SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is the board that should be holding him accountable, but they aren't. Most boards today are lame ducks to collect a paycheck. No one is challenging him because he is delivering results (although I would argue it's actually Gwynne Shotwell keeping the shipping sailing). So there's that.
I'm not redefining anything, the courts have broadly held that workers, when acting as a group and not just airing individual grievances, have protections for their speech. Things like corporate values, retention, recruiting, public sentiment, workplace diversity, etc are all potentially workplace conditions.
Workplace Conditions has a legal definition, but it is interpreted by the courts and those courts have the ability to adjust those definitions or interpret them as appropriate.
I ask because in your many comments all you’re doing is stating a hypothetical complaint that sounds plausible but I, as well as many others evidently, think would not have legs, ultimately. I can think of several examples in my career where employees have been fired for disruptive behavior or being a negative influence on morale - well within an employer’s rights. Those examples seem to line up more closely with this example at SpaceX than actual workplace conditions complaints I’ve seen.
I mean, props to you for going to the mat on this, but it’s past time you provide some evidence of your logic carrying the day in a real world example. Otherwise you’re just proposing wishful thinking as reasoning.
FWIW, I think firing the organizers is an overreaction and that it would be in SpaceX's best interest to muzzle Elon, but it's hard to conjure up a legal argument that they can't do it. And you'll notice that the company's statement said nothing about the content of the letter, only that it's inappropriate to organize it with company resources and on company time.
Knowing that people like you with your reasons for not working there are not present and harassing people towards your view point could be a recruitment draw no?
Given you've spammed this misinformation all over this thread, despite being corrected on this point repeatedly, I'm not sure you're acting in good faith.
Apparently the letter was not about working conditions. It was about Elon tweeting.
Eg Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more.
I take that back:
The letter was spammed to all employees using company resources, which means its authors and supporters were creating a hostile work environment. Firing the dead-weight woke cry bullies was the proper move.
So yes, for all intent purposes he is their employer.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-SpaceX-does-Elon-Mu...
Arguably it depends somewhat of the skill of those hired but if that's arbitrary (i.e. their skill isn't related to the firing) one can easily argue that SpaceX's management practices are extremely questionable right now. So from an 3rd party employee's perspective today you have to tell the boss he's fucking shit up if you _really_ want to get to Mars.
In the future it would behoove you to at least familirize yourself with a topic lest you make another ignorant statement.
Wealth will either be given or it will be taken.
I would not be shocked to hear that this results in a lawsuit over protected concerted activity.
Working conditions is things like working hours, your physical environment, your responsibilities [1]. The SpaceX letter was basically "Musk is uncouth, and we don't like that". A fair criticism, but nothing about working conditions.
The text of the letter can be found at [2], if anyone wants to judge for themselves.
[1] https://definitions.uslegal.com/w/working-condition/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
or deadlines just get moved out
This statement is false in the general case. If the contract says 40 hours, I'm leaving after 40 hours, and if you want me to stay longer I better have a large share of the company. Your inefficiencies as a manager are not my problem as an employee, unless I'm also a shareholder.
The following passage is one of many about workplace behavior, which therefore is part of working conditions:
Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. SpaceX must establish safe avenues for reporting and uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.
If the letter alleges that Musk directly harassed employees, that would be entirely different. But it doesn't; it merely says that Musks behavior in the public sphere is unpleasant (again, that's fair).
Forcing a trucker to drive 20 hours straight is working conditions. Refusing to install proper lighting in a warehouse is working conditions.
Having a policy saying "don't be an asshole", and then enforcing it in a way that is perceived as unfair, is not working conditions.
If the letter had directly alleged that Musk or other leadership was abusive towards the employees, they would have a case. But just saying "we thing Musk is an asshole, and we have a no-asshole policy" is not protected speech.
Many employment laws just create causes of action for civil litigation. I.e. they define types of harm for which the employee can seek compensation in the courts.
Very specifically for this case, they protect the right of employees to talk to an employer about improving workplace conditions. With or without a union, and with or without any interest in unionization.
Working Conditions means the conditions under which the work of an employee is performed, including physical or psychological factors.
The things that that letter discusses affects the psychological factors of the work. Committing to making people feel included, defining what toxic behavior will not be accepted, and so on.
Your linked definition includes in working conditions, "...all existing circumstances affecting labor in the workplace." This fits with the definition that I gave - the behaviors that you have to put up with from coworkers affects labor in the workplace.
This is way too reductionist. These aren't just "Musks tweets", they are directives about employee policies that are publicly stated, but not private enforced (because, to the author's criticism, they have no strict definitions). Furthermore they have clear (or at least implied clearly) repercussions: "don't behave they way we want to or you're fired".
> all could be considered about working conditions.
Actually, I think what the author is asking for is clarity about working conditions, not necessarily the working conditions are good/bad - they're just ambiguous.
This is backwards. There are lots of rules out there which I'm sure you dislike. Therefore your dislike of this one is irrelevant.
And I say that despite agreeing with you about how it might be abused. And despite wondering whether the people calling for more diversity and exclusion in this letter may be the kind of people to abuse it that way. Rules are rules, and we should try to apply them fairly, especially when applied to people we dislike.
Maybe those companies shouldn't include statements like this in their corporate filings then:
"The Twitter account @elonmusk is considered an official corporate communication channel."
Especially when Musk is tweeting from it things like changes to remote work policies.
Sure sounds like a discussion about workplace policies and enforcement to me.
You can dislike something and also not think it's illegal.
Is that workplace conditions?
Also, oddly enough, "official company communications" is not workplace conditions. You do not have a legal right to discuss company communications!
There is an increasingly troublesome number of people entering the industry who simply don't enjoy working hard. I think every company would do better to fire them.
I take it you are in a country that doesn't support freedom and basic rights.
I do not take company statements like that at face value, as they have their own interests to protect. However, it does leave the possibility that termination was not related to statements about working conditions.
The former employees may have a case here.
Regardless, will be interesting to see how this plays out. If I were one of those employees, I'd be talking to a lawyer. If I was one of the employees still working at SpaceX, I'd be talking about a union. We recently unionized at my employer, it is great to know we have each other's back.
If some of the comments in this thread is any indicator, people seem to believe it should be a protected class, which is extremely disturbing.
Two or more employees addressing their employer about improving their pay. Two or more employees discussing work-related issues beyond pay, such as safety concerns, with each other. An employee speaking to an employer on behalf of one or more co-workers about improving workplace conditions."
Would that letter fall under that? I think there is at least a somewhat credible claim it could (and also a credible opposing counterclaim that the form of speech was meant to be defamatory/disparaging, and not a protected activity), but I am not a lawyer.
The bit about Musk's behavior gets quoted because it fits with various agendas. But the letter itself is mostly a plea for making SpaceX a more inclusive workplace for people of different races, genders, and so on. To establish clear HR policies rather than current vague rules like "no assholes".
