What's new
By:

Eric Bach, fired Chief Engineer, sues!

GMan said:
I would assume he likely cannot, as would be typical of an exit arrangement.
Click to expand...
If he is suing for wrongful termination, there is most likely not an exit arrangement.
 
borski said:
The interim CEO is the old COO. You know, instead of speculating without any kind of evidence, you could read the complaint. It's pretty specific with the allegations it makes.
Click to expand...
Having read the complaint I think he got some good lawyers. Not plead in vague generalities, which for me is a good sign when it comes to pleadings.

Hopefully the Pro Hac Vice applications are approved.
 
Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Whichever way this goes I hope that the parties can settle it with grace and respect.
 
The complaint is a joke. To sum it up: "those meanies in corporate made fun of me and it hurt my feelings." His lawyers wrote a nice complaint but as the saying goes: lipstick on a pig.
 
illopp00 said:
Yeesh....although there is plenty of complaints on glassdoor...
Click to expand...
The glassdoor on Lucid is pretty ugly. Glassdoor is like anything on the internet - you've gotta sift through it a little bit to try to understand the truth. But there is a lot of smoke there. :/
 
Like anything, you cant make everyone happy. 3.2 out of 5 is not terrible. Besides, if.you ever worked in corporate America, everyone complains, everyone points out a problem but very few have a viable solution. I got out of the corporate world for that reason. This problem is so rampant, it cannot be cured!
 
WeighingGravity said:
The glassdoor on Lucid is pretty ugly. Glassdoor is like anything on the internet - you've gotta sift through it a little bit to try to understand the truth. But there is a lot of smoke there. :/
Click to expand...
3.2 not bad for a struggling “ start up”…apple is 4.2, Tesla 3.5, Rivian 3.5, GM 3.6

Take these with a pinch of salt.
 
nil123 said:
The complaint is a joke. To sum it up: "those meanies in corporate made fun of me and it hurt my feelings." His lawyers wrote a nice complaint but as the saying goes: lipstick on a pig.
Click to expand...
I do think it's pretty funny that a white male is claiming the company was acting with racial animus against him; calling a white person of german ancestry and birth a 'nazi' is racist? If I call a Black person, or an Asian person, or anyone who is not Caucasian, a 'Nazi,' then I'm not being racist, but calling a white person a Nazi makes me racist?

Clearly, it is pretty offensive and highly critical to call someone a Nazi, but it would be interesting to know what of Bach's actions/statements/behavior led the HR exec to come up with that moniker. Seems to me hard to shoehorn it into a racism claim. Certainly a lot of bad blood between Bach and the HR folks, but maybe he was a bad boss and obnoxious person?
 
I'm not looking at the overall rating, I'm looking at specific comments that talk about a toxic culture and that point the finger at a handful of top execs (even naming the chief engineer directly), claiming "little Caesars" and "fiefdoms."

Anyways, I have no idea what happened, and people always conflict with each other. And you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. And hard driving execs are often tyrants that get results - Jobs was an arrogant asshole, Gates was a dick; do I need to talk about the other famous electric car company guy?

I'm sure there are two sides to this story. I'm sure the legal settlement will land somewhere in the middle :)

I was surprised how little Bach actually makes...... that's not a huge salary given the levels of knowledge and responsibility you need to have to hold that position. I guess his equity stake was the lottery ticket that could have made him a billionaire if things went right, but that doesn't appear imminent.
 
WeighingGravity said:
I'm not looking at the overall rating, I'm looking at specific comments that talk about a toxic culture and that point the finger at a handful of top execs (even naming the chief engineer directly), claiming "little Caesars" and "fiefdoms."

Anyways, I have no idea what happened, and people always conflict with each other. And you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. And hard driving execs are often tyrants that get results - Jobs was an arrogant asshole, Gates was a dick; do I need to talk about the other famous electric car company guy?

I'm sure there are two sides to this story. I'm sure the legal settlement will land somewhere in the middle :)

I was surprised how little Bach actually makes...... that's not a huge salary given the levels of knowledge and responsibility you need to have to hold that position. I guess his equity stake was the lottery ticket that could have made him a billionaire if things went right, but that doesn't appear imminent.
Click to expand...

Just one correction… I worked for Steve Jobs… He was far from an arrogant asshole. In fact, he was by far the most inspiring leader I’ve ever worked with.

And trust me… There was no one at Lucid who was 1/1000000 as effective as Steve Jobs…
 
lpinprov said:
I do think it's pretty funny that a white male is claiming the company was acting with racial animus against him; calling a white person of german ancestry and birth a 'nazi' is racist? If I call a Black person, or an Asian person, or anyone who is not Caucasian, a 'Nazi,' then I'm not being racist, but calling a white person a Nazi makes me racist?

Clearly, it is pretty offensive and highly critical to call someone a Nazi, but it would be interesting to know what of Bach's actions/statements/behavior led the HR exec to come up with that moniker. Seems to me hard to shoehorn it into a racism claim. Certainly a lot of bad blood between Bach and the HR folks, but maybe he was a bad boss and obnoxious person?
Click to expand...
You're assuming the person who called him a Nazi was white?

In any case, it wouldn't matter. There is a major difference between calling a German a Nazi and calling someone who is say, Italian, a Nazi. Using these sorts of epithets is bad either way, but it has a much more sinister overtone to someone who comes from the culture of said epithet. Folks who grew up in post WWII Germany have a very different experience with that word than anyone who didn't. It's not a laughing matter to them.

