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Tesla Model 3 LR AWD, Cross County Road Trip
After completing a cross-country road trip in my two-year old Tesla Model 3, I fell in love with it all over again and knew I had to write a post about it.
In my opinion, Tesla hasn’t just revolutionized the electrical vehicle (EV) industry, it has reinvented the car, as I will show you in this (highly biased) post.
Whether you’re in the market for a Tesla, are an existing owner or are simply curious about EVs, I hope you’ll get some value from this post.
You’ll see why comparing a Tesla to most cars today is like comparing a smartphone to a flip phone — it’s really that big of a difference.
If you don’t know much about how EVs work, I highly recommend watching this popular 10-minute YouTube video titled How does an Electric Car work? — it’s a bit technical but overall worth a one-time watch to understand why EVs are the future. It’s no surprise the EV market is expected to reach over $800 billion by 2027!
In this post, we’ll take a tour of the following aspects of a Tesla Model 3:

1. App
2. Exterior
3. Interior
4. Driving
5. Charging
6. Safety
7. Maintenance
8. Community
9. Cost
10. Improvements

Here we go.

1. App

Before describing the car itself, I want to begin with one of the most convenient aspects of owning a Tesla: the Tesla mobile app. This serves as your primary car key and provides many remote control features.
The mobile app automatically unlocks and locks the Tesla 3 doors using bluetooth — this short-distance, keyless access is extremely convenient because it’s hands-free (e.g. phone in pocket) and eliminates having to carry a physical car key.
Tesla does provide key FOBs but in the two years of owning my car, I’ve only used them for valet parking or as a backup in my wallet, in case my phone dies.
Tesla Mobile App
The Tesla mobile app complements the interior touchscreen by giving you many controls outside the car.
The long list of remote control features include lock/unlock doors/trunks, turning on the climate, control charging, valet mode, honk/flash to locate the car, set speed limit…and more.
You can even use the Summon feature to slowly drive the car in reverse or forward — think remote control toy cars — this can come in handy for water puddles or tight garages.
Other neat features include the ability to send an address to your car from maps apps such as Apple and Google Maps (via the share option). You can even locate where your car is parked using the app.
These types of pragmatic, modern day tech features is what sets Tesla apart from all other car manufacturers.

2. Exterior

The Tesla 3 is a sleek looking four door sedan, which drives like an expensive sports car.
Tesla Model 3 - Exterior, Frunk and Trunk
The doors have unique flush handles that are aerodynamically designed to reduce drag. You’ll have to get used to giving one time instructions to first time users, such as “put the thumb on the fat part of the handle and open with the rest of your hand.“
Tesla 3 comes with two trunks, a conventional rear trunk and an innovative, front trunk (“frunk”).
I find the frunk extremely useful for small bags (e.g. groceries), since the incline keeps the bags from sliding around. I used to get strange looks when I opened the frunk but people seem to be getting used to it, thanks to a growing number of Teslas on the road.
The rear trunk also has lots of room with an additional compartment under the trunk’s floor. You can also fold the rear seats down for longer objects (e.g. skis); I was able to fit a hybrid bicycle in there once.

3. Interior

When people get inside a Tesla 3 for the first time, they are often taken aback by how bare the interior is.
https://preview.redd.it/k1zpvo0ms4y51.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=b62a611c636906e381a3503b728a84b3ba2554d8
Then…they slowly begin to get wowed by how many features are packed in the deceptively minimalistic interior.
The Tesla 3 can comfortably seat five people, with heating in all seats. It has more legroom than conventional, internal combustion engine (gasoline) cars, since there’s no transmission hump in EVs.
Tesla Model 3 Minimalist Interior
With the rear seats folded down, there’s enough space to fit a twin size airbed — I have read about people sleeping overnight in their Teslas, at campgrounds.
The Tesla 3 has your basics: seats, air vents, several cup holders, multiple storage compartments, USB and 12v chargers, door locks, and window controls (auto retract for all four windows).
At the center of the front panel is a single, gorgeous 15-inch, extremely responsive, touchscreen to operate everything else (including the glovebox) — essentially your control center.
Touchscreen
Getting used to having everything on a single screen takes only minutes to get comfortable with, since most of us use mobile devices these days, so it’s a familiar feel.
I’ve personally fallen in love with the single touchscreen concept, since it feels like using a tablet (e.g. iPad) and gives the car a more airy feel, without the clutter of knobs you find in most cars.
It’s baffling to me that other car manufacturers haven’t realized the simple fact that consumers love their smartphones, since most cars still have a fragmented instrumentation dashboard.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support helps but it still doesn’t provide an integrated, smartphone-like, user experience (Ux) — imagine if you had part knobs and part touchscreen to operate your smartphone!
Settings
The 15-inch touchscreen provides you access to many features, almost too many to cover in detail in this post, so I’ll list them instead:

• Speedometer
• Door lock/unlock
• Settings (glovebox, lights, locks, display, driving, Full Self-Driving (FSD)/Autopilot, navigation, safety, service, software, etc.)
• Climate control
• Wiper control
• Backup camera
• Navigation: Everything you can expect from a mapping app, with comprehensive supercharger network support built in. The satellite view is amazingly responsive!
• Battery level, settings and consumption
• USB connectivity/charging and 12V charging
• Objects nearby (cars, trucks, motorcycles, signs, people, traffic lights, lane markings)
• Dashcam – record video footage on a USB drive using Tesla’s external cameras (see video at the end of this post)
• Custom driver profiles
• Manual/automatic garage opener via HomeLink
• Sentry alarm system
• Tire pressure
• Incoming phone calls
• Seat belt warnings

Netflix - Full Screen
Then…there’s a whole section on the screen dedicated to apps, including:

• Web browser
• Calendar (integrated with your phone with auto navigation)
• Entertainment (with full-screen support) including Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Caraoke (with a “C”), Atari arcade games, drawing tool, fullscreen campfire, and more.

With so many entertainment options, you will have to find reasons to get bored on supercharger stops.
The Tesla air vents provide ample control via the touchscreen, with some very cool graphics to change the airflow direction, by “pinching” the air animation.
Climate Control
The steering wheel comes with scrolling wheels that serve multiple purposes, for example controlling the music volume/track, cruise speed, side mirrors, steering column tilt, and soft/hard rebooting the car. It also has a built in sensor to detect whether your hands are on the steering wheel during FSD (see below).
Steering Wheel Controls
Of course, you get all of the above….under a wondrous, panoramic, tinted glass roof that inspires you to daydream in the daytime and stargaze at night.
Tesla Model 3 Glass Roof

4. Driving

The Model 3 is extremely quiet, fun to drive, nimble on turns, and accelerates fast enough to make people’s heartthrob and say “wow!”
Imagine having the acceleration of an expensive sports car with the feel of a golf cart — that’s what driving a Tesla feels like.
As of November 2020, here were the 0 to 60 MPH speeds for the three Tesla 3 models (with the ability to go faster via a paid upgrade):

• Standard Range Plus: 5.3s 0-60 MPH, Top speed 140 MPH
• Long Range AWD (my car): 4.2s 0-60 MPH, Top speed 145 MPH
• Performance: 3.1s 0-60 MPH, Top speed 162 MPH

To begin driving a Tesla 3, you turn it on by putting your foot on the brake pedal and turn it off by putting the car in park — there’s no “cranking” the car on or shifting the gear in park and pressing a STOP button — it’s essentially like turning your smartphone on and off.
Sometimes at a complete stop in my garage or parking spot, I’ll forget to put my car in park before opening the door — but no worries, the car automatically puts it in park for you.
Tesla also automatically engages the emergency brakes, when you park your car. It’s these little conveniences that Tesla has thought of, which make the Tesla so much fun to own.
While parking/reversing (e.g. in a tight garage), it helps to see a readout of exact measurement, and audio/visual warnings, for objects close by.
Tesla Nearby Objects Warning and Backup Camera
When you first use the accelerator pedal on a Tesla 3, it feels like you’re pressing against pure air since it’s so quiet but the highly responsive, induction motor makes it a lot of fun to go from 0 to 60 MPH (4.4s in my car)!
I absolutely love how quiet my Tesla drives. EVs in general are very quiet under 30 MPH, in fact so quiet that many countries will soon require sound emitters in EVs, for pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
Though the Tesla 3 is a sedan, the large battery in the center gives it the weight and low center of gravity, making it more nimble than many sports cars I’ve owned before.
Tesla Model 3 Battery
Single Pedal Driving
One of the coolest features of the Tesla is “single pedal driving” using a technology called Regenerative Braking (Regen for short; see Wikipedia for details).
When you let go of the accelerator, Regen enables your car to slow down rapidly while also charging your battery. My brake usage has reduced by 80% compared to conventional cars. For example, you can have the car slow down quickly for turns or gradually come to a complete halt at stop signs, without having to use the brakes.
Tesla provides an automatic brake HOLD function that enables your car to stay at a complete stop, without you having to keep your foot on the brake (e.g. at a red light). This HOLD feature also automatically engages, when the car slows down to 0 MPH.
The HOLD function complements regenerative braking, since you can let go of the accelerator while approaching a red light and have the car come to a complete stop, without having to use the brake pedal (i.e. single pedal driving).
FSD/Autopilot
If you’ve seen the 2004 movie “I, Robot” starring Will Smith (as Detective Del Spooner), there’s a scene after he crashes a car, when his lieutenant yells this at him: “What is the matter with you? Traffic Ops tells me you’re driving your car manually.”
We are as close to fully autonomous cars, as we've ever been in our lifetime.
There are five levels to autonomous vehicles:

1. Driver Assistance
2. Partial Automation
3. Conditional Automation
4. High Automation
5. Full Automation

Tesla currently has Level 2 in its cars but has already demonstrated Level 3, in this popular two-minute YouTube video by Tesla.
However, even just Level 2 FSD is one of the coolest features in the car, since it significantly reduces the driver fatigue.
FSD - Highway (Utah), Night (Tahoe) and Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco)
FSD is a suite of features including Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, and others (e.g. Autopark, Traffic and Stop Sign Control).
FSD literally saves you so much driving that, at times, you feel like you’re babysitting the car, by just leaving one hand on the steering wheel with your feet lounging.
I tell friends driving with FSD feels like playing a video game in a comfortable lounge chair, where you have to pay enough attention to not die but you’re enjoying every minute of it.
I use FSD anywhere and everywhere there are visible lane markings, from 25 MPH street to 80 MPH highway, speed zones.
This technology keeps getting better with every software update — I’ve literally seen how it handles so much better over the past year, around things like construction areas.
You can engage just Autopilot (Traffic-Aware Cruise Control) by pressing the cruise control lever fully down once. To engage the full FSD, you press the lever down twice — this activates Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot, and Auto Lane Change.
Let’s take a closer look at how FSD works.
According to Tesla’s website, “Eight surround cameras provide 360 degrees of visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength that is able to see through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.”
FSD - Cameras, Auto Lane Change
The Auto Lane Change feature is amazing and I absolutely love using it each time! You change lanes by simply giving the turn signal and let your car do the rest; i.e. the car will automatically change lanes, when it’s safe.
While doing my cross-country road trip, I came up with two supplemental terms to Auto Lane Change:

• Delayed Auto Lane Change: When you know you can’t change lanes due to traffic, you can go ahead and “queue” your lane change request and the Model 3 will change lanes, when safe.
• Accelerated Auto Lane Change: When you don’t want to wait, so you speed up to create a safe distance between the cars, which triggers Tesla to change lanes.

