Being a Tesla employee in the current world can often mean that one is at the helm of changing the world. But, there could be some pitfalls to this if an individual has nefarious designs of his own. Recently, just a day after it was reported that Twitter had again entered into a deal with Elon Musk, the share price of his company dropped rapidly.
The shares of the car company which is leading the electric vehicle market went down by 12.2%. This effectively cut down around $125 billion of the market value of the EV maker, as mentioned by NPR. While one can always claim that this was due to an employee running his mouth off, Elon Musk actually has quite a savvy in dealing with whistleblowers. Back in 2008, he actually caught one employee of Tesla who had been leaking information to the press during the recession.
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Elon Musk Shares Smart Idea With Which He Identified Tesla Employee Who Was Leaking Company Secrets
Musk decided to share the story of the Tesla employee he caught after a Twitter user by the name of Vaibhav Balghare asked him how he dealt with those who sold confidential data. With the CEO of Tesla being quite active on Twitter and boasting around 108 million followers, it wasn’t long before he gave a reply. On October 9, Musk tweeted, “That is quite an interesting story. We sent what appeared to be identical emails to all, but each was actually coded with either one or two spaces between sentences, forming a binary signature that identified the leaker.” Needless to say, this sounds like something straight out of James Bond.
When another Twitter user asked about the future of the Tesla employee, Musk quite politely mentioned, “They were invited to further their career elsewhere”. For those who are not into business speak- this means they were fired from the company. On questions regarding a possible lawsuit from the employee back then, Musk joked that everyone was trying to survive the recession- and excessive court fees were not something one would want to get embroiled in.
2008 was a tough year for most companies in the USA, and Tesla was no stranger to it. Musk had spoken about the situation on Twitter quite some time ago, “That was a crazy tough year. Tesla financing closed at 6 pm Christmas Eve- the last hour of the last day possible. Payroll would otherwise have bounced two days after Christmas.” Also, for those wondering about the binary sentencing in the emails, this is called a canary trap. Here, multiple versions of the same document are provided to members of an organization. And since the digital code behind it is different, it is definitely not hard to find the leak.
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Sources
- “$125 Billion Wiped Off Tesla Share Price Following Elon Musk Buying Twitter.” LadBible. Rachel Lang. April 27, 2022.
- “Tesla shares sink, wipe out over $125 billion in value, as Musk scores Twitter deal” NPR. April 26, 2022.
- “Elon Musk used genius method to identify Tesla employee who was leaking confidential information to press” LadBible. October 14, 2022.