That's pretty far into the protected category of talking about improving workplace conditions.
Someone will get to have their name attached to the decision declaring any government interference in how a business is run unconstitutional.
Unions, 40 hour work week, desegregation, certainly employment discrimination, OSHA, the ADA? I worry people like Musk know they have the money to take it that far and that the supreme court would love to completely deregulate businesses.
Congress has the power to regulate commerce.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
There is a long road of interpretation from there to telling a manager of a restaurant that he has to hire black waiters. And the important bits of it all came in the last century. It is certain that the Founders never INTENDED for Congress to have its current authority.
It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court wants to create the chaos of overturning all of that to go back to the original definition. But it is within their official authority to do so.
We need to be wary because I, for one, totally believe they would make any regulations illegal given a case that gave them the chance.
Preventing chaos is clearly not something they feel responsibility for, they're making extremely high impact decisions against hard fought civil rights in favor of just about any other interested party.
You can't use "talking about improving workplace conditions" as an excuse for creating a hostile work environment by harassing your coworkers (BTW, sending unsolicited emails can very much be harassment). The NLRB has specifically ruled about this as part of the Google-James Damore case.
https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-rules-google-firing-...
You can't be fired for wanting to make your workplace better. You can be fired for making it worse for others. Often the same behavior can be seen as either or both. And courts exist to adjudicate these disagreements.
That said, I hate the example. However discussing that would be a derail, so I won't.
> while some parts of Damore’s memo were legally protected by workplace regulations, “the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.”
They didn't rule he was creating a hostile work environment by "sending unsolicited emails"; they ruled that the memo contained statements that were "discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment." This just doesn't apply here -- Damore's strongest argument was that he was discussing working conditions, but the arguments in his actual memo about "women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution" were the problem.
In this SpaceX case, they were very clearly discussing working conditions in a substantial part of the memo, and it's quite possible that is in fact protected speech. What muddies it up is adding the parts about also needing to tell Elon to stop being an ass on Twitter; that's probably not protected.
Completely agreed - this reads very much like a protected letter about working conditions, up until the authors made a terrible error by citing the primary action item as addressing Elon's twitter behavior, and putting working conditions as the secondary and tertiary demands. IANAL, but it seems like that will give a lot of ammo to SpaceX's lawyers in what would've otherwise been an open and shut retaliation case.
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.
This is the spirit of their demands and they made it personal.
Not a lawyer, but the primary action point being about the twitter behavior seems to significantly cast doubt upon what would've otherwise seemingly been a slam dunk labor law/retaliation violation case.
Some leaders, and following that some cultures are receptive of open criticism and disagreement. Others are absolutely not. It's up to each person to read the room.
SpaceX employees are the hand that's feeding Musk. Unless you think he can get to Mars by himself.
In fact, certain kinds of persons are prone to stir up these kinds of issues to distract from their own poor performance in their actual job. Which evidently isn’t internal “activism.”
The level of entitlement it takes to expect to be paid to undermine the organization that’s paying one ought to be shocking, but it evidently isn’t.
> The level of entitlement it takes to expect to be paid to undermine the organization that’s paying one ought to be shocking, but it evidently isn’t.
The employees literally wrote a letter saying an individual's actions were undermining the organization. The letter is an exhortation to protect SpaceX (in terms of finance and reputation) from Musk's behavior.
Also, SpaceX definitely has spun itself up as a “this is for the good of all humanity” type company and attracts employees who really are bought-in on the whole Grand Vision. To the writers of this letters, that Grand Vision > Elon the Person.
If Shotwell runs the company then why is Musk getting the heat?
SpaceX’s success is at least in part due to a culture of actually doing stuff. It’s difficult to create that culture, and the work to maintain it is done at the top.
Perhaps wokeness is incompatible with a culture of solving hard technical problems to the exclusion of all other concerns?
As a class. Individually they're absolutely powerless and class solidarity is very difficult to achieve, perhaps impossible. There's a reason labor movements tend to involve elements that physically coerce other members of the class (i.e., 'scabs') from crossing picket lines. Capitalists don't need very many specific members of the proletariat, they just need enough. Musk can fire his critics at will for a very long time without any real threat to his business unless his employees and any potential employees were to coalesce and oppose him en masse.
I doubt that they will do this. If I were in Musk's position I'd fire these people and I'd fire similar critics at twitter. Capitalist led enterprises are essentially monarchical. I don't like this but it is reality and it's best if everyone understands it. I prefer mask off to the alternative.
Collaborative organizational forms: on communities, crowds, and new hybrids https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41469-018-0036-3
Self-organization in Communicating Groups: the emergence of coordination, shared references and collective intelligence http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Papers/Barcelona-LanguageSO.pdf
There's never been much agreement on what marxism means. I believe Marx himself disliked the term and claimed to not be a marxist.
It saves a lot of stress to ask fired-up people what it is they're for (methodologically speaking) and not bothering to argue if they don't have a coherent or actionable answer.
It's a free country. Workers are free to quit, form their own collective and run it as they see fit. It's perfectly legal.
The next right step in technology (that would allow real progress in space exploration while having good environmental impact) is fusion energy. Developing chemical rockets to send a human to Mars seems like a misguided endeavor.
Without focuswe may run out of runway to develop and deploy clean energy technology - https://xkcd.com/1732/
Then it's just a logistics problem.
Plus whoever founds the successful human civilisation on Mars gets into the history books, fusion is a massive team effort that won't have one specific person remembered.
Making a self-sustaining city on Mars is impossible. And even if not impossible, certainly costs many tens of trillions of dollars, which is as good as.
1 million was estimated, which would cost $100 billion
“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.
Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…”
Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds— promising untold opportunities—beckon.
Nice try, but no. Employees don't feed employers.
It's not arrogance to want to work on something you're passionate about without a petulant billionaire figurehead actively devaluing your work.
Then they are free to seek gainful employment at any number of other spaceship companies.
You seem to assume that if you just show up at SpaceX's door with a briefcase and say "I want to work on space travel" that you are somehow entitled to a job there. No.
> without a petulant billionaire
Just admit you hate the guy for personal reasons. That's OK; you're allowed to have an opinion. Most people wouldn't purposely go work at a place that's run by a guy they despise then try to undermine said business. A better grasp of the employer-employee relationship would be helpful.
I never said anything like this. I said it's not arrogant to want to work on something you're passionate about without worrying about that work being devalued.
Yes, I dislike Elon Musk's behavior. Because I take personal issue with his actions does not preclude my ability to discuss SpaceX - in the same way that I discuss politicians whose views I don't agree with.
The letter in question is an exhortation from employees who are concerned that his behavior is undermining the business. Somehow, you've managed to twist this completely around into employees wanting to harm the business.