FSD requires you to have your hands on the steering wheel every 20-30 seconds — I rest my left or right hand on the bottom part of the steering wheel to avoid getting the warnings but I’ve heard of people using their legs, water bottles and other crazy ways to fool Tesla’s FSD into thinking your hands are on the wheel.
I’m a bit embarrassed to be boastful about this but I’ve come to rely so much on FSD that depending on surrounding traffic, I’ll work on my mobile device momentarily (e.g. editing documents, instant messages, quick web browsing). I feel irresponsible and guilty but part of me thinks, this is how we’ll gradually move to FSD…a couple of seconds at a time.
While I absolutely LOVE FSD and use it for 80% of my driving (highway, local), I can’t see a door-to-door FSD till 2022 or later, due to factors including Tesla’s technology, roads (e.g. lane marketings) and legislation.
Tesla’s FSD technology is already phenomenal and getting better rapidly but it has quirks that still gives me (and my family) a scare every now and then — enough for me to pay attention to the road.
You can learn more about Tesla’s FSD technology here: tesla.com/autopilotAI.

5. Charging

One of the things people worry about with fully electric cars is running out of charge — after two years of ownership and a cross-country road trip, I can assure you, this has rarely been a problem for me.
Many of my friends can’t believe I still charge on 120v, after 2 years of owning my car! I realize it’s extremely inefficient but we were considering moving and I just haven’t felt the need for it since I work from home.
120v (Level 1) charges at a pathetic 5 MPH but you can get 50+ miles overnight. 240v (Level 2) chargers charge between 10-50 MPH and direct current faster chargers (Level 3) such as the Tesla’s superchargers, can charge from a couple hundred to 1,000 MPH (using the new V3 Supercharging).
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Tesla Supercharger Network and Three Levels of Charging (source: pluglesspower.com)
According to Tesla’s website, as of November 2020, there were 2,000+ Supercharger stations (20,000+ Supercharger outlets) worldwide, with many more coming soon.
Of course, you can always use 3rd party chargers or use the charging cable and adapter that comes with the Tesla. According to Statistica, there were over 24,000 charging stations (with over 78,000 outlets) in the US, as of September 2020.

6. Safety

Tesla cars have the honor of receiving some of the highest safety ratings possible, thanks to their drivepassenger protection (e.g. airbags, rollover, alerts).
For example, here’s a graphic from Tesla’s website, showing all 5-star ratings for a Tesla Model 3, from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Tesla’s NHTSA Rating and Model 3 Airbags
From close by objects in your garage to objects on the highway, Tesla 3 has you covered with alerts.
While driving, Tesla constantly detects surrounding objects and displays them on the touchscreen (e.g. car, trucks, motorcycles, people, stop lights, lane markings). Any endangering aspects will show up in red (e.g. lane changes, passing cars).

7. Maintenance

EVs in general require much less maintenance than internal combustion automobiles. Tesla maintenance comes mostly in the form of software.
Tesla updates the software in the car automatically, every month or so. If you’re new to a Tesla, it takes a little getting used to receiving software updates, similar to your smartphone or computer. Till this day, I find it fascinating that Tesla cars are just as much software (or more), as they are hardware.
Tesla Software Updates and Mobile Service
Tesla is also known to roll out some significant improvements via software updates — something you would expect to take your car in for (e.g. an acceleration boost from 4.4 to 3.9 seconds).
Much of any hardware maintenance can be done via Tesla’s mobile service, where someone comes out to wherever you want. For example, I just had my two-year service done for $192.05, in my driveway (see Tesla’s Car Maintenance page for details) with the following note in the electronic invoice:

“Checked Brake Fluid Brake Fluid at 80% life. Replaced Pair of Wiper Blades. Replaced Cabin Filter. Maintenance Performed Tire Rotation on Passengers side only, Drivers side tires are good where they are right now. Recommend new pass front tire soon.”

All other major services can be handled at one of Tesla’s Service Centers, by scheduling via the mobile app.
In my area, they tend to be booked 2 to 4 weeks out but the service otherwise is courteous and efficient, handled using a combination of SMS texts, in person and email communications and generous UbeLyft credits to get around.
One thing I’ve found to be a pain is when you have a flat tire — the 18″ tires used on a Tesla 3 can be expensive and hard to find, since they have acoustic foam inside them. This was the #1 concern on my mind, while traveling on my cross-country road trip.

8. Community

Unsurprisingly, Tesla has a huge fan base including online social networks, offline clubs, third party apps, and much more. The following are some popular clubs and third-party apps that I’ve come across and/or use regularly.
Clubs

1. Reddit: Teslamotors, TeslaModel3, TeslaLounge, TeslaCam
2. Forums: Official Tesla Forums, Tesla Owners Online, Tesla Motors Club, SpeakEV Tesla Model 3
3. News: Teslarati.com, Electrek, CleanTechnica

Apps
Before my cross-country road trip, I decided to hook up my Tesla account to three northworthy third-party apps that many online EV/Tesla enthusiasts seemed to be recommending:

1. Teslafi: Logs data for all your drives with amazing detail (e.g. graphs, battery consumption, maps, charging stops).
2. A Better Route Planner (ABRP): Popular app used for more precise planning based on your EVs model.
3. Stats: Provides several bells & whistles for Apple mobile devices (iPhone/iPad/Watch); e.g. schedule climate/charging, open doors/trunks via Siri, monitor battery health, and more.

It was a bit nerve-wracking to give my username and password to these apps but once you have an authentication key from one of them, you can use that for the others.
Advanced users with coding skills can use the unofficial Tesla JSON API to obtain an authentication key or use Teslamate, a self-hosted data logger with dashboards for driving, charging, efficiency, drain, stats, and much more.
Once you’re setup with these apps, the amazing data they provide makes the whole process worthwhile, as you can see from some of the screenshots below.
Third Party Tesla Apps
Aftermarket
There are plenty of aftermarket products for Tesla available on various websites. I’ve only purchased two aftermarket products: a Qi wireless phone charger and a spare tire kit by Modern Spare.

9. Cost

As of November 2020, here were the list prices for the three versions of a Tesla Model 3, in the US:

1. Standard Range Plus: $37,990 (range 263 miles)
2. Long Range: $46,990 (353 miles)
3. Performance: $54,990 (315 miles)

FSD costs an extra $10,000.
If you’re considering buying any kind of EV, you can calculate the cost per mile by dividing its list price by its maximum range. For example, a Tesla Model 3 Long Range at a list price of $46,990 and range of 353 miles costs $133/mile, as shown in the below infographic from visualcapitalist.com.
One thing to keep in mind when comparing prices is that Tesla is years ahead of its competition with its innovative technology and supercharger network — something that’s hard to put an exact value on.
Cost of EV Ownership (source: visualcapitalist.com)

10. Improvements

I’ve owned some nice cars in my lifetime but never have I owned a car that I loved driving so much every single day, as much as I have my Tesla Model 3.
Tesla is as close to perfect as a car gets but it can use some tweaks, so here’s a list of flaws and/or wishes:

1. Alerts: The on screen blind spot warnings aren’t good enough; most people have come to expect something built into the side mirrors.
2. Wipers: Tesla’s automatic wipers were horrible but since Tesla launched its ‘Deep Rain’ neural network, they have improved over the past year but still remain slightly flaky (e.g. turning on a couple of times when it’s not raining).
3. Voice: Support for voice commands is weak and nowhere as robust as Apple Siri or Google Assistant, which can be frustrating since I often have to turn to my iPhone (e.g. calling a local restaurant).
4. Lights: It would be nice to have shortcuts to turn the head/park lights on/off, instead of going into Settings.
5. Map: Tesla’s map is absolutely amazing but it’s missing waypoints, so you end up having to use something like the ABRP app (discussed above). Also, It would be great to see icons for what’s nearby (e.g. restaurants, service stations), similar to supercharger icons.
6. FSD: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is overcautious, e.g. it’ll keep 3 to 6 cars worth of distance versus the 1 car, I have it set at. Also, given the choice between tracking using the left and right lanes, FSD chooses to hug the right side, which is extremely annoying on highways (e.g. merging from on-ramps). Approaching stopped traffic at a red light on a major road can be nerve-wracking since the car waits too long to begin gracefully slowing down, thereby requiring harshefaster braking later. The merging on and off ramp with construction barrels, needs improvement.
7. Battery: The remaining battery life isn’t 100% accurate to rely on entirely, since it doesn’t take into account leakage, winter weather, winds, etc. It can be nerve-wracking when you think you have 20%, just to find it’s dropped to 15% (and dropping).
8. Apps: While it was great to be able to hook up third party apps, it would be nice if Tesla officially sanctioned them via some sort of an online marketplace and support for API keys. It would also be cool to add more 3rd party apps support; e.g. Waze, Amazon Prime, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto). Lastly, it takes too long to load the existing apps (e.g. Netflix, YouTube).
9. Music: The music icon should be indicative of the map feature or the music and maps screens need to be separated. The music portion of the screen allows resizing but blocks the directions, in larger view. The music screen should provide more granular controls for track and display the time for songs (e.g. time left/played). There’s no way to pause/mute the radio on the screen (you have to use the wheel on the steering wheel). Lastly, the Spotify interface is flaky (e.g. long load times, checkmark is confusing).
10. Tires: I realize many cars nowadays do not include spare tires but it would be nice if Tesla provided third party options on your website, similar to how Apple/Google have marketplaces with reviews, for third party products (e.g. Spare Tire Kit by Modern Spare). Of course, Tesla does offer roadside assistance service.
11. Superchargers: It would be nice to have a tall, physical Tesla sign at supercharging stops, since it can be hard to find charging stations in places like shopping centers. A nice trick is to zoom in the destination using the satellite view of the map.
12. Service: It can take from a couple to a few weeks to get a service appointment. I suspect some of the backlog is due to the issues earlier models had. I had one major and a couple of minor issues early on (steering wheel replacement, door hinges), which were covered under factory warranty and addressed quickly by Tesla.
13. Miscellaneous: Having to reboot occasionally and/or rare black screen. Inside door opening controls can be confusing for first timers, since they look like window controls. Betteadjustable seat headrest that don't stick out so much. Rear windshield wipers to avoid water build up.

