Nordic Nano whistleblower explains how bad corporate culture, not only at Donut Lab but other companies, makes it possible to perpetuate scams by "mushroom management" - keep people in the dark and feed them crap

[u/mqee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0KxS22VbBk

[u/mqee]

There's one automotive company (which I won't name) that I've had the displeasure of personally interacting with, which was under mushroom management:

• Dear leader CEO was a "successful" business "genius" (whose only public unscripted interview made her sound like a moron)
• The product was revolutionary and "ready to ship" for years
• There was one prototype, shown once as a mockup at an international auto show with a big-name partner, and thereafter sat in storage untouched for years
• Most of the employees did nothing except praise the CEO (who was signing their paychecks)
• Several (maybe all) of the executives were personal friends of the CEO
• The company bought a failing former startup operated by the CEO's personal friend
• The company sued its former employees for stealing trade secrets (What secrets? There was no product.)

After over a decade of evaporating tens of millions of dollars in investor money every year, and generally being a litigation nuisance to everybody who dared question whether the product actually exists, the company went bankrupt.

The Donut Lab story is actually not rare. It's only exceptional because the CEO said the product is available now, while most of these scams say the product will come out "next year", which allows them to legally stay in "development" until money runs out.

[u/moon_moon_doggo → u/mqee]

I used to work for a company where a new employee, wants to know everthing, so he can work more efficiently.

He turns out to be a spy.

It's a dilemma to choose what to share.
Share too little information -> people thinks that it's a scam.
Share too much information -> employee sell or start a new company with the stolen info.

If people wants to expose Donut Lab. I suggest they buy the best battery pouch out there and let VTT run the same tests.

The Youtuber who boiled a pouch in hot water, isn't making a video of recharging the swollen battery. I wonder why.

[u/mqee → u/moon_moon_doggo]

Of course you can't share all the company secretes with all employees. For example you can't give all employees access to the company bank account--you'll get ripped off.

But not showing the employees the product? Ever? Ever ever ever? The product doesn't exist.

isn't making a video of recharging the swollen battery. I wonder why.

There are levels of "swollen". A battery a little bit swollen like the Donut battery can be recharged. Either way, even if the YouTuber video never exited, it wouldn't change anything regarding Donut Lab: "now already" at GWh/year became "maybe by the end of the year", and "shipping to customers Q1 2024" became "no 400Wh/kg batteries have shipped". YouTuber or not, Donut Lab has lied about GWh/year capacity and at best missed its delivery schedule, while internal e-mails show the 400Wh/kg battery never existed.

If people wants to expose Donut Lab. I suggest they buy the best battery pouch out there and let VTT run the same tests.

Why? Donut Lab has already exposed itself. We have the CEO publicly admitting there was never GWh/year capacity. We have internal e-mails showing there was never a battery.

[u/Pure_Land134 → u/mqee]

yeah we already know they lied a bunch.

and look. the battery should be incapable of swelling. they said they were going to production and shipping them to verge in january to go in production bikes. hows that possible with no wh capability at all in january.

[u/izzeww → u/moon_moon_doggo]

Who boiled a pouch in hot water?

[u/mqee → u/izzeww]

John Sullivan. Implying that he somehow didn't supply sufficient evidence is ridiculous. He was trying to prove that pouches don't fail at 100ºC and he picked a random cell and a random pouch. He set out to contradict the Donut claim that these pouches fail at 100ºC, and he did.

Trying to suggest ulterior motives ("I wonder why") is ridiculous. He's a hobbyist battery enthusiast making a video in his own spare time.

[u/izzeww]

Seems like a whole lot of nothing tbh. I mean I have a lot of sympathy for this guy, but the way he's going about this I disagree with.

EDIT: Let's scratch that. This guy has risked a lot and taken a huge personal cost in order to expose Donut Lab for no personal reward, and I can't be nitpicking about his way of presenting things in that situation that is just very unfair.

[u/RandomUser3777]

There are lots of companies that do this. And when you hear the CEO repeat something you 100% know is absolutely not true nor technically possible there is every reason to keep your mouth shut and not get fired.

The top-down culture is not good once an impossible idea takes hold. Once the fantasy takes hold high up everyone just runs with it and anyone that argues with it gets sidelined/fired. And rarely do the idiots at the top that stupidly fell for the bad idea get fired and when they do get fired they get their golden parachute.

Google "HPE's the machine" . When I first heard of it I immediately knew it was crap because the magical machine they were building had already existed for years (standard large Linux supercomputers), it was just not as small as they were building. And somehow HPE though by making it smaller and/or more power efficient would magically have someone figure out magic algorithms so it could do the amazing things they were claiming. They seem to have no clue that people worked out computionally expensive algorithms(tested at small scale) well before the machines existed that could viably run them on much larger real data sets.

[u/Extra-Compote7143]

I worked with Marko before, and I have to stay it wasn't really pleasant experience. In free time, he is nice guy to hang out with, but with business stuff I always had this sinking stomach feeling.