If SpaceX weren't there, they'd be working for someone else or themselves - he needs them more than they need him.
That's not the reality of the situation though. SpaceX's current staff isn't the last cohort of people who are willing to work for musk, and therefore are hugely responsible for the company and it's output. They're but cogs amongst the machine that Musk has built. Cogs are replaceable. Cogs don't function properly if not properly utilized by the engineer.
Musk is the engineer. He's the only person at SpaceX, or Tesla, who is actually irreplaceable. I know people rant and rave about "people aren't replaceable cogs" but they truly are, and that's good. If this wasn't the case for 99.9% of the world, society wouldn't function that well. I'm a cog, and I know that. It isn't shameful and shouldn't be viewed as such.
Elon Musk is not a god and his billion dollar ideas would be worthless were it not for thousands of people who have worked tirelessly because they believe in a common goal. SpaceX is nothing without the labor of others - they are the hand that feeds him, not the other way around.
I don't think people who are doing literal rocket science at SpaceX would "go back to designing widgets" if SpaceX folded tomorrow. This implies that they would somehow not be doing meaningful work without Musk's money?
Labor means nothing if not done for an intelligent purpose. For S0aceX employees, Elon Musk is the source of that intelligent purpose. Of course labor beyond what one man can supply will be necessary for any worthwhile pursuit. What matters is not the labor, but the source of the intelligent purpose that gives the labor a common goal and guides it towards it.
"As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand."
I don't know why anyone would think that that would go over well.
I think Elon's a tool, and this is a bad move, but to think someone should be protected from consequence of what they express is absurd.
It's his company, he makes the decisions. The market should respond if that's a big enough deal, and I'm 100% sure that's starting to happen (though it's exceedingly slow in the space domain).
I have to assume they knew when they penned the letter that they would find out whether their leader could take criticism and help them make a better company and product together, or react immaturely and let them know that their time would be better spent elsewhere. Seems they got their answer.
In any case, yeah, Musk owns the company and has the right to fire people for criticizing his business decisions. Bold strategy, we'll see how it turns out for him.
I think there's also this game that gets played now where internal dissent tries to whip up external dissenters to get their way within companies. Leaders need to decide if this is happening or not and act accordingly.
This is common and has been common for hundreds of years.
Burn the boss, lose your job.
It isn't rocket science.
This is cringe worthy. They knew exactly what would happen and expected to rally support online. I can't say with certainty what the ultimate goal was.
> That's like comparing rocket motors to lettuce.
No, they're clearly not that different. Both involve laboring for others (usually members of the ownership class), under some degree of compulsion. Though the nature of that compulsion can be different (e.g. using the threat of the whip vs. using the threat of starvation).
The benefit of "being able to change jobs" is often significantly overstated and highly contextual. It's not like anyone can just pick any job they like: they have to pick what they're offered. For some people, that can be highly restricted, to the point of being serf-like.
For things to be "not that different" implies they are interchangeable to an extent. I'd certainly be interested to know the result if you surveyed a random sample of 100 employed people and asked if they'd be willing to forego work to enter slavery.
We are not slaves, but our bosses are not our parents either.
In the UK recently the CEO of a ferry firm sacked all its workers in contravention of the law (they were required to give a 90 day consultation before any job losses, required to offer them other roles in the organisation). The CEO was summoned to parliament to explain what happen and said that "we didn't think the employees would go along with it, so we just fired them".
The government and employment tribunals are looking into collecting evidence in order to convict the CEO (criminal vs the usual civil penalty).
True. And you're not entitled to the job, either. The employer/employee relationship is a voluntary one, for both parties.
A company of any significant size, on the other hand, will be able to handle the loss of a single employee just fine.
There is a power imbalance between the two parties here and I don't think you can construct a solid argument while ignoring it.
(Most welfare systems have plenty of woeful traps, though, and I fall on the side of 'People should not lose their jobs over a disrespectful letter', but I haven't read it.)
I.e. the idea that employees is powerless is not true by inspection.
People also can always start their own companies, being an employee is hardly the only option. (People who start their own companies also quickly realize that their imagined power over other people is entirely nonexistent.)
Businesses that are trying to stay in business don't have time for you.
Seriously, Hacker News is not the site for you to engage in this kind of low-quality culture war. Stop doing it.
I do think Musk was within his legal rights to fire these people, but that does not mean it was the right thing to do or that he should be immune from criticism. Especially after he's made such a big fuss about free speech being so important.
Sure there is, and trivially so- your employer decided to fire you in both cases, in neither did 20000 hyperonline strangers fire you.
* The guy who got fired for cracking his knuckles in a way that looked vaguely like an "OK sign" which is offensive to some extreme left-wing people
* The data scientist who got fired for citing research on the efficacy of nonviolent protest
* The journalist who was pressured to leave his workplace for interviewing a black man whose views didn't match a certain narrative about what black people believe
* The professor who was suspended for saying a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English slur
Moreover, cancellation is "pressuring someone's employer to fire them". This is different than an employer taking offense to an employee's speech and firing them as a consequence.
If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.
> If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.
My comment was necessarily about Musk himself, but also about his defenders. Thus, it doesn't matter much whether Musk himself is a hypocrite based on any of his own statements, but rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.
I was explicitly noting that many cases of cancellation are unjust. Giving examples is appropriate.
> rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.
I’m sure some are. Any person with a large following will have many people who are hypocrites. A huge swath of the general population is hypocritical, so I would expect some hypocrites among Musk’s followers.
I don’t know how you could credibly argue that his supporters in general are hypocritical in a way which is independent from whether or not he is.
Since this is a closely held company there are different rules as well.
I think in the USA insubordination is neither here nor there, because US employers can dismiss people just because they don't like them.
The direct order has to be something important that is part of your job.
Less-serious insubordination should be dealt with by means of formal warnings, and processes to help the employee improve. But if, for example, I'm ordered to attend a customer meeting at 10:00am, and I refuse on the grounds that I'm planning to stay in bed until 11:00am, I can be fired summmarily. The employer would be well-advised to document everything scrupulously.
Ultimately an employer can fire anyone they want; HR processes and procedures can be rigged. In a legal dispute between an employer and a worker, the employer has the upper hand. If a worker wins an employment dispute, they might keep their job; but they now have a hostile employer.
That said, most places in the US are at-will employment, so you can fire your employees for no reason.
Any bets on whether (CEO == assclown) is a protected class?
some countries have decent labour laws that won't crucify you for disagreeing with your employer
These employees clearly messed up in that regard.
> It’s not known which SpaceX employees wrote the letter; the employees who posted the letter in the internal chat system have not responded to requests for comment.
It says it was in contact with people who saw the letter, but nowhere implies it's the authors.
> The letter generated more than a hundred comments in the Teams channel, with many employees agreeing to the spirit of the missive, according to screenshots of the chat shared by two sources who spoke with The Verge and asked to remain anonymous.