Conclusion

As detailed as this review is, I haven’t covered many features, for example Navigate on Autopilot, Autopark, Lane Assist, chime on green traffic light, automatic high beam, driver profiles, and so much more.
Additionally, Tesla continuously delivers features, so it’s not feasible to list everything here. For example, the beta version of the completely rewritten FSD began rolling out in October 2020. For more information on software updates and other great resources, visit tesla.com/support.
In my opinion, Tesla is years ahead of anything comparable on the market currently, thanks to their technology, customer data, supercharger network, battery life, customer service, and more.
Tesla has reinvented the car and thought of so many conveniences (e.g. single pedal driving, auto unlock/lock doors, low maintenance), that it makes it a pleasure to drive and own this car, every single day. Even long distance driving feels more like an enjoyable journey rather than a chore.
If you’re considering buying a Tesla 3, do it. Imagine driving the car of the future, today!
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Thanks for reading! :)
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If you still want more...please see the original post for video reviews, more photos and...a work anywhere journey on this road trip.

A definitive Tesla Model 3 review after two years of ownership and a cross-country road trip
Submitted November 14, 2020 at 01:42AM by startupsidekik https://ift.tt/36zAlq7
via /teslamotors ---- Content:
​Tesla Model 3 LR AWD and Cross Country Road Trip (30 superchargers, 2800+ miles, 12 states)After completing a cross-country road trip in my two-year old Tesla Model 3, I fell in love with it all over again and knew I had to write a post about it.In my opinion, Tesla hasn’t just revolutionized the electrical vehicle (EV) industry, it has reinvented the car, as I will show you in this (highly biased) post. Whether you’re in the market for a Tesla, are an existing owner or are simply curious about EVs, I hope you’ll get some value from this post.You’ll see why comparing a Tesla to most cars today is like comparing a smartphone to a flip phone — it’s really that big of a difference.If you don’t know much about how EVs work, I highly recommend watching this popular 10-minute YouTube video titled How does an Electric Car work? — it’s a bit technical but overall worth a one-time watch to understand why EVs are the future. It’s no surprise the EV market is expected to reach over $800 billion by 2027! In this post, we’ll take a tour of the following aspects of a Tesla Model 3:AppExteriorInteriorDrivingChargingSafetyMaintenanceCommunityCostImprovementsHere we go.1. AppBefore describing the car itself, I want to begin with one of the most convenient aspects of owning a Tesla: the Tesla mobile app. This serves as your primary car key and provides many remote control features.The mobile app automatically unlocks and locks the Tesla 3 doors using bluetooth — this short-distance, keyless access is extremely convenient because it’s hands-free (e.g. phone in pocket) and eliminates having to carry a physical car key.Tesla does provide key FOBs but in the two years of owning my car, I’ve only used them for valet parking or as a backup in my wallet, in case my phone dies. Tesla Mobile AppThe Tesla mobile app complements the interior touchscreen by giving you many controls outside the car. The long list of remote control features include lock/unlock doors/trunks, turning on the climate, control charging, valet mode, honk/flash to locate the car, set speed limit…and more.You can even use the Summon feature to slowly drive the car in reverse or forward — think remote control toy cars — this can come in handy for water puddles or tight garages.Other neat features include the ability to send an address to your car from maps apps such as Apple and Google Maps (via the share option). You can even locate where your car is parked using the app.These types of pragmatic, modern day tech features is what sets Tesla apart from all other car manufacturers.2. Exterior The Tesla 3 is a sleek looking four door sedan, which drives like an expensive sports car.Tesla Model 3 - Exterior, \"Frunk\" and TrunkThe doors have unique flush handles that are aerodynamically designed to reduce drag. You’ll have to get used to giving one time instructions to first time users, such as “push the fat then pull the skinny.“Tesla 3 comes with two trunks, a conventional rear trunk and an innovative, front trunk (“frunk”). I find the frunk extremely useful for small bags (e.g. groceries), since the incline keeps the bags from sliding around. I used to get strange looks when I opened the frunk but people seem to be getting used to it, thanks to a growing number of Teslas on the road.The rear trunk also has lots of room with an additional compartment under the trunk’s floor. You can also fold the rear seats down for longer objects (e.g. skis); I was able to fit a hybrid bicycle in there once.3. InteriorWhen people get inside a Tesla 3 for the first time, they are often taken aback by how bare the interior is. https://preview.redd.it/p90lcimdc5z51.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=3a3260a6f764ff02a44a7bab54f538e3bb50a268Then…they slowly begin to get wowed by how many features are packed in the deceptively minimalistic interior.The Tesla 3 can comfortably seat five people, with heating in all seats. It has more legroom than conventional, internal combustion engine (gasoline) cars, since there’s no transmission hump in EVs.Tesla Model 3 Minimalist InteriorWith the rear seats folded down, there’s enough space to fit a twin size airbed — I have read about people sleeping overnight in their Teslas, at campgrounds.The Tesla 3 has your basics: seats, air vents, several cup holders, multiple storage compartments, USB and 12v chargers, door locks, and window controls (auto retract for all four windows). At the center of the front panel is a single, gorgeous 15-inch, extremely responsive, touchscreen to operate everything else (including the glovebox) — essentially your control center.TouchscreenGetting used to having everything on a single screen takes only minutes to get comfortable with, since most of us use mobile devices these days, so it’s a familiar feel.I’ve personally fallen in love with the single touchscreen concept, since it feels like using a tablet (e.g. iPad) and gives the car a more airy feel, without the clutter of knobs you find in most cars.It’s baffling to me that other car manufacturers haven’t realized the simple fact that consumers love their smartphones, since most cars still have a fragmented instrumentation dashboard.Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support helps but it still doesn’t provide an integrated, smartphone-like, user experience (Ux) — imagine if you had part knobs and part touchscreen to operate your smartphone! SettingsThe 15-inch touchscreen provides you access to many features, almost too many to cover in detail in this post, so I’ll list them instead:SpeedometerDoor lock/unlockSettings (glovebox, lights, locks, display, driving, Full Self-Driving (FSD)/Autopilot, navigation, safety, service, software, etc.)Climate controlWiper controlBackup cameraNavigation: Everything you can expect from a mapping app, with comprehensive supercharger network support built in. The satellite view is amazingly responsive!Battery level, settings and consumptionUSB connectivity/charging and 12V chargingObjects nearby (cars, trucks, motorcycles, signs, people, traffic lights, lane markings)Dashcam – record video footage on a USB drive using Tesla’s external cameras (see video at the end of this post)Custom driver profilesManual/automatic garage opener via HomeLinkSentry alarm systemTire pressureIncoming phone callsSeat belt warningsNetflix - Full ScreenThen…there’s a whole section on the screen dedicated to apps, including: Web browserCalendar (integrated with your phone with auto navigation) Entertainment (with full-screen support) including Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Caraoke with a “C”, Atari arcade games, drawing tool, fullscreen campfire, and more.With so many entertainment options, you will have to find reasons to get bored on supercharger stops. The Tesla air vents provide ample control via the touchscreen, with some very cool graphics to change the airflow direction, by “pinching” the air animation.Climate ControlThe steering wheel comes with scrolling wheels that serve multiple purposes, for example controlling the music volume/track, cruise speed, side mirrors, steering column tilt, and soft/hard rebooting the car. It also has a built in sensor to detect whether your hands are on the steering wheel during FSD (see below).Steering Wheel ControlsOf course, you get all of the above….under a wondrous, panoramic, tinted glass roof that inspires you to daydream in the daytime and stargaze at night.Tesla Model 3 - Glass Roof4. DrivingThe Model 3 is extremely quiet, fun to drive, nimble on turns, and accelerates fast enough to make people’s heartthrob and say “wow!” Imagine having the acceleration of an expensive sports car with the feel of a golf cart — that’s what driving a Tesla feels like.As of September 2020, here were the 0 to 60 MPH speeds for the three Tesla 3 models (with the ability to go faster via a paid upgrade):Standard Plus: 5.3s 0-60 MPH, Top speed 140 MPHLong Range AWD (my car): 4.4s 0-60 MPH, Top speed 145 MPHPerformance: 3.2s 0-60 MPH, Top speed 162 MPHTo begin driving a Tesla 3, you turn it on by putting your foot on the brake pedal and turn it off by putting the car in park — there’s no “cranking” the car on or shifting the gear in park and pressing a STOP button — it’s essentially like turning your smartphone on and off. Sometimes at a complete stop in my garage or parking spot, I’ll forget to put my car in park before opening the door — but no worries, the car automatically puts it in park for you.Tesla also automatically engages the emergency brakes, when you park your car. It’s these little conveniences that Tesla has thought of, which make the Tesla so much fun to own.While parking/reversing (e.g. in a tight garage), it helps to see a readout of exact measurement, and audio/visual warnings, for objects close by.Tesla Nearby Objects Warning and Backup CameraWhen you first use the accelerator pedal on a Tesla 3, it feels like you’re pressing against pure air since it’s so quiet but the highly responsive, induction motor makes it a lot of fun to go from 0 to 60 MPH (4.4s in my car)!I absolutely love how quiet my Tesla drives. EVs in general are very quiet under 30 MPH, in fact so quiet that many countries will soon require sound emitters in EVs, for pedestrian and bicyclist safety. Though the Tesla 3 is a sedan, the large battery in the center gives it the weight and low center of gravity, making it more nimble than many sports cars I’ve owned before.Tesla Model 3 BatterySingle Pedal DrivingOne of the coolest features of the Tesla is “single pedal driving” using a technology called Regenerative Braking (Regen for short; see Wikipedia for details). When you let go of the accelerator, Regen enables your car to slow down rapidly while also charging your battery. My brake usage has reduced by 80% compared to conventional cars. For example, you can have the car slow down quickly for turns or gradually come to a complete halt at stop signs, without having to use the brakes. Tesla provides an automatic brake HOLD function that enables your car to stay at a complete stop, without you having to keep your foot on the brake (e.g. at a red light). This HOLD feature also automatically engages, when the car slows down to 0 MPH.The HOLD function complements regenerative braking, since you can let go of the accelerator while approaching a red light and have the car come to a complete stop, without having to use the brake pedal (i.e. single pedal driving).FSD/AutopilotIf you’ve seen the 2004 movie “I, Robot” starring Will Smith (as Detective Del Spooner), there’s a scene after he crashes a car, when his lieutenant yells this at him: “What is the matter with you? Traffic Ops tells me you’re driving your car manually.”There are five levels to autonomous vehicles:Driver AssistancePartial AutomationConditional AutomationHigh AutomationFull AutomationTesla currently has Level 2 in its cars but has already demonstrated Level 3, in this popular two-minute YouTube video by Tesla.However, even just Level 2 FSD is one of the coolest features in the car, since it significantly reduces the driver fatigue. FSD - Highway (Utah), Night (Tahoe) and Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco)FSD is a suite of features including Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, and others (e.g. Autopark, Traffic and Stop Sign Control).FSD literally saves you so much driving that, at times, you feel like you’re babysitting the car, by just leaving one hand on the steering wheel with your feet lounging.I tell friends driving with FSD feels like playing a video game in a comfortable lounge chair, where you have to pay enough attention to not die but you’re enjoying every minute of it. I use FSD anywhere and everywhere there are visible lane markings, from 25 MPH street to 80 MPH highway, speed zones.This technology keeps getting better with every software update — I’ve literally seen how it handles so much better over the past year, around things like construction areas.You can engage just Autopilot (Traffic-Aware Cruise Control) by pressing the cruise control lever fully down once. To engage the full FSD, you press the lever down twice — this activates Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot, and Auto Lane Change.Let’s take a closer look at how FSD works.According to Tesla’s website, “Eight surround cameras provide 360 degrees of visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength that is able to see through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.”