Valleywag does still exist, as a subsidiary of Gawker, and their Owen Thomas has uncovered one of the funnier Silicon Valley stories for a long time.

Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturing outfit in San Carlos, CA, has had a few struggles lately. Leaks have not helped. CEO Elon Musk completed a thorough investigation of one leak that revealed Tesla’s minuscule $9 million cash on hand, firing employee Peng Zhou in the process.

Musk’s paranoia has come back to bite him in the end, however, as he created a somewhat incendiary company-wide email that he fingerprinted by using different words in each email sent to each employee.

Unfortunately for him, he did not alert upper management, one of whom sent out his own version of the email to everybody, giving them a safe copy to leak out to everyone. Of course, the one everyone had got leaked to Valleywag.

One can understand Musk’s frustration. Leaks to a hungry press can cripple a growing company, especially during tough times.

But he was too smart by half on this occasion. Hilarity ensues.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 9:53 pmand is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.