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/our-enforc...
I think a sticking point might be that the letter talked about bad behavior by Elon Musk in public, and a problem with the "no assholes" policy being vague and inconsistently applied -- but there weren't any concrete examples.
Possibly some things Musk has tweeted might reasonably be interpreted as creating a hostile work environment or something like that. But maybe he just shared an opinion the authors of the letter don't agree with. Or they're annoyed at him for smoking weed in his Joe Rogan interview. It's hard to know for sure. (Maybe SpaceX employees already know what all the elephants in the room are and it wasn't necessary to enumerate them, but as an outside observer it's hard to know the full context.)
EDIT: Everyone telling me that company employees are different from Twitter are missing the point. We know that. But he clearly doesn't care about free speech "absolutely" when he throws a fit that his employees are criticizing him.
In the first case you are hoping they will use their free time on your platform.
In the second place you are exchanging money to get them to do what you want them to do instead of what they would otherwise be doing.
If I pay a plumber to fix the toilet and he starts bothering me about ANYTHING BUT FIXING THE TOILET... he's gone.
Also I am not threatening his career, he is, he is choosing to take a principled stand and should understand the likely consequences and be willing to accept them.
It's a simple fact that SpaceX chose its CEO's public image over its mission statement and reputation. I hope future prospects realize that there is no stability or long-term personal growth to be found there unless they can keep their heads down and kiss ass.
But if they can't work anymore because they got fired from the one employer of their skill the consequences are quite severe. They have to learn a new field! Ideally I'd say people with this specialized skill set form a guild or union. The same thing that makes them vulnerable makes their employer vulnerable--the workers of that industry are highly concentrated, with high investment in skill development. Absent that, it's a tricky issue and I think it would be fair to say that at least a warning would have been in order before dismissal.
I don't know if the people Musk fired are in this category or not. If it were an office manager, for example, seems fine. if it is an engineer on some space ship esoterica, ouch.
Perhaps this isn't a good analogy, but if you yelling insults at the the neighbors makes it harder for him to fix the toilet, and he asks you to stop, would you still fire him for it?
Because you could argue, although with difficulty, that Musk tweeting stupid things makes it more difficult for SpaceX employees to do their work.
In practice, I've found it generally easier and wiser to leave a company with a stupid boss rather than ask the stupid boss to change, but I see why someone could try the latter.
Your point is a good one though, to continue the analogy, the plumber shouldn't want to come back. Erratic and volatile bosses are best avoided. I prefer it when they do this stuff loudly and in public so I can know to avoid them.
1. not qualified or diminished in any way; total.
free adjective: free; comparative adjective: freer; superlative adjective: freest
1. not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.
hmm I wonder what 'free speech absolutist' means. maybe that one's freedom to speak is not qualified or diminished in any way? their freedom to speak is total?
What's the alternative? Does a free speech absolutist need to never make judgements on what he hears from someone's free speech? If I hear a person say he wants to murder me and my family, do I still need to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner? Aren't I exerting some form of control of over him if I say you can't come into my home?
I think your view of the term "free speech absolutist" may make sense when analyzing the individual word meanings, but doesn't make sense as a phrase, and doesn't align with how self described free speech absolutists view themselves.
Most people aren't free speech absolutists, though, and I agree that they'd think there's a fundamental difference between employer-employee relationships and user-provider relationships as a whole. But it should be significantly harder for an employer to fire an employee than for a service provider to ban a user.
Being a free speech absolutist is meaningless if you are going to fire people the moment they say something you don't like.
If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.
Yes. Like not getting banned from the public square for giving your speech, or not getting arrested by the government for your free speech. No one has ever argued that truly free speech means no one can judge you on what you are saying.
> If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.
It would mean either that, or that you are using the phrase in a different manner than other people who use the phrase.
I find this whole exercise silly. I view it as
1) I don't like someone
2) Someone says he is X
3) To me, X means Y
4) Someone is not a Y
5) Therefore, someone is a hypocrite and (1) is justified.
Words have meaning, if they didn't then there would be no such thing as hypocrisy because everyone could just have their own little definition for a term or title they want to adopt but not be burdened to live by.
To Elon rules apply to thee and not me, these firings are text book hypocrisy.
1) The meaning of a phrase is the same as the meaning of stringing together the individual word definitions of the phrase.
2) There is a universally accepted, obvious definition of a phrase
I think you could reasonably call yourself a free speech absolutist, because you will never kick someone out of the public square for saying their peace, but you are still be allowed to not invite that person to your house for dinner.
What you describe is just regular ole free speech.
It's a situation of monopoly. If consequences to speech prohibit one from an entire category of human need (one's life, ability to earn a living, ability to find housing, etc), then those consequences are in fact limiting speech. A 'cancellation' that makes someone unemployable is much more a prohibition on speech than being fired from a single job without affecting one's general ability to get hired. If Musk were to now work to get the signatories of the letter blacklisted from broader employment this becomes an issue.
The problem is that platforms on the internet benefit from network effects and become quasi-monopolistic. If there were platforms with similar reach as Twitter that allowed the speech that Twitter does not allow, whether or not Twitter censors would be kind of a moot point.
I for instance am not a free speech absolutist. I think it's okay to deplatform people who are spreading misinformation about a global pandemic, or an election. But Mr. Musk apparently thinks that's bad.
So, we get to find out where he draws the line that he claims he doesn't have.
The real test for whether or not Musk is being a hypocrite is whether or not he censors critics of him on Twitter. That is an apples to apples comparison. I think it's fair to say that continuing to pay people who criticize you is a different matter.
I would expect nothing less from the woke-cancer employees. The productive members of the team must be relieved that the woke weight was shed.
or more simply: by using that word you sound dumb
then again, maybe that's how you want to identify. who am I to say
- Publicly attacking a man as a pedophile because he dismissed his submarine as an unworkable solution during the Thai cave rescue efforts.
- Cutting off analysts during a Tesla call, calling them boring and then soliciting fluff questions from the Internet.
Musk, like most free speech absolutists, is a hack. It's an argument used to allow _them_ to say words without repercussions.
If anything, being ruthless and deceptive are better traits to achieve this. Of course there are some exceptions. But I don’t think Musk is one.
I never understand this defense.
There are lessons one can take from successful people, but they not demigods. They're just people and people are often good and bad at the same time. Why do people defend them? If I make a controversial statement in a public forum, I should expect some uncomfortable criticism and they aren't entitled to any better treatment just because they can throw a wad of cash around.
if there are exceptions then it isn't absolute
About 1/6 of the pay comes from his pocket, since he owns about that much of the company.
> He may be founder & CEO. But he is an employee as much as those five.
His main relationship to Tesla is as it's controlling owner, not an employee, though, yes, he's also an employee. That's pretty different from every other employee.