​FSD - Cameras, Auto Lane ChangeThe Auto Lane Change feature is amazing and I absolutely love using it each time! You change lanes by simply giving the turn signal and let your car do the rest; i.e. the car will automatically change lanes, when it’s safe. While doing my cross-country road trip, I came up with two supplemental terms to Auto Lane Change:Delayed Auto Lane Change: When you know you can’t change lanes due to traffic, you can go ahead and “queue” your lane change request and the Model 3 will change lanes, when safe. Accelerated Auto Lane Change: When you don’t want to wait, so you speed up to create a safe distance between the cars, which triggers Tesla to change lanes.FSD requires you to have your hands on the steering wheel every 20-30 seconds — I rest my left or right hand on the bottom part of the steering wheel to avoid getting the warnings but I’ve heard of people using their legs, water bottles and other crazy ways to fool Tesla’s FSD into thinking your hands are on the wheel.I’m a bit embarrassed to be boastful about this but I’ve come to rely so much on FSD that depending on surrounding traffic, I’ll work on my mobile device momentarily (e.g. editing documents, instant messages, quick web browsing). I feel irresponsible and guilty but part of me thinks, this is how we’ll gradually move to FSD…a couple of seconds at a time.While I absolutely LOVE FSD and use it for 80% of my driving (highway, local), I can’t see a door-to-door FSD till 2022 or later, due to factors including Tesla’s technology, roads (e.g. lane marketings) and legislation.Tesla’s FSD technology is already phenomenal and getting better rapidly but it has quirks that still gives me (and my family) a scare every now and then — enough for me to pay attention to the road.You can learn more about Tesla’s FSD technology here: tesla.com/autopilotAI.5. ChargingOne of the things people worry about with fully electric cars is running out of charge — after two years of ownership and a cross-country road trip, I can assure you, this has rarely been a problem for me.Many of my friends can’t believe I still charge on 110v, after 2 years of owning my car! I realize it’s extremely inefficient but we were considering moving and I just haven’t felt the need for it since I work from home. 110v (Level 1) charges at a pathetic 5 MPH but you can get 50+ miles overnight. 240v (Level 2) chargers charge between 10-50 MPH and direct current faster chargers (Level 3) such as the Tesla’s superchargers, can charge from a couple hundred to 1,000 MPH (using the new V3 Supercharging).Tesla Supercharger Network and Three Levels of Charging (source: pluglesspower.com)According to Tesla’s website, as of November 2020, there were 2,000+ Supercharger stations (20,000+ Supercharger outlets) worldwide, with many more coming soon.Of course, you can always use 3rd party chargers or use the charging cable and adapter that comes with the Tesla. According to Statistica, there were over 24,000 charging stations (with over 78,000 outlets) in the US, as of September 2020.6. SafetyTesla cars have the honor of receiving some of the highest safety ratings possible, thanks to their drivepassenger protection (e.g. airbags, rollover, alerts).For example, here’s a graphic from Tesla’s website, showing all 5-star ratings for a Tesla Model 3, from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).Tesla NHTSA Rating and Model 3 AirbagsFrom close by objects in your garage to objects on the highway, Tesla 3 has you covered with alerts. While driving, Tesla constantly detects surrounding objects and displays them on the touchscreen (e.g. car, trucks, motorcycles, people, stop lights, lane markings). Any endangering aspects will show up in red (e.g. lane changes, passing cars).7. MaintenanceEVs in general require much less maintenance than internal combustion automobiles. Tesla maintenance comes mostly in the form of software.Tesla updates the software in the car automatically, every month or so. If you’re new to a Tesla, it takes a little getting used to receiving software updates, similar to your smartphone or computer. Till this day, I find it fascinating that Tesla cars are just as much software (or more), as they are hardware.Tesla Software Updates and Mobile ServiceTesla is also known to roll out some significant improvements via software updates — something you would expect to take your car in for (e.g. an acceleration boost from 4.4 to 3.9 seconds).Much of any hardware maintenance can be done via Tesla’s mobile service, where someone comes out to wherever you want. For example, I just had my two-year service done for $192.05, in my driveway (see Tesla’s Car Maintenance page for details) with the following note in the electronic invoice:“Checked Brake Fluid Brake Fluid at 80% life. Replaced Pair of Wiper Blades. Replaced Cabin Filter. Maintenance Performed Tire Rotation on Passengers side only, Drivers side tires are good where they are right now. Recommend new pass front tire soon.”All other major services can be handled at one of Tesla’s Service Centers, by scheduling via the mobile app. In my area, they tend to be booked 2 to 4 weeks out but the service otherwise is courteous and efficient, handled using a combination of SMS texts, in person and email communications and generous UbeLyft credits to get around.One thing I’ve found to be a pain is when you have a flat tire — the 18″ tires used on a Tesla 3 can be expensive and hard to find, since they have acoustic foam inside them. This was the #1 concern on my mind, while traveling on my cross-country road trip.8. CommunityUnsurprisingly, Tesla has a huge fan base including online social networks, offline clubs, third party apps, and much more. The following are some popular clubs and third-party apps that I’ve come across and/or use regularly.ClubsReddit: Teslamotors, TeslaModel3, TeslaLounge, TeslaCamForums: Official Tesla Forums, Tesla Owners Online, Tesla Motors Club, SpeakEV Tesla Model 3News: Teslarati.com, ElectretAppsBefore my cross-country road trip, I decided to hook up my Tesla account to three northworthy third-party apps that many online EV/Tesla enthusiasts seemed to be recommending:Teslafi: Logs data for all your drives with amazing detail (e.g. graphs, battery consumption, maps, charging stops).A Better Route Planner (ABRP): Popular app used for more precise planning based on your EVs model.Stats: Provides several bells & whistles for Apple mobile devices (iPhone/iPad/Watch); e.g. schedule climate/charging, open doors/trunks via Siri, monitor battery health, and more.It was a bit nerve-wracking to give my username and password to these apps (except Teslamate) but once you have an authentication key from one of them, you can use that for the others.Advanced users with coding skills can use the unofficial Tesla JSON API to obtain an authentication key or use Teslamate, a self-hosted data logger with dashboards for driving, charging, efficiency, drain, stats, and much more.Once you’re setup with these apps, the amazing data they provide makes the whole process worthwhile, as you can see from some of the screenshots below.Third Party Tesla AppsAftermarketThere are plenty of aftermarket products for Tesla available on various websites. I’ve only purchased two aftermarket products: a Qi wireless phone charger and a spare tire kit by Modern Spare.9. CostAs of October 2020, here were the list prices for the three versions of a Tesla Model 3, in the US:Standard Range Plus: $37,990 (range 263 miles)Long Range: $46,990 (353 miles)Performance: $54,990 (315 miles)FSD costs an extra $10,000.If you’re considering buying any kind of EV, you can calculate the cost per mile by dividing its list price by its maximum range. For example, a Tesla Model 3 Long Range at a list price of $46,990 and range of 322 miles costs $145.93/mile, as shown in the below infographic from visualcapitalist.com.One thing to keep in mind when comparing prices is that Tesla is years ahead of its competition with its innovative technology and supercharger network — something that’s hard to put an exact value on.Cost of EV Ownership (source: visualcapitalist.com)10. ImprovementsI’ve owned some nice cars in my lifetime but never have I owned a car that I loved driving so much every single day, as much as I have my Tesla Model 3.Tesla is as close to perfect as a car gets but it can use some tweaks, so here’s a list of flaws and/or wishes:Alerts: The on screen blind spot warnings aren’t good enough; most people have come to expect something built into the side mirrors. Wipers: Tesla’s automatic wipers were horrible but since Tesla launched its ‘Deep Rain’ neural network, they have improved over the past year but still remain slightly flaky (e.g. turning on a couple of times when it’s not raining).Voice: Support for voice commands is weak and nowhere as robust as Apple Siri or Google Assistant, which can be frustrating since I often have to turn to my iPhone (e.g. calling a local restaurant).Lights: It would be nice to have shortcuts to turn the head/park lights on/off, instead of going into Settings.Map: Tesla’s map is absolutely amazing but it’s missing waypoints, so you end up having to use something like the ABRP app (discussed above). Also, It would be great to see icons for what’s nearby (e.g. restaurants, service stations), similar to supercharger icons. FSD: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is overcautious, e.g. it’ll keep 3 to 6 cars worth of distance versus the 1 car, I have it set at. Also, given the choice between tracking using the left and right lanes, FSD chooses to hug the right side, which is extremely annoying on highways (e.g. merging from on-ramps). Approaching stopped traffic at a red light on a major road can be nerve-wracking since the car waits too long to begin gracefully slowing down, thereby requiring harshefaster braking later. The merging on and off ramp with construction barrels, needs improvement.Battery: The remaining battery life isn’t 100% accurate to rely on entirely, since it doesn’t take into account leakage, winter weather, winds, etc. It can be nerve-wracking when you think you have 20%, just to find it’s dropped to 15% (and dropping).Apps: While it was great to be able to hook up third party apps, it would be nice if Tesla officially sanctioned them via some sort of an online marketplace and support for API keys. It would also be cool to add more 3rd party apps support; e.g. Waze, Amazon Prime, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto). Lastly, it takes too long to load the existing apps (e.g. Netflix, YouTube).Music: The music icon should be indicative of the map feature or the music and maps screens need to be separated. The music portion of the screen allows resizing but blocks the directions, in larger view. The music screen should provide more granular controls for track and display the time for songs (e.g. time left/played). There’s no way to pause/mute the radio on the screen (you have to use the wheel on the steering wheel). Lastly, the Spotify interface is flaky (e.g. long load times, checkmark is confusing).Tires: I realize many cars nowadays do not include spare tires but it would be nice if Tesla provided third party options on your website, similar to how Apple/Google have marketplaces with reviews, for third party products (e.g. Spare Tire Kit by Modern Spare). Of course, Tesla does offer roadside assistance service.Superchargers: It would be nice to have a tall, physical Tesla sign at supercharging stops, since it can be hard to find charging stations in places like shopping centers. A nice trick is to zoom in the destination using the satellite view of the map.Miscellaneous: Having to reboot occasionally and/or rare black screen. Inside door opening controls can be confusing for first timers, since they look like window controls. Betteadjustable seat headrest that don't stick out so much. Rear windshield wipers to avoid water build up.ConclusionAs detailed as this review is, I haven’t covered many features, for example Navigate on Autopilot, Autopark, Lane Assist, chime on green traffic light, automatic high beam, driver profiles, and so much more.Additionally, Tesla continuously delivers features, so it’s not feasible to list everything here. For example, the beta version of the completely rewritten FSD began rolling out in October 2020. For more information on software updates and other great resources, visit tesla.com/support.In my opinion, Tesla is years ahead of anything comparable on the market currently, thanks to their technology, customer data, supercharger network, battery life, customer service, and more.Tesla has reinvented the car and thought of so many conveniences (e.g. single pedal driving, auto unlock/lock doors, low maintenance), that it makes it a pleasure to drive and own this car, every single day. Even long distance driving feels more like an enjoyable journey rather than a chore. If you’re considering buying a Tesla 3, do it. Imagine driving the car of the future, today!__________​Thanks for reading! :)

