pick a few key words it would be: High pressure, somewhat disorganized, and results-driven.
It was high pressure in that there were hard deadlines, and these deadlines needed to be met. If they weren't met, you needed to have a damn good explanation for as to why they weren't met.
Somewhat disorganized in that they did have a complete dev-ops lifecycle, but it felt kind of patched together. The team I was on did not do any formal standups or sprint planning. There was a very robust QA, validation, and homologation process though. They expected developers to do most of the QA, though. The point of the actual QA team was to ensure that there were 'no surprises'. I happened to be paired with a dedicated QA rep, though, which was nice.
Results-driven in that you were expected to do what you needed to do to get your job done. "Nobody told me what to do" was not an excuse. If you needed something done by someone else, you were expected to take initiative and ask and bug people until it got done. Most employees knew this, however, and were happy to help.
Engineers somewhat idolized Elon but also legitimately did not want to be the one to tell him bad news (such as they would prefer a different company rep do it). There are a lot of really smart people at Tesla, and you really do get to work on things that have never been done before (I got plenty of news articles written about what I worked on), but you really need to be dedicated to the company.
When I was there, there was a lot of crunch towards the end of my contract, and they said it wasn't usual, but I'd say expect crunch at least once or twice a year.
Thanks for the insight. At this point in my life I'm interested in WLB, sounds like engineers there may be more likely to be on the younger (in their 20s?) side of things.
Sorry, didn't see this, but actually the ones I was around were often late 20's to mid 30's. Often had kids and a family. They were just very dedicated to Tesla.
It was high pressure in that there were hard deadlines, and these deadlines needed to be met. If they weren't met, you needed to have a damn good explanation for as to why they weren't met.
Somewhat disorganized in that they did have a complete dev-ops lifecycle, but it felt kind of patched together. The team I was on did not do any formal standups or sprint planning. There was a very robust QA, validation, and homologation process though. They expected developers to do most of the QA, though. The point of the actual QA team was to ensure that there were 'no surprises'. I happened to be paired with a dedicated QA rep, though, which was nice.
Results-driven in that you were expected to do what you needed to do to get your job done. "Nobody told me what to do" was not an excuse. If you needed something done by someone else, you were expected to take initiative and ask and bug people until it got done. Most employees knew this, however, and were happy to help.
Engineers somewhat idolized Elon but also legitimately did not want to be the one to tell him bad news (such as they would prefer a different company rep do it). There are a lot of really smart people at Tesla, and you really do get to work on things that have never been done before (I got plenty of news articles written about what I worked on), but you really need to be dedicated to the company.
When I was there, there was a lot of crunch towards the end of my contract, and they said it wasn't usual, but I'd say expect crunch at least once or twice a year.