Even if you think you are just making a joke, it's not your place to assume what you say is received in the manner in which you sent it.

You can't tell other people they aren't allowed to be offended.

Any racial or cultural stereotypes are completely off limits in a professional environment. Completely unacceptable, regardless of the source. And if the company not only didn't support him when he expressed the offense, but actively pushed him out, that's not a good look.

We don't have all the facts, so who knows what actually happened here. But my guess is this isn't just jealousy or anger on Bach's part. My guess is SOMETHING bad went down, and it was handled poorly.
 
WeighingGravity said:
The glassdoor on Lucid is pretty ugly. Glassdoor is like anything on the internet - you've gotta sift through it a little bit to try to understand the truth. But there is a lot of smoke there. :/
Click to expand...
I’ve worked for plenty of companies, and none have had their culture accurately reflected on Glassdoor. I find Glassdoor pretty much entirely useless.

That doesn’t mean the culture at Lucid is great; I have absolutely no idea. I just don’t know what Glassdoor reviews are actually meaningful signal, that’s all.
 
lpinprov said:
If I call a Black person, or an Asian person, or anyone who is not Caucasian, a 'Nazi,' then I'm not being racist, but calling a white person a Nazi makes me racist?
Click to expand...
If you call someone German a slur used for one of those other ethnicities, I suspect you’d find confused faces, not someone calling you a racist.

So yes, in things like racist slurs, context does matter.

Calling someone who is clearly German, with a very thick German accent, a Nazi, is clearly meant to be more insulting than calling someone from Vietnam a Nazi.

Is it racist? I have no idea. I’m not German and it would be hard for me to know, but I wouldn’t call a German a Nazi anyway (or anyone really, for that matter).

Most importantly, if true, it is explicitly HR’s job to prevent this, not to be the problem.

As to whether it has merit? No idea. That’s for the courts to decide.
 
Last edited:
GoFast said:
Just one correction… I worked for Steve Jobs… He was far from an arrogant asshole. In fact, he was by far the most inspiring leader I’ve ever worked with.

And trust me… There was no one at Lucid who was 1/1000000 as effective as Steve Jobs…
Click to expand...
I had only minimal experience with Jobs (especially compared to you), but I spilled food on him once as an intern, heh.

He was the reason I went into startups. He told me to work for Apple, but that if I didn’t, I should start a company.

He was extremely inspiring. Enough so that many years later I ended up writing a blog post about it.

I loved working at Apple. There are few companies that had that “unparalleled excellence” vibe with extremely high standards for user experience, and I’m not even sure if Apple still does; I’ve never been there under Cook.
 
It's going to be a long time, if ever, before we on this forum know what really happened with Bach.

No matter how you cut it, it's a shit show Lucid does not need right now.

The thing of most immediate concern to me is that as these senior key people depart -- Rawlinson, Bach, Bell -- no information is emerging about how they are being replaced . . . other than Emad Dlala's portfolio keeps expanding.

Unless Bach got caught with his hand in the cookie jar or did something legally actionable against someone, firing him before an automotive engineering talent of his caliber was on tap to replace him seems folly and a sign of an organization that has become so consumed by inward-looking strife that they are losing sight of the big picture. Not only does Lucid have a lot more to do to stabilize the Gravity launch, they have their next key product well into development.

I'll have Derek Jenkins in my prayers tonight.
 
borski said:
Calling someone who is clearly German, with a very thick German accent, a Nazi, is clearly meant to be more insulting than calling someone from Vietnam a Nazi.

Is it racist? I have no idea. I’m not German and it would be hard for me to know, but I wouldn’t call a German a Nazi anyway (or anyone really, for that matter).
Click to expand...

I went to graduate school in Germany. Germans were so sensitive about the Nazi era that certain references were banned by law. The move "Cabaret" was making an international splash while I was there. After seeing the movie several times in German, I finally went to a midnight showing of the movie in its original form. I was surprised by the Bavarian beer garden scene when a member of the Hitler Youth stood up and began singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" as the beer garden patrons rose to their feet and threw up Nazi salutes. It had been removed from the version of the film meant for German audiences because it was deemed so offensive to a post-war German.

IF -- and it's still an "if" at this point to us outsiders -- an HR person really did call a German, especially one in authority, a Nazi it is a deeply felt insult to a German. I have worked around and dealt with more than one cantankerous, aggressive, even emotionally-brutalizing executive. Even if Bach were anything like that, you don't deal with it by calling him a Nazi.
 
The CEO is also German. If someone called him a nazi I doubt it was a company wide dictate. And I would bet that person was either fired or disciplined in some way.
 
nashvillelucid said:
The CEO is also German. If someone called him a nazi I doubt it was a company wide dictate. And I would bet that person was either fired or disciplined in some way.
Click to expand...

According to the complaint she was moved to another position but remained with the company.
 
HR's typical prime directive is to protect the company, Calling an employee a Nazi (if true) is morally and ethically wrong; whether it rises to the level of unlawful discrimination depends on other facts (see "stray comments" doctrine). If plaintiff proves that their complaining about being a Nazi was a substantial motivating factor in the firing, then that's a key part of proving retaliation. But HR wouldn't typically have authority to fire/discipline a high-ranking employee, so I expect discovery will show people up the food chain involved in the process/decision.

TL;DR: There's two sides to every story.

(Obvious disclaimer, I have no personal knowledge about the facts or parties; just my opinions and not legal advice).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top