Learn programming to improve your current job

This place is a wonderful place to learn things. I, myself, have spent a lot of time here and have learned so much because of the community. I wanted to give back a bit, and in light of what's going on in the world now, I figured I'd detail a different reason to learn programming and tell you a bit about my experience. I hope it inspires people to learn, but especially those who aren't ready for a full-blown career change (yet, or ever).

My Background

Before I dive in, I think you guys might appreciate a bit of background about me. You probably don't have the same background I do, nor will be at a company like mine, but that doesn't mean you can't start learning things or find a way to adjust your job within your company.
I have been a techie for a very long time. I'm in my mid-thirties, and I've been using computers since I was about ten years old. A lot of that time was spent on basic stuff - games, typing, word processing, spreadsheets, browsing the web. From there, I started repairing and (re)building/upgrading computers for myself, family, and friends. I learned a lot about what NOT to do professionally at a time when I didn't have much in terms of consequences (see /talesfromtechsupport for their opinion on how to help family... haha). I also got into Linux around this time and made TONS of mistakes on an old computer learning how to get things running. Didn't know what I was really doing, but it was a fun way to kill time when I couldn't spend it with friends.
A few years later, I started learning html and css in the early days of html 4.0. I thought I might enjoy programming, so I took some classes in high school. I was good enough at it, but it felt super tedious for me and I figured I just didn't like it, despite having spent time with VB, VC++, and a little bit of JavaScript. I learned the basics of things like variables, data types, loops, control flow... The basic grammar of the languages. Built some small stuff, but it was frustrating enough that I gave up on it. I also stopped messing with Linux because I got a nice computer and started gaming heavily.
When I went to college, I follow a pre-med path. I worked at the computer labs and ended up in supervisory role. This taught a lot about customer service and really interacting with co-workers. Soft skills are super important, as I learned. I graduated college without a full-time job and without a competitive advantage trying to get into med school. I gave up on that. Around this time, I got back into linux fairly seriously, learning commands, running a home file server, then adding torrenting functionality, music streaming apps, etc.
I ended up working for the US Census for a while doing everything from address canvassing and mapping through a short stint as a supervisor in their IT dept, though I ended up moving back to Admin because I could train people more effectively than others could and they needed me.
I was a writer for a tech blog for a while, doing guides, a few reviews, and just generally
Fast forward a few years, I moved to NYC for a post-bac, and I landed a job at a tech startup for a while being paid decently and doing a lot of data management work.
A few years later, I gave up on grad school (too expensive) and ended up working for an e-commerce company that's relatively small, but was growing moderately at the time. This was roughly 5-6 years ago now. It wasn't until about three months before I got this job that I started to (re)learn programming. I went through codecademy for python, then did a bunch of supplemental stuff, learn python the hard way, relearned python 3, and did an online group course through I company I ended up working at as a side-gig later. We had live zoom classes and office hours and projects and homework. This course started about 3 months into my new job.
So, to recap, I was messing with computer since I was 10 years old, got exposed to a lot stuff even if I didn't do much with it, and just nurtured a love of all kinds of technology. Later in life, I self-studied python for 3 months, got a job doing tech support for an e-commerce company and continued studying for another 3 months, and at that point did a 10-week online course. So, about 9 months after I started learning python, I did a project with two others where we used the stripe API to pull dummy data from fake customers' accounts, and then display very basic trends and metrics using the bokeh library, and threw this into a django app. We each did a different part, but taught the other two how to do what we did.
That brings me to my current job and the end of any real formal learning. When I started, I was employee #8, and alongside 3 free-lancers overseas, that was our company. One founder and one manager (together, the two partners, owners of the company), me as tech support, one as customer service, one manning the store, one doing ppc/etc, and one shipping out customers' orders.

Disclaimer

I am absolutely privileged. I did not have to provide for a family while I was going through this. I was broke, but didn't have to worry about rent and food. I had years of interest and love for tech that filled in a lot of knowledge. I'm lucky to have ended up at a company that rewards risk-taking, doesn't punish failure, and allows most of us to grow and switch into positions where are interests and budding talents lie.
Most people won't have all of these things. Still, I hope I can give you some insight that might help you. Sometimes, my advice will be wrong. This doesn't fit all situations. Somewhere in here, though, there's probably something for you to consider. If you're someone who's thinking about learning programming but aren't sure why or how it'll help, then this is especially directed at you.
If, however, you're making progress and have a lot of general frustration, I think maybe my background and career path might inspire you to have some patience for the process or learn from my mistakes or successes.
If you have imposter syndrome, well, there's a reason I never called myself a programmer for years even when I was doing it regularly. I hope my journey helps you realize that sometimes you just roll with the punches.

Building Skills Efficiently

My story

I knew a lot about technology. I watched tech news and youtube channels and follow engadget until the verge writers split off to do their own thing, and in general swallowed up tech. I used whatever I could get my hands on, which was usually old, outdated equipment. I learned a lot about obscure stuff that gave me some geek cred - something that isn't important to have in and of itself necessarily, but makes you memorable when networking.

Networking

Networking is making connections in a sustainable way. Sure, you can be on linkedin with someone you met once at a conference and get a job. Happened to me a few times. But, I feel, the trick to networking well is to be passionate but also be respectful of others' time. I shut up and apologized when I caught myself ranting/rambling. Often, I was urged to continue because who I was talking to had similar interest levels. Other times, I had turned them off to further conversation. This is how you can develop soft skills at the same time as making quality connections. Again, soft skills are integral to any job, but especially so in any technical role.
I had a unique background, having run my own linux server at home for a while. I made friends with junior and senior sysadmins, thinking that was something I'd try to get into, via something like a tier 2 or 3 tech support position. Didn't happen, but some of those people I still talk to and turn to for advice. They stayed in touch because they liked my taste in gadgets - often ones I couldn't afford but drooled over reviews of. Staying in touch is a life skill, and is very close to staying engaged, something you need to learn to do well if you want to do project management, or any kind of management to some degree.

Back to my story

I talked about tech like it was my life, even though it really wasn't. This was my "fake it til you make it." This helped me get a low-paying job in tech support. That allowed me to learn about a specific domain of customers and physical products, and really helped me get my tech support chops. Even today, I hate doing anything in Customer Service, but I feel for the people in my company who are doing it and I treat them well, and when I can, I give them opportunities to step up and learn and do more. These are tangible management skills in almost any job you can think of. Do NOT neglect these.
I knew a lot about cellular technology. Not a ton, but more than anyone else at the company. We had a partner through which we sold a service. I learned about cellular, about the devices we sold, and I had some opinions on the direction of technology. This caught one of the partners' interest. He wanted to know if we could bring the service in-house. I did my best to help answer that question.

Learning on the job

I admitted that I knew some but not everything surrounding the question. I also mentioned I could learn it. How did I know I could learn it? I had done it before through my interests and hobbies! Learning how to learn is incredibly important! Anyone here will tell you that if you can't read documentation and learn something, programming isn't for you. You need discipline to do that, and you need to know yourself so you can use all the tricks to force yourself to learn quickly, focus faster and for longer, and take the right kind of breaks when you need to.