Sorry, pls explain me this business logic. 1/6th is his ownership which is mostly tied to stocks. The pay comes from liquidity(arising from sales, selling bonds & any additional stock dilution from the organization) Unless I am completely misinformed about how business accounting works. Ownership doesnt pay unless they sell their stocks to pay(which he did through raising funding through stock hypothication in the past)
The fact Musk wants to turn it into a platform for free speech doesn't imply that he believes twitter has that burden of responsibility, only that he thinks it would be a good thing if they took on that responsibility.
It's also not hypocritical for Musk to say twitter would be a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech while also saying workplace communication is not a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech.
Now whether you or I agree with his stance on either of these points is another subject entirely, but it is not hypocrisy as other comments seem to be suggesting.
If you call your friend mean things on twitter and your friend decides to stop talking to you, freedom of speech has not been violated.
A job is little more than a business relationship where a person agrees to do labor in exchange for money. Either side of that relationship has the ability to terminate that relationship as a consequence of speech they might not like.
Either way, to act like this "business relationship" is perfectly reciprocal is either naive or malintentioned.
1. The inevitable inconsistency in application creates hypocrisy, which makes people upset.
2. It attracts political attention if/when the enforcement is politically biased.
3. It costs large sums of money that could be spent on other things.
4. It isn't actually necessary.
5. Public forums in which ideas can duke it out are essential for a healthy democratic society. Someone needs to run them, so if you decide to create an explicitly public forum open to everyone then you have a moral duty to protect and implement free speech policies
etc etc. Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a subset of the arguments that can be mounted.
But note that none of these apply to the case of employees criticizing their employer.
Speech isn't just about the act of saying, but also being able to be heard. Anyone can whisper to themselves in bed, but that is not speech in the political sense. Being able to speak where nobody hears is doesn't mean you have free speech.
Musk has only ever said he believes people should have absolute freedom of speech; he hasn't said people shouldn't face consequences for what they say.
Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?
Obviously, I am not saying what these employees are saying is equivalent, but cancelling somebody for what they say is not always cancel culture.
Being banned from Twitter is a consequence of your speech, but it's also restricting your freedom to speak. I imagine Musk feels that not restricting people's freedom of speech is more important than the consequence of banning them.
That doesn't mean he thinks there should be no consequences for speaking. Just that the consequences shouldn't limit your freedom to speak.
In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.
I'd expect them to go on a interview campaign after this actually. I think they'll be quite publicized and amplified.
The people banned from Twitter are still free to speak about whatever as well. Frankly I think SpaceX's actions limit speech more than a Twitter ban. Ex-Twitter users just have to find a new platform, at their convenience. Fired employees have just had there livelihood taken away and have to drop everything and find something new before their savings run out.
To be clear I think SpaceX was well within it's rights to fire these people, but as consequences go I see firing as far more consequential than a Twitter ban.
People who are fired from SpaceX have absolutely no access to the SpaceX communication channels they were fired for exercising the wrong kind of speech on.
Trying to destroy someone's life for a wholly-subjective slight is cancel culture (social cancer)
What limits freedom of speech _are_ the "consequences". It either is "absolute" in which case there are no consequences, or limited, in which case there are consequences (but then by definition it isn't absolute anymore)
If you fire someone for their opinion about their employer, or jail them for their opinion about the president, you can't be for "absolute" freedom of speech.
It's like saying "you're free to murder people, but if you do you'll go to jail".
In a strictly legal sense, you can be allowed to call your neighbor ugly. There will be no legal consequences, because of a law/constitutional amendment protecting free speech.
On a personal level, however, your neighbor might not like being called ugly, and retaliate by avoiding you or insulting you back. This is a consequence, but not a legal one.
I think, Musk view is that expression on Twitter should play a "legal guardian" type role in moderating content on the site, as opposed to say blocking negative content (and you could argue that as a site that makes money selling ads, blocking negative content could be the smart play, similar to the NYT not hiring idiots to write for them), but that the SpaceX employees, when fired by their employer, are facing consequences not on a legal but a personal level.
Of course, there's a very good chance this is just backwards rationalizing the erratic, irrational behavior of a emotionally unstable person.
This is a misrepresentation of the current "debate" taking place regarding free speech, a debate we have frequently on Hacker News. Nobody is threatened with jail for saying anything in the US, so if that was the primary bone of contention, the debate wouldn't exist. It's more about cancel culture, etc.
SpaceX isn't, nor will it ever be, a town square so the rules don't extend there. (Nor do they extend to Twitter the corporation itself.)
Musk's companies are not town squares. They are private entities and employees can be fired for insubordination, harassment, or abuse of company resources.
So... racism, porn, gore, etc are all ok? After all, they are within the letter of the law
No, it isn't. Popper's paradox only applies to the speech of parties which use force, rather than speech, to suppress the free speech of others. It was written in the context of Nazi Germany, and warning about the consequences of what is now called "free speech absolutism," when that freedom is co-opted by authoritarians who don't respect it (in other words, people like Elon Musk.)
Trying to suppress speech with more speech is simply how free speech is supposed to work.
You cannot compare at-will employment with public speech within the letter of the law.
Simplified:
Woke Cancer Culture != Protected Class
You simply cannot compare the employment relationship and open debate within the letter of the law.
No, I don't know that. This is explicit retaliation for what appears to be organizing around working conditions. That's protected.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172915/elon-musk-spacex...
These folks were unhappy with their working conditions. They're now free to find employ somewhere else that suits them better while others who want to be at SpaceX will replace them.
Markets are great!
The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is "So what?"
Yes, it's predictable. I don't believe people who wrote the letter haven't thought of this potential consequence and haven't felt any trepidation whatsoever.
So what if it's "predictable"? So what if it's legal? The point is not whether it's currently legal and whether it's predictable. The point is whether it's right.
How does stating that "it's predictable" address the very real and ugly problems in this whole situation?
Those are just two examples. There are more.
I disagree with the other assertion that you lose the moral right to destroy it. Does he have the moral right to fire his employees? I hope you'd agree with me that he does. And in this case he'd just be firing all of them.
You asserted that he has a moral right to destroy the company because he built it. He might have built it, but it doesn't matter if he now owns 54% or 90% or 10% of it, it stopped being just his. He can't just say "screw it, I'm bored, let's just burn it down to the ground".
That responsibility is even greater when it comes to the people who depend on you, who put their livelihood in their hands because they believe in your company. Not necessarily in you, but certainly in what you created.
Let me put it this way: if you knew that the person in charge of company X is a volatile, irresponsible person incapable of putting the good of the company before their own ego, someone who doesn't care enough for the company, would you go work for that company?
Musk's behavior is damaging the company. His employees are objecting to that, among other things. They are right to do so.
As for whether he has the moral right to fire his employees indiscriminately solely by virtue of having created the company? No, he doesn't, for the same reasons I described above.
