A recently hired Tesla employee found himself fired without lasting a week at work, after the company has discovered he downloaded 26,000 confidential files and promptly filed suit.
On December 28, software engineer Alex Khatilov landed himself a lucrative job as a quality manager at the world’s most valuable carmaker.
Within three days, however, a security team discovered that he had downloaded to his personal cloud storage data that competitors could use to mimic the Tesla’s innovation and success.
Per the company, the stolen code was worth 200 man-years of work. Only a few key people had access to the confidential files, and these files weren’t relevant to Khatilov’s role in the company.
In his defense, Khatilov claims the transfer of files was accidental and that he somehow forgot that the transfer occurred.
He was, however, confronted about the theft via a video call and was seen deleting the files from his computer in a hurry.