Learning and teaching

But, another reason learning how to learn is important is because it teaches you how to teach. My role at the census was incredible because I learned how to teach effectively. I did onboarding, then taught how to do payroll. My shift processed almost double the payroll than other shifts because I taught them basic keyboard shortcuts and showed them small optimizations in the keying process (we'll get back to this later). I also taught others who ended up taking over onboarding how to fingerprint more consistently and effectively. That's not an easy thing, and if your prints didn't process, you couldn't work! It had tangible benefits in getting us fully staffed in a timely manner.
This also is what helped me get my paid blogging role. Independent research was one thing, how-to guides and the like were another. Learning skills like annotating screenshots, building troubleshooting sections, and understanding processes is fundamental to writing good documentation for lay people. It might be a bit different for programmers, but for people in other, non-technical roles, going that extra step or two here and there really sets you apart by more than you think.

Back to learning on the job

Because of those skills, I had the opportunity to spend part of my shifts away from calls so I could focus on an on-going project. I eventually even set up a local server and tested a device I reprogrammed myself to see what other "gotchas" were in the process. As my understanding grew, I was able to better communicate with the existing service provider, and our business increased. This led to another opportunity.
My job at the computer lab entailed interviewing and hiring, as well as onboarding and training (like at the census). Our call volume went up, and I hired someone to help me and gave them the training they needed. This gave me more time to work on the project at hand.
Ultimately, I determined that it didn't make sense to leave our service partner until we had a better foothold in the industry. Still, delivering that kind of opinion with organized data and experience was crucial. It allowed me to start taking on smaller projects in the company.

Programming as a tool: part 1

As my boss learned, I was learning how to program and do small projects in my spare time. I was tasked with organizing customer information into a central database of sorts. I under-promised and over-delivered so well that Scotty himself would have been proud. Not something I can blindly recommend, but I'll let the full-timers speak to that. I will mention, though, that I saw that my boss valued honesty and I kept being honest back (but just adding a margin for error). At the end of the day, I accomplished the goal, even with a few missteps.

A taste of project management

Because of that, for more moderate projects that I didn't feel comfortable doing, I was tasked with hiring freelancers and working with our own developer to deploy things. This was because speaking tech and translating to lay speak is an important soft skill. It enables you to manage others effectively, but also enables you to have valuable input. It is also crucial to know your limits so you don't make over-reaching conclusions. You learn how to work in gray areas.

Programming as a tool: part 2

Skipping ahead a bit, the company grew and we took on an interesting project, working with suppliers to list items for sales on ecommerce sites and drop shipping them.
Our CRM had over 1.1 million items, even though there was a 38% overlap. To fix a problem like this, you need domain-specific knowledge. Explaining to programmer that, "yes, Amazon thinks every ASIN is unique product, but that's not actually true" can be tricky and annoying. Telling them "each manufacturer uses a different field as a primary key, and sometimes those cause duplicate ASINs" is much clearer. Knowing which fields to trust always or sometimes, which to never trust, when to use context and when to ignore context... These are all enabled by domain-specific knowledge.
During this phase in the company, I spent a lot of time identifying criteria to match duplicates over a variety of contexts. I spent a lot of time writing scripts to do bulk edits, deletes, or adds to our content-management system. I also spent a lot of time making quality-of-life alterations for our shipping department. This lead to another focus of mine.

Operations and Procedures / Programming as a tool: part 3

Programmers need to learn to be analytical, but they also need to learn to be procedural (hehe). Programmers understand how skipped steps and vagaries can lead to inconsistent outcomes.
Learning how think like a programmer, even if you aren't one, is incredibly useful when combined with domain-specific knowledge. Now, I know many of you are familiar with the "new guy who wants to change everything" trope. This is where your soft skills come into play.
Learn how a process is done. Understand their pain points, and how they deal with them. Understand what they do well. Ask hypothetical questions with good, concrete examples. Do this with people on the line as well as their managers. It's rare in life that people are on the same page, so understanding as many sides of a thing as you can will help. This is your discovery phase, and ONLY after you have completed this can you try to improve things.
I used an online database tool with a wysiwyg front-end builder called knack. It's like dreamweaver meets google docs meets databases. Can't speak for anyone else, but for me, it was the right tool for the right job. I knew that I hated front-end development (and I still do!), and since writing something myself and deploying it would eat into time spent for other responsibilities, it wasn't an option for me. This tool bridge the gap, and it was cheap to implement in our case.
This let me fix the crucial mistake that most non-techies make: spreadsheets are not databases. Speadsheets are fine things. Very useful. However, if you need to have auditing or controlled access, even google sheets isn't going to do it for you. Most normal people don't know this. You have an advantage here. Implementing knack really streamlined a lot of smaller undocumented processes regarding re-shipments, returns, repairs, managing online presences, and a host of other things. I'm pretty sure our slack usage dropped by half. Most of these little applets were CRUD forms and work queues and took maybe two days to go through discovery, a day or two to build a prototype, and another three days to test, adjust, and deploy.
An average of 6-7 business days to reduce errors, prevent record destruction, and streamline someone's job? All of those departments LOVED me. The cost was $40/month? Managers loved me. I became the go-to guy to handle these things. Making sure people can't make mistakes in a friendly way like this really goes a long way to building good will with your fellow employees, but that only works if you take their feedback and understand the administrative process. What I mean here is that if someone on the line wants a change but a manager doesn't, you have to explain the need to the manager and the roadblock to the line worker, but in a way that doesn't antagonize anyone involved. Again, soft skills.

Back to the story

Throughout this time, I'd budget work hours to learn. Parts of my job relied on staying up to date about changes to our tools and SaaS systems, but also larger trends. I was able to justify going to PyGotham a few times as a work-education thing. A few of the tricks and libraries I picked up really helped us out when we had some jams, so that was money well spent as far as the partners were concerned. But, I also took a renewed interest in our service-related products. I started to help out some of the product-adjacent managers to see what else was out there, both people we could buy from and competitors. Understanding this was crucial to developing tastes and understanding customer feedback better.

Hardware

Fast-forwarding, I started implementing product testing procedures for new products, worked on a new manufacturer partner's product to integrate it in our service, troubleshot issues related to existing products, and eventually we scrapped a lot of our business and focused on the key money makers. For me, that meant hardware. I learned a lot by documentation and training. We finally decided to bring our service in house. We gained an incredible development team in the process.
The biggest part of this was device configuration. It was a nightmare keeping them apart and revising them, not to mention the fact that we didn't audit what was incoming. If the manufacturer made a change, we were the last to know about it. So, I did something I'd only know to do if I used it as a programmer, I used GitHub. Git is a great tool for version control of ALL kinds, not just code. Configurations are perfect for this.
Troubleshooting customer issues was also super important. I became the leading internal resource for the hardware, so I started working with our developers to help them understand what the devices can do in order to better leverage them. I also worked closely with the tech support team to give them what they needed to troubleshoot and resolve issues better. I pre-formatted remote commands for them to use and I wrote a lot of the tribal knowledge I had gained down into a document, eventually splitting that into guides for interacting with the devices.

Programming Full-Time

This brings us into recent months. After organizing configs and implementing changelogs, I got ahead of the manufacturer's changes. I started testing firmware before we deployed it. We got ahead of problems. I wrote tools that used the APIs that our developers made to ease things for tech support tier 3. I wrote tools to help organize files before they were committed to git. I worked with the developers more closely as we faced a few large bumps in the road.
Finally, a few weeks ago, I was transferred to the engineering team full-time.

Skills and Takeaways

While I did end up as an engineer, you'll notice that the vast majority of my job history and skills were tangential or parallel to programming in some way. I wasn't a programmer 99% of the time, nor was I anywhere near a full-time engineer.
However, learning programming gave me several skills I didn't have before:

• Analytical thinking
• Procedural design
• Implementing stopgaps
• Simplifying and streamlining complex processes
• Understanding problem domains
• Thinking in a more abstract way
• Integrating different solutions

Could I have learned these elsewhere? Sure. Arguably, some I was already starting to from my Linux experience. Still, learning programming streamlined learning those skills. Then, I could fully take advantage of them with my other skills:

• Being empathetic to coworkers
• Understanding how to navigate management
• Networking efficiently and making good impressions
• Building knowledge through passion and diligence
• UNDERSTANDING FREAKING SPREADSHEETS^I can't believe I didn't know what a pivot table was until like three years ago
• Meta-learning and teaching

All of these allowed me to do a wide variety of jobs in a few different roles:

• Project management
• Training and team-building
• Light data analysis
• Supercharged data-entry and management
• Operation design and execution and a bunch more.

Lastly, I hope there are few different things that you can take away from my journey so far.

My journey went on to engineering; yours doesn't need to

As I've mentioned, I hope this post has given you some ideas for how you can develop your existing career using programming. Not everyone has the bandwidth or desire to make a full career change. Others simply don't have the luxury to do it in one fell swoop. A lot of my ideas can apply to various office, support, and "dispatch"-like positions in warehouses/factories. It can seriously help you streamline and speed up work you could otherwise already do at a much slower pace. Also, crucially, if you're in an environment that appreciates and allows you grow into these tools, you can use what you learn to pivot yourself more safely if you DO want to make the change.
If you are in a situation where your boss sucks or coworkers are shit, then feel free to keep what you're doing as secretive as you can. Basically, automate your job as best you can, but don't tell anyone. Then, use the rest of your time to learn and hone this skill until the time is right to leave/pivot to a different job, or to jump ahead of your boss or into a different department. Just be sure you have a record of your code so you can show it to potential employers, and if you can, anonymize your data as best you can so you can't get slammed for giving away any secrets.

Programming is a useful tool in and of itself, even if you're not a programmer

Programming is a great tool to make your job easier, so you can spend less time doing tedious repetitive things and more time doing things you like or expanding and taking on more projects or responsibilities. You don't have to change careers to appreciate this. In my roles, I've used python + pandas to take gigantic spreadsheets (excel chokes after filesize is over like 150 MB or something) and apply basic changes, more advanced changes, or create pivot tables. These are common office tasks and functions that can get annoying to have to do by hand week over week. You can automate that so you can focus on other crap.