Does he have the right to fire his employees for the right reasons? Of course, but that's not the case here. That's what I was pointing out when you asserted that he certainly has the right to fire them just because he built the company.
It might be perceived as right and acceptable to some folks because of their definition of morality and behavior, and it might be a common enough understanding of those morals in 2022. It’s PC. However, its not a good precedent for a company to tolerate because moral attitudes change.
If a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees wrote a letter saying that their CEOs behavior and values did not line up with their Christian values and behavior expectations, and for the company’s success, the leadership needed to condemn publicly the CEO’s actions? Would that be ok? What if they started actively proselytizing their morality to the other employees? Attempting to stir up dissent to the point where it was detrimental to company productivity?
This latest type of activism is PC, so that is the only reason its even discussed. Other activism like the above example is perhaps not as PC and most folks would not even care…or would be on the other side of the issue.
There are basically three problems the open letter highlights and asks the leadership to address. They're wrapped in polite, corporate-appropriate language, but I'll express them here in plain, blunt, non-PC words:
- SpaceX is supposed to be bigger than just Elon Musk. Elon's shitposting on social media is harming the whole company, and the employees will end up suffering because Elon keeps putting his ego before the company.
- The so-called leadership, as it happens all too often, keeps talking the talk, but they don't walk the walk. They say they care about making SpaceX a great place to work, but that's just bullshit as long as they turn a blind eye to the toxic fuckery at SpaceX.
- The company policies are bullshit. Using words like "asshole" to sound cool and non-PC does not replace having an actual policy. "Zero tolerance" means fuck-all if you selectively tolerate stuff, and "no-asshole policy" is either too vague or isn't enforced.
Basically, it boils down to being sick of the toxic corporate LARPing you see in a certain kind of techbro companies, where suits pretend to be cool and down with the techies by using words like "asshole" to show how they value "straight talk" and therefore you can totally trust them not to fuck you over.
I hope that was non-PC enough to help explain what the letter says, for anyone who hasn't actually read it.
On the off chance that you did read the letter and you really decided that it's no different from "a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees" demanding that their CEO behave according to their values, then I would like to point out two details you might have overlooked:
1. That would be perfectly understandable if the company itself claimed to hold and represent those values. If the employees of the hypothetical Every-Zygote-Is-Sacred LLC wrote a letter complaining about how their CEO kept tweeting about how much they loved and supported Planned Parenthood, then they would have a point, regardless of whether you or I were pro- or anti-abortion.
2. Regardless of what company policies say about the company values, many companies have a policies about social media, along the lines of "don't tweet anything that would negatively affect the company, not even on your personal account". People can, and do, get fired for breaking that policy. Complaining about how the CEO of the company keeps blatantly breaking that policy and actively harming the company in the process might be naive, but it's certainly understandable.
In conclusion: yeah, I think it's right and acceptable for SpaceX employees to complain about the unprecedented level of toxicity from their CEO.
EDIT: I accidentally a word in the last paragraph.
If you don’t like what Musk who owns the controlling interest in your company is doing, buy him out. If you can’t buy him out, move on and work someplace else. Acting in a disruptive manner because you are butthurt about your CEO/company owner is just ridiculous.
It's not okay for a small group of employees to try to impose their chosen morality, but it's okay for one person to impose his own morality on the whole company, because he owns the controlling interest in it.
More importantly, that same person who owns the controlling interest has no responsibilities or obligations towards the company as a whole.
Did I get that right?
And while we're on the topic of what each of us finds ridiculous, how about the fact that whenever someone suggests that a publicly traded company should do something slightly idealistic, people always bring up fiduciary duty towards the shareholders, but it gets overlooked when we're talking about one billionaire's "right" to drive his company's value into the ground by shitposting on social media, because "he's the owner, he can do what he wants".
Regardless of all that, one point that keeps being overlooked -- and at this stage of discussion, where it has been pointed out repeatedly, it's pretty obvious that it's being overlooked on purpose -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality. They're asking for two things: 1) hold Musk accountable for harming the company, 2) define what "no-asshole" and "zero tolerance" policies actually mean and enforce them.
That's not morality. That's common sense and consistency.
EDIT: Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?
Yes. Like it or not there is a difference between “the person who signs the paychecks” and the person receiving the signed paycheck. C-level employees and folks who own controlling interests don’t always have to play by the same rules, even the rules they themselves set for the other employees.
> one point that keeps being overlooked -- …(shortened for brevity)… -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality.
But they are, though. They are being disruptive to the business because of their morality. If you are unhappy with the bosses behavior outside the organization because of your moral code, but I, a fellow employee, am fine with or frankly don’t care what the boss does outside the organization—and then you spam me on company communication platforms trying to organize dissent based on your moral code you are in essence demanding conformity to your beliefs in a way that is disruptive.
> Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?
In my opinion a small group of employees being intentionally disruptive and causing public drama would be more likely to cause morale issues for me.
It’s not like Musk’s personality and tweeting was unknown. His political leanings shift and all of a sudden he and his behavior is intolerable? Please.
Well, at least you're finally willing to address my points about their letter not being about the morality, instead of hoping those points would go away ;)
When his political leanings "shifted", that's when his behavior started going against the company's own rules and actively damaging the company. Now, you might believe that the former is okay, because he signs their paychecks -- which is just another way of saying "might makes right" -- but I don't know how you justify the latter to yourself. That's another point you keep dodging: Musk's behavior is actively damaging the company.
You can shift the blame to "cancel culture", if you want, but the fact remains that certain behaviors can, and do, affect any company not just in terms of morale, but in terms of its ability to do business. This has been well known for ages and has, in fact, been exploited by one extreme of the political spectrum. It only got labeled "cancel culture" when it got turned against that extreme.
And that's the political aspect of this whole conversation that I was trying to avoid, because discussing politics with strangers is about as pleasant as a root canal, but since you can't let it go, then let's go: yes, regardless of whether the letter itself was about the employees' morality or not, certain "political leanings" are, in fact, intolerable.
When you say "all lives matter", for example, that's where you cross the line into outright racism. It's not like "all lives matter" is a new thing someone invented yesterday and that's why people are being fooled into taking it at face value. It's been around for quite a while, and it's extremely easy to understand that it's only ever brought up as a response to "black lives matter" and why that response is racist.
Racism should be intolerable.
And that's just one of the things Musk did on Twitter. So yes, regardless of whether or not this letter is about morality, his shift in political leaning should be considered intolerable. If you really think that "racism is not okay" is something that is being forced on everyone in SpaceX against their wishes, then you're basically saying the majority of SpaceX employees are racists.
And that is the crux of the controversy. Finally you admit what this is really behind this. Musk’s political leanings are intolerable to you and to these employees and you don’t want to tolerate his behavior. They are creating disruption because of their intolerance by spamming other employees to try and “convert” them.
