It's his company and they chose to work there. It's like repeatedly patronizing a restaurant then loudly complaining how much the chef sucks. You're free to eat elsewhere or build your own spaceship company.
But really the goal is to make SpaceX as productive as possible, to do something productive for the world, not to serve Musk's whims. If there is a trade-off between the whims and the productivity, it's clear which should be sacrificed.
You are allowing your emotions and dislike of Musk to cloud your judgement.
You say they are entitled - high skill, difficult to replace workers are actually entitled to make demands of their employer which are proportional to the value they offer, in particular when they act collectively.
If you just like rockets, and want some work-life balance, you can always apply for the SLS team, or Boeing Starliner.
The U.S. CFR Title 14, Part 1, Section 1.1 defines "pilot in command" as:
...the person who:
Has final authority and responsibility for the operation and safety of the flight
Edit: Mind that there is an obvious conflict between positions like, "you do as I say, because my money", and the complex relations that constitute a corporate business.
Also, "final" implies an iterative process of multiple steps, like a discussion. (Which in turn implies a certain degree of openness to such a process.) Otherwise, it would be "exclusive" or "total".
That's not how it works with Crew Resource Management.
There is a reason planes still have two pilots -- and it is not that the need two or even one to function most of the time.
PIC does not order anyone around, but is the actor/writer. The other pilot verifies and overrides/calls issues. And certain operations, for instance during take off, are done together.
Maybe companies work that way, but if you fly a plane with that approach, I am joining as the second, crew or passenger.
The point is that employer-employee relationships are inherently imbalanced. A corporation has far more freedom to make choices like that than their employees.
No, you can't just "get another job" if all the companies are abusing employees in the same way.
The fact that corporations are set as mini-dictatorships never made sense to me. Everyone's at the mercy of the whims of the CEO.
Karl Marx said that workers should own the means of production, and this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. In capitalism, shareholders have more power over the company than those doing the day-to-day work who know the business, and those shareholders could easily tell Musk to tone it down if they wanted to – and Musk would listen.
The employees could never sway him. "Take it or leave it," which really just means "go work for the other asshole."
I think it wouldn't be such a bad thing if corporations had mandatory employee democracy on certain workplace issues. I think the ownership class has too much power over the individual. Just because you own assets shouldn't mean you get to play games with people's livelihoods.
I’d argue there probably isn’t enough substance to the complaint yet (Space-X brand is probably still a net positive having him in front of the company), but your line of argument would cause a quiet brain drain from organizations, not keep them healthy with open discussion. The fact that this open letter was described outside of the company might be the only reason I might side with you.
Sometimes the only way left to communicate a message is to burn something down.
It is always better to run an organization such that the above do not apply to it, particularly.
…and then be quite concerned that the CEO’s attention is seemingly quite scattershot now, and perhaps too focused on a social media site that nobody outside the chattering class uses.