Programming can be a useful tool in the abstract, even if you're not a programmer

Programming teaches you a methodical way to think about problems. It gives you a variety of abstract tools to solve those problems. Even if you can't implement them in a language well, you can still talk to those who can. You can also apply ideas to the real world. Conditionals are basic programming building blocks, but you don't often see people in smaller companies or mom-and-pop operations using flowcharts for their operations. Documenting best practices and using these things can make you look really good when all of sudden the business is slammed and - WOW! you've just onboarded and trained 3 new people in a day or two to do the jobs you need them to do. Thinking of contingencies is sometimes less present on programmers' minds, but something sysadmins and infosec people think about a lot (at least if they're willing and able to do their job well).
Moreover, if you work at small companies or startups, operations positions are often ripe for advancement. Small software companies often hire people to do manual QA instead of automating it. If you create the procedural docs to do that and then start to automate, there's often room to wiggle your way into a new position. At the very least, when someone moves up or out, you're in a better position.

Working on tangential skills can make you into a better programmer

Soft skills are something we all know and talk about. Networking is something we all know and talk about. These kinds of things can really help convey the kind of person you are. Hopefully through studying programming, you show yourself to be more methodical, organized, and explicit in the real world things you do. These are all things that you learn in programming that make you better at things in your life (to a point, of course).
It does work the other way around! Learning how to analyze line work can help you think of pipelines more easily. Thinking of group organization can help with data models. Understanding how teams work well can help you organize an API. I watch tons of woodworking and metalworking videos by weekend hobbyists. Even if it's something completely different, I often find that my mind will come upon a good solution to a problem I'm stuck on. Take your inspiration everywhere you find it.

Thinking outside of the "concept" box, but staying within the "propriety" box is the sweet spot

Lastly, in real life I'm often told that I'm a genuinely nice guy and very memorable. I wasn't always this way! I worked hard to remember some very basic things.

• Sometimes, people just don't get something. You need to hear it with the right wording, at the exact right time and place, under the right arrangement of stars, and with the right inspiration to understand sometimes. This happens to everyone at some point - it doesn't make them stupid or bad or whatever. Remember at least one of your moments so you can be patient with others.
• It's easy to talk down to someone (oversimplify), and it makes you look like an asshole. It's also easy to speak too technically and lose them, and that can also make you look like an asshole. Apply some boilerplate in the conversation. Something like, "I'm not sure how familiar you are with X, but blah blah" and then get more technical if they know or get simpler if they don't. Don't be afraid to use analogies in casual conversation, because if you subsequently use analogy in work conversation people won't take it the wrong way.
• You have to stand your ground sometimes. It's important to learn how to be firm but also sympathetic. Crucially, this sweet spot is different from person to person. I still don't have a good way of figuring this out easily, though.
• I'm important to observe pleasantries, water cooler talk, and operate within general rules of propriety. It makes people feel familiar and comfortable. This builds you good will, which goes a long way when you try to introduce weird concepts. As an example, if you're nice and understanding (genuinely), you can more easily talk to coworkers about their processes and can get them to change them more easily. This can really help with frictional people, especially when you're stuck trying to make a team adopt a change their stupid manager is trying to make. You can also back them up if it doesn't work out.
• You are memorable when you are passionate. It's better to be positively passionate about something than negatively, generally speaking. That positivity and affection for your subject of choice really sticks with people.
• Learn how to see if people are engaged with what you're discussing. Being apologetic if you're ranting can buy you good will, or can help others reinforce that they are interesting in what you're talking about.
• Learn to take an interest in anything. Am I ever going to wear makeup? Not likely. Have I gotten to know colleagues better by shutting up and listening and trying to understand makeup? Hell yes. Have I made connections with potential business partners or coworkers by being able to contribute a bit to conversation? You bet. Seriously, most people don't have attention spans to learn about things that are not interesting to relevant to them. Developing this skill reinforces your ability to learn about boring or irrelevant things. It also lets you find more common ground. Years after learning about makeup with some coworkers, I accidentally landed a sale with someone because I kept up a conversation with someone who was a makeup artist, and she talked with her boss about asset management.

I know many of you will disagree with some of my points. If you do, I'm sure we can learn from that conversation.
I know many of you will point out that a lot of this is common sense. It is, or can be, but sometimes you don't realize something unless it's placed, plainly, in front of you.
I also know that my story is different, and you may have more struggles. I've been lucky. That being said, I do believe that I was either prepared enough to recognize the luck and take advantage, or did my best to make the most of the luck when it came up. I hope the above can help someone somewhere do the same.

**** I've added some more ****

I have no way of proving any of this to be true, but I thought it was worth sharing. Enjoy.

i used to work for tesla writing infotainment firmware and backend services - all of which runs in a single bottom tier Datacenter in a single location on the worst VMware deployment known to man.
fun fact: a jenkins pipeline once caused almost the entire fleet to reboot loop for about an hour

model s and x use openvpn to talk to their backend. inside that backend there are metadata services that feed info to the system, one of those things being a ~20MB+ (generated by the worst erp system) json payload that describes supercharger shit for the map in the touchscreen. somebody was smart enough to do automated linting but forgot to validate against the custom parser the car runs which caused a segfault in the qt app that runs the ui, which in turn for a variety of reasons forces a reboot of that component. I think we clocked about 15 seconds before it read the file and faulted after boot. it was doing that for an hour before everyone panicked and got me and qa on the phone to fix it. i wrote a quick python/fabric script that ssh’d to as many cars as possible at a time to rm the file

why do the cars run a cluster of ubuntu vms? used to be centos 6 and Ruby on Rails. I haven’t worked there in 3 years, but last I heard it hadn’t changed much for s and x. model 3 uses newer tech, but still based out of a single Datacenter

some of what I wrote runs on the factory line - at the time we started the model s program, which has not changed to this day, we fake the backend to install and validate firmware as the car moves down the line. a tech runs over to the car, plugs an eth cable in diag and dumps an image on the car using curl and a tui app I wrote using python. as the car moves down the line it is installing firmware for about an hour. if that station for any reason can’t talk to the PKI system, erp, or a ruby webapp it halts the line

can't you flash the storage before its installed in a car? 

yes and no. the firmware update process in a car is complicated because you have a bunch of dumb components hanging off of CAN or LIN and they have to updated in very specific order and sometimes you have to retry 10s of times to get it to take. ( fuck you Bosch). Tesla never bothered to flash those things ahead of time before assembly so that gets done the first time as it rolls down the line. the infotainment system and gateway arbitrate that stuff. typically any update that tuned voltages becomes a one way - no downgrade is possible without frying something

this is the thing, like i work with boards that have many devices on them that have firmware and they're all flashed well before the >board is installed in anything if not before even being soldered down they got smart eventually - model 3 does do this now, but doing that at scale with all the components for a car is a challenge when you have it being done with stations running yocto images and perl

like, for all the lols @ tesla, have they literally never heard of a process engineer? 

like everyone else who was smart they either quit or were fired through no fault of their own so what you’re left with are people fearing for their job who desperately don’t want to change status quo for fear it will break something

they forgot that the unspoken part of "move fast and break things" is that you're supposed to fix what's broken

exactly this. we never really had time to address critical issues and were constantly short on staff because people were quitting or they just wouldn't give candidates competitive offers. this is why you hear about people burning out - they've managed to chase everyone away

more fun facts:
the infotainment system and gateway don't have a battery-backed rtc. when the system reboots (sleep, deep sleep, reboot, whatever) the car is at tyool 1970 until it gets ntp again. the logs themselves are written in a binary ring buffer format and when they come in they used to end up in a giant 700TB single mysql database after they were expanded. all of production after-sales service and engineering relies on that single log interpretation system which ran on centos 5 and python 2.4 until hbase/hadoop and friends were brought in.
the supercharger system uses ssh dss keys to "vpn" back to the datacenter to a single server over 2G wireless with very limited resources. the connection is essentially simplex for various reasons so getting data to and from the supercharger is usually a 1KB/s operation unless that site has had connection aggregation done. at one point i looked at the system and to pull data out for analysis, somebody had written a bash script that was printf'ing in a for loop across ~5k devices. it would usually take about 3 days to do a successful firmware update on any single supercharger.
we once patched openssl to ignore client cert expiry because somebody forgot to create a process to update keys in the field and all the customer cars started falling offline because their certs had expired. the quick and dirty was to just patch openssl quickly and make openvpn on the server side use that one while we created those processes for about 2 weeks.

most of the time me and the other firmware folks were chasing elon's whims about what to do with firmware. where i should have been fixing critical issues in the system i was pulled off to do shit like add farting unicorns

uh we literally do the same thing; well, yocto images and python
tesla isn't the first to solder down SOMs running embedded linux and a bunch of MCUs hanging off an i2c/canbus/whatever line

they aren't the first - for what we were doing at the time it made sense and helped us get the program off the ground quickly. lots of room for improvement and in 8 years, they should have done so.
my issue was the fact that the systems doing the flashing were running the yocto images and perl and the guy writing the perl was also responsible for writing the thing that actually updates the car. that thing (the car-side updater) is about ~100k lines of C in a single file. code reviews were always a laugh riot

i am SO GLAD your nda expired

99% of what i'm talking about is "public" anyway. tesla isn't encrypting their firmware and it's really easy to glean information from the vpn with a packet cap because nothing inside the vpn (was) encrypted. dumping tegra 3 model s and x is trivial and tesla's cars are nowhere near as secure as they'd have you believe.
for example, at one time you were able to root a model s with a usb stick and a gstreamer exploit.

while tesla should be given credit for updating the car over the air to fix issues, that's also any connected car's biggest weakness - you're one exploit away (or malicious employee with access) from remote root.
more fun stuff: there's limited space on the emmc in the touchscreen system so updating maps can't be done using an image or a binary diff. so the thing rsync's map updates (all 2GB of them) from various places. they may have fixed that in the newer intel-based boards, but who knows.
autopilot had really high turnover at one point before release because some guy from space x came in and gave the entire dept a C pointememory test because Elon said they were "late" to ship.