The lovely thing about “at will” employment is that you don’t have to work at a place that doesn’t fit your values and a company doesn’t have to employ you if you don’t fit their values.
Tell that to James Damore.
Do people still really believe that is what he said? I'm all for calling out hypocrisy, but what he said was empirically true; their are professions that are male dominated, just are there are some that are female denominated--and the latter tends to have less scrutiny.
Male nurses are the exception and it is one of the most highly paid professions in the professional World, and yet NO ONE and I mean NO ONE has been calling for discriminatory hiring practices in the Medical Industry over that. And especially right now when they are having to under go horrible shift requirements due to a lack of staff and applicants.
This is one of the many ugly truths of about these narratives: they actually DO want preferential prejudices, but only in a way that favors those who tend to make the loudest (and often misguided and misinformed) noise with their narratives.
I did most of my undergrad with nurses and dated several, I don't envy their profession and the money while on the surface seems appealing is hardly going to make up for the seemingly hell they go through every week, especially during COVID. I respect them for what they do, and just accept that that level of triage and care-taking tends to be a female dominated domain.
Tech is a cushy, albeit tedious and often brain numbing monotonous career choice by contrast and I have no doubt that anyone who could work doubles during COVID in an ER could master writing basic scripts and using SO like everyone else does if they wanted. But they don't and they'd rather strike in order to reform their profession instead.
Why would time change people's opinions?
Anyone who wanted to read it for themselves had plenty of opportunity almost immediately. Anyone who didn't but instead had sources they trust, knew what those sources' opinions were almost immediately. Anyone who wanted to specifically seek out opinions that didn't match their own, could have done so more easily while it was all still fresh and it would have taken what maybe a couple hours.
It's not like this is an area of ongoing archaeological research where people keep discovering and translating new fragments that change how the fragments we already have seem to fit together.
Because it was pretty clear that after he made his points clear it didn't line up with what the media hitmen who were seeking to create: click bait rage-material.
After his rounds on several podcasts, Rogan being the most prominent, I looked into what was being said and it was absurd that they had derived this conclusion because of what I had listed above. The woke mob is to blame, sure, but it was the deliberate framing and inaction of the tech community as a whole who I think should bear some responsibility. I think the Bay Area 'dating scene' (or the lack thereof) is a direct reflection of the adverse effects of having a a heavy male bias within the tech Industry.
> My initial opinion was formed on what the media said. Then a couple years later that I read it for myself and saw that it did not align with the narrative.
I'd like to believe this retrospective view is a lot more common than it is, so I'm glad you honestly detailed your experience with the matter which I think is more common for those who'd bother to step out of their own echo chambers. But since people seldom these days, it's a total outlier.
Which is what they did.
All indications point to Tesla and SpaceX not being very open to 'change' initiatives that are employee-initiated.
Good job firing the employees that actually try to give a damn. The yes people are quiet and will stay. That's how you kill a company, slowly.
Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.
Did he attempt to supress the letter?
Freedom of speech != freedom from action
They have the power to work someplace else.
If you have a full pantry, go ahead and bite.
Or live somewhere where you get free food.
Wasn't that an old Soviet or similar joke? "In {country_name}, we have freedom of speech. What we don't have is freedom after speech".
Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, just like in the USA?.
Yes. In the USA you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell "Down with Reagan!", and you will still not be punished.
Weird the incestuous circles of tech.
I think what's really funny is that North Korea has freedom of speech in their constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~...
You have a right to speak. You just need to expect a bullet through your head shortly afterward.
Elon takes the “freedom from consequences” interpretation of free speech when it comes to his complaints about twitter and “cancel culture”, then turns around and effectively cancels these employees for speaking their mind.
“the more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.” (Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 506 (1946).
The Supreme Court has since backtracked on the Marsh opinion somewhat, but some states such as California have ruled that reasonable exercise of speech and of petition rights on privately owned shopping malls are protected activities.
What are the Terms of Service (EULA) of a public shopping mall? What are they for Twitter?
When you click on "I agree" to the terms of software, or a website, what did you agree to? Where do you click "I agree" when visiting a shopping mall?
There is usually an inconspicuously posted sign that indicates 'no loitering, no spitting, no foul language' etc. or they reserve the right to throw you out.
In Manhattan Community Access v. Halleck[0], however, the Court ruled against the premise in regards to a public access television station, and maintained that the station remained a private actor despite being a "public forum."
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Cor...
I understand the point, but I hate this saying. After all, what more is the government throwing you in jail for speech than a “consequence”?
The spirit of “free speech” does not give you a free pass to impose draconian “consequences” in response to speech you don’t like.
By that definition, everyone in the world has freedom of speech.
To focus the scope, it means openly criticizing the governing body is protected and not a punishable offense _by the government_ (people can and have been let go for political posts on social media written from their home, if the employer felt it was damaging to the company's reputation).
And no, literally billions of people in the world do not have that right.
SpaceX is not a town square and never will be, nor is any private company. I doubt even Twitter employees will be able to say what they like on Twitter without fear of being fired from Twitter. It's only about removing you from the platform.
There's no hypocrisy, it lines up exactly with his past actions and his past words.
Both are private property.
Both are private property, yes. And you are correct that twitter legally has as much right to do whatever they want with their product and restrict it however they want as United Airlines does. That's not the point being made here at all and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
The parent comment I originally replied to was saying "how can twitter even he a public square if it is a private company, that's a contradiction". And I was just saying that there is nothing preventing a private company from having a product that behaves like a public square, hence that isn't a contradiction or an oxymoron.
Thus stands the difference. Capisce?
If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company.
If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination, but also abuse of company resources and harassment of employees who just want to do their job and not cater to the worthless feelings of people who have crippling self-esteem issues.
Dumping the woke cry babies is the right decision here. Engagement only serves to embolden work cry bullies who are used to getting their way.
At its core we are discussing are situations that are dire enough that a decent fraction of the company feels their leadership is fucking around and hurting the company. Whatever angle we look at it, the company will already be segmented and toxic: it couldn’t stop its leadership from fucking up for whatever length of time, leadership doesn’t give a shit about employees reaction, and managers can’t properly gauge nor progressively address the internal repercussions.
“Focusing on the mission” is already compromised at that point, and you’ll need to chose between the leader that doesn’t give enough shit, or the employees that stepped up too prominently.
By reacting emotionally and using terms like "work cry babies" you weaken your own ability to think critically and fairly about this. You are also more likely to derail the conversation and prevent debate with people who may disagree with your views but could be open to them. Save these sorts of insults and grandstanding for reddit and twitter and keep them off of hn.
> If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company.
I am willing to explore your argument that engaging with members of a company that are overly critical of that company hurts the company in the long term. Can you cite some examples?
> If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination
The question I have is not if the company did or did not have a legal right to fire them. I'll leave that to the legal professionals. Rather I wonder if engagement with dissenters in this case would be harmful or productive. I tend to favor the notion that systems which attempt to maintain unity by casting out those who offer dissenting public voices tend to become monocultures and echo chambers. I don't discount the value of monocultures and echo chambers, they can be extremely valuable, but I don't see how SpaceX benefits by building one.
Harmful.
First, Any dissent around company product choices is acceptable but comes with a risk depending on the level of expression. Smart companies learn to cultivate this kind of dissent and provided it doesn't detract from the mission itself, its probably the right decision.
Second, the company should fire on the spot any dissent that is not directly work related. It detracts from the mission.
The petition in question violated both precepts of allowable dissent.
For #1 let's say for the sake of argument that the dissent was honest, and strictly trained at the company's tactics in marketing (i fundamentally disagree, see #2) . If the marketing tactics are a failure, that is the board's prerogative to change CEO. However, the petition is violating the allowable levels of expression by usurping power from the Board itself. That is a level of expression many levels above the petitioner's role or level in the org, extremely noisy (affects all employees), and public. The petition literally violated all norms around tolerable dissent, and should be fireable on the spot.
For #2, the petition asked silence CEO speech which is not 100% product related. The hint of this is that the petition is loaded with complaints about "public behavior" and "embarrassment" which are clues into the intent is for this to be a political decision to intervene, not a product one. Words like embarrassment when targeting an individuals are meant to discuss individuals, not products. More importantly, when the petition targets speech which includes a number of opinions that are personal, and not product, this becomes political.
Let's take examples of each:
For #1, would people would get fired on the spot if employees circulated a petition saying they wanted the CPO to be "reined in" for refusing to carry Elise chassis in models subsequent to the Roadster ? The answer is yes.
For #2 This used to be very rare in the past, so it was never tested until recently.. I believe the most high-profile firing has been the firing of the Red Bull - US CEO and US Head of HR by the German board. They were engaged in activism not work related, and both got the boot.
A long time ago when I was a young engineer I worked at a few hundred person startup. Many of the employees of this startup were from cultures spoke bluntly and embraced cynicism and pessimism. Every two weeks the CEO would have an all hands meeting. For any hour he would answer any question from any employee. Many of these questions were, to my American ears, as disrespectful. The question might assume the CEO took a particular action for some sinister reason such as having stolen company funds and getting ready to fire everyone. Or just blunt say to the CEO "I think all the executives are incompetent and should be fired". The hardest questions were questions about "if market changes and we are fucked, here are indicator the market is changed and we are fucked."
The CEO would listen to the question and then respond. The responses were never defensive, never rude but honest and straight forward. As far as I could tell everyone felt better after those meetings and respected the CEO more for openly facing and addressing as best he could the fears that everyone at the company had.
> Second, the company should fire on the spot any dissent that is not directly work related. It detracts from the mission.
I do consider this dissent at SpaceX to be work related. Musk does significant harm the SpaceX's mission with his public actions. If he was an employee he would probably be fired, but the issue is that SpaceX can't really fire Musk. There is no good action the company can take. I assume they have privately asked Musk to take actions which harm the company less and I assume that worked as well as when the SEC had Musk agree to pass all tweets through is legal dept. before posting. How to you foster dissent when the major goal that dissent is something which is not actually achievable and would derail the company. I hope this serves as a wakeup call to Musk and he looks at the problems he is causing by his behavior and decides that making life multi-planetary is more important than say calling a rescue diver a pedo or smoking weed on the Joe Rogan show.
Regardless, businesses don't care what you did in the past - for that, your reward is your compensation - you are hired for what you do tomorrow.
Irrelevant to being hired or kept on as the president of the company by the owners, of which Musk is only 17% (AFAICT). If more owners of the company do not want him as an employee (president, whatever), then they can fire him.
Whether that would be a good idea or not is something else. (Apple 'fired' Jobs in the 1980s.)
He even went with him to Russia before SpaceX was founded,
Mike G also started the Space Development Agency, with a goal of funding govt LEO constellations with specifications matching Starlink.
Vision maybe. Politics are irrelevant to work. It is impossible to achieve 100% alignment in an organization of more than one person. And even then I'm not sure it is possible.
I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you.
Yeah, guys, it might be legal (maybe not) but it IS hypocritical. If you want to champion free speech you can't do this shit. Stop with the debate team bullshit and exercise some common sense.
Generally, It doesn’t apply to ‘privately owned companies’ Just like how these employees are free to criticize their employer it does not mean there are freedom of consequences and employers are just as free to fire their employees.
That is why they stay anonymous and criticize their employer just like what happened with Coinbase.
Free speech protects individuals from government prosecution only. It has nothing to do with employment or labor law.
[0] Now Elon has recently said in that video call to Twitter employees that free speech doesn't mean a right to an audience, but it's hard to square that statement with his previous statements.
This is incoherent. Musk can express that he wants Twitter to moderate according to free speech principles--that's not the same thing as asserting that Twitter has a legal responsibility to moderate according to free speech principles.
Moreover, censorship doesn't require the censor to be the State--a private platform can censor content, and they often do.
Per the ACLU:
> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.
Per Wikipedia:
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions and other controlling bodies.
This is untrue. He believes that the Twitter _product_ should be run like a public forum, town square, shopping mall, or whatever you want to call it.
> and instead guarantee an audience for people
Also untrue. Let's use Trump in this example. He doesn't believe everyone should be forced to listen to Trump. He believes everyone should be able to access everything Trump has ever said on the platform (barring illegal things that must be removed).
You're just seeing the psychic ripples of all the Elon fanboys and pseudo-libertarian technofascists wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of their savior turning out to be a pretty vanilla corporate capitalist.
After all the chest-thumping and general toxicity I find their discomfort endlessly amusing.
No doubt it is amusing, but it doesn't compare to the detractors having a meltdown after his every move.
Why let a pesky little thing like intellectual honesty stand in the way of jumping on a good hate bandwagon?
I'm unclear how that means I should be able to say whatever I want at my job and still keep the job. For example, if I work at Tesla and say I think electric cars are stupid and the ICE are superior, I would imagine I would be fired. I don't think that's a free speech violation, but rather that my opinion is in conflict with the goals of the company.
Criticism of Musk's action here may come both from those who in fact are in the "free speech absolutist" camp and want both the Twitter deplorables and the corporate gadflies to be protected from retaliation, and from those who are just in the latter position and want the opposite pattern, but I think only the first group can bring a charge of hypocrisy (still incorrect, as it ignores the orthogonality) without it making themselves guilty of higher-order hypocrisy.
No, not really, since this has very little to do with free speech. Free speech does not mean that you can communicate with your superiors, or in fact any other person you're in some relationship with (spouse, family member, etc.