There's the story online of that hacker who was pulling software images off through the door Ethernet port and found that his car's >firmware was remotely downgraded after he uncovered and posted the first references to the P100 models.
Does that sound plausible to you?

yup, i'm the guy that installed the older versions. this was a marketing mistake really. if i recall correctly, he ended up getting a marketing car or his car got tagged in the update system as a trusted car and he ended up getting pre-release stuff. this happened from time to time - sometimes marketing would sell off a car and the shit erp system wouldn't record the change. that car would then get prerelease and sometimes very broken firmware. i seem to recall another case where we just forgot to remove the prerelease materials from the official build, so all you had to do was look around.

the early days of tesla, post-roadster, early model s and the start of model x were good times - everyone was trying to prove the technology worked, we were innovating and making something that hadn't been done before. things really started to shit the bed around the time we pivoted from model 3 plans to shipping model x first. the falcon wing doors were such a shitshow. they ended up delaying the program almost a year, hence why model 3 basically skipped all the usual phases a car goes through for validation. i mean, come on - you have bumpers falling off in the rain, the interior is a disaster, there's no instrument cluster which takes your eyes off the road - this list just goes on.

tesla basically runs their entire business like a just in time compiler only they don't treat warnings or errors as failures. most groups in the company don't cross-communicate so there's a lot of duplication of effort.
i once got pulled into a meeting because a car burned down when it was attached to a supercharger and we didn't get a log out of the car. normally under some emergency circumstances the car will try to upload a log when it thinks shit has gone really badly, but in this particular case it was far enough away from a tower it had half 3G connection and had to upload a 30MB log via HTTPS POST. the car burned down before it even got to 10MB and the system was only designed for exponential backoff retries, not resumption of in-progress. elon was calm about it, but we had to justify why we never had time to address it - maybe it was because we were all busy making unsafe features work?

also on the supercharger note - you can get blacklisted from using them if you charge on them all the time. that's because the supercharger bypasses the charging regulator boards and dumps directly into the pack at 300A/450v which creates a ton of wear on the battery. want to keep your range high? don't supercharge often.

do they define “too often”?

algorithm-based now - the ai shit i was working on took into account a lot of factors to determine if you were abusing it before i left. the criteria takes into account the state of many components in the car, your driving patterns and other details. or it did anyway. not even sure that stuff is running still - they rotated projects in and out of existence pretty rapidly.

what is elon like when stuff goes wrong due to his idiotic micromanagement and big stupid ideas?

he's never wrong. his "open door policy" was an invitation to catch you breaking rank.

tesla was also in the news because they were doing cute shit like spinning up k8s clusters which had AWS IAM access to sensitive S3 buckets but wasn't ssl'd and the k8s mgmt api was available publicly. there were other teams running industrial control equipment with centos 7 an no hardening at all.
there was one time where a canadian kid stole the domain and redirected emails and managed to take over slack and a bunch of other shit because the idiot IT team didn't hide the registrar information or use something like markmonitor. the car-side stuff at least did full mtls at the time so it was ok, but lol did that kid get a lot of info.
**** the new stuff:
Some more:

thats just what i want, the car manufacturer monitoring how i drive the car i own and deciding that features should be turned off after i >have purchased it, that's a good feature.

you have no idea. any connected car is ripe for data harvesting and you (the consumer) should expect it going forward. on that note, china has a law in place that mandates all electric cars send real time telemetry to their government servers - model s/x/3, NIO cars and any other electric car if they're driving already complies with that law to be road certified. don't be surprised if that becomes a mandate in other countries

for all the shit that went down at tesla, there were some positive aspects. everyone i worked with really cared about physical safety and we put a lot of effort into making sure the engineering was sound so nobody got hurt. if you subtract autopilot, and that's a big if, the car is generally well designed minus the fit and finish issues + interior, but i'd argue that's never been tesla's strong point anyway. the cars are fast, the 2013-2014 model s lines were really good, solid, basic cars. my last straw was the summon feature - i strongly believe a car you are not in, backing out on its own from a parking space with the current sensors is super dangerous.

i was making jokes with the tesla expats when ol' musky launched his roadster into space that you could see the gaps in the fit and finish without a telescope

just remembered some bits of trivia

• they took away our free snacks in deer creek and replaced them with shitty vendors
• said vendors food poisoned people often enough osha or whatever the body is shut them down
• people were so mad about the free cereal being gone they'd intra-office snail mail bowls of cereal from the factory and post pictures in slack
• deer creek's parking got so bad (too many people, not enough space) they hired permanent valets
• they were cited for the shitshow parking for fire safety violations (unconfirmed, but i believe it)
• elon publicly being a shitbag to trans people
• the first time we turned on real time telemetry for the dev fleet we caught somebody going 130mph over the san mateo bridge
• it networking so bad the company had permanent 5~8% consistent packet loss between various places (like, next rack)
• firmware git repo so large they had to mirror it (something like 2TB)

depending on when and what features you got (and if you got a marketing used car) they could go as low at $40k after incentives - but totally agree with you. fit/finish issues have been a thorn in their side forever

the touchscreen is kind of a safety issue in that you have to look at it to touch it, stealing focus. tactile buttons for some functions would have been better

the firmware repo was that size if you take into account a huge company, many devices in the car at play and incremental updates to firmware across all those devices + branches for people to do work in. i contributed to that mess by policy, not by choice, but whatever. i'd imagine they'd be smart enough to move to something like git lfs so it isn't as much of a pain
scale stuff:
tesla has a real thundering herd problem at this point. if you factor in common peak drive times for any region (bay area CA being the largest by pop) they have to weather something like 100k+ cars slamming servers all at once during rush hours. i saw this play out on some of the cj dashboards, it was fun to watch the production shit come to a grinding halt before they figured out they couldn't just-in-time the autoscale and had to provision ahead of time for peaks
i had to deal with marketing people sincerely asking me why we weren't going to run containers on the car in firmware. no, marketing, i don't care that the car would "update faster" or "features would release faster"
a web front-end (we'll say it's a cms that's php-based) that needed $500k in WAF bullshit just so we didn't get pwned every 5 minutes
fragmented installs of splunk. i think i counted well over 20 installs for various departments before they finally hired a decent data scientist that cleaned it up
so many random java, django, .net services from various places, more than i could count and i had to touch a lot of them with firmware. ActiveRecord controlling way way way too much. i consider this probably one of tesla's biggest scale problems - i don't think they actually know or can track exactly what they're running server side at all - so you end up with teams running vmware, nsx, k8s, openstack, hyper-v.
a car that has a json parser implemented in bash 3 because is dangerous in the car. there are some seriously magic shell scripts on that thing that probably 3 people in the company understand in full

nodejs was a thing for a while but quickly broke down once we reached the 20k car mark - ended up replacing a bunch of that stuff with a Go variant

bets on whether the fire was due to incompetence, act of nature, or deliberately set?

never attribute to malice what can more easily be explained by incompetence

not surprised at all. earlier in Falcon 9 lifecycle at SpaceX, they kept having helium problems because the QC team kept signing off on >defective bottles and valves. do you think that attitude might have scared them into not saying anything?

absolutely. taking advantage of the "open door policy" was the fastest way to lose your job at tesla and from what i'm told, spacex, being run by the same guy was no different. there is so much pressure to ship on time they push people to work 14 hour days, 7 days a week - i did that for a while before i just couldn't take it anymore and just accepted being marked down in employee review for being late

the openvpn problem is easy to get around thundering herd/scale issues if you design it correctly and know how to run a network. in theory, you could get around a lot openvpn scale issues if you use bridged networking, ipv6 on the inside, and some redundant dhcp servers to hand out leases - that kind of shit won't work in most cloud providers though so you stuck at running that crap in a datacenter.
tesla's issues around the services were many fold - the specifics would give away too much, but i'll say this: when you make all of your services depend on a single rdbms while simultaneously using the world's worst ORM, you get what's coming to you.
i poked around on a 3 a friend has and after looking at a packet cap it looks like they're doing ssl'd amqp - i didn't see any openvpn packets so i suspect they got wise to how shitty it can be, but lol at running connected car stuff directly over the internet outside a private apn or a tunnel

The staggering level of internal fragmentation reminds me of how PayPal was when I worked there in '09-15. They experimented for a few months with an "agile product solutions" team that basically >took "we need a widget that does this" orders and cranked out custom Java shit that never worked.

that's basically tesla in a nutshell only, i guess it kinda works. every different team has some kind of different service where you can get data but none of it published anywhere, there are no standards, and everyone just loves to write their own client implementations because they don't trust you to do it right (sorry that we don't have a client in C++ which is mandated by policy for the car)
poking holes in the firewall was always super fun - i would describe, in full detail all ports, sources, destinations, have security assessments done, etc and somehow, still, the firewall cj's would fuck up the ports. i once spent, and this is not a joke, 3 weeks chasing a single port down - i think that email thread had 100 reply-all's, two video confs and me visiting the firewall cj in fremont before it was finally fixed

was there any sort of accountability for the devs there, or was it if you knew how to talk the talk you could bs your way through the ranks while producing nothing of value? was there any noticeable increase in the absurdity of musk's requests as time went on? anything particularly absurd he called for that was flat out shot down?

no, if you didn't do work it was really really obvious and they purged you quickly. that didn't mean it was any good but if you produced you were generally left to your own devices as long as you weren't breaking builds - this seemed to be true of most engineering teams.
ol' musky did increasingly weird shit, but i wouldn't necessarily call it out of the ordinary for silicon valley - many folks, me included, for a time, viewed him as a bit of a Jobs-type. his behavior became really erratic around the time we wrapped up X and headed for 3 full steam - the more stuff piling on about autopilot, the more issues with the factory, the ongoing issues with X and then with 3 mfg, his ongoing spacex work - the dude really needs a nap and to just walk away from tesla at this point. its arguable he isn't running it successfully considering all the issues

• edit - running it successfully by silicon valley standards. too many issues to reach profitability because of really poor strategy and execution. too many people get wrapped up in his celebrity without really asking 'can he pull this off' which is the difference between him and Jobs - Jobs actually did shit

yeah, i get that, it's just they make a product that will probably shit itself when the back end goes dark, and that product costs $65k-$120k so it's an outlier by sv standards.

the product shouldn't shit itself when the backend eventually goes dark - autopilot won't work, updates won't, remote phone shit won't but otherwise the driving and infotainment part of the car should still function if you pull the sim and put your own in. given how shit the firmware security is it'd be pretty easy to dump the firmware, compile up some statically linked tools for shits and just patch in your own services. there's been a few clever people on twitter who figured out you can run Go arm bins on the thing - after that it's just figuring out what crap you care about on CAN (if anything).
all that said, tesla did sell cars explicitly with the sim pulled and no network ever - service was always complaining to us because the ring logs on those cars would take hours to parse.
speaking of the ring logs - because there was no battery backed rtc, we had to stitch and best-guess times based on the intervals when the car did have valid time and patch that into the logs serially before they could be imported. inaccuracies in the signal data could and did lead to all kinds of bullshit when somebody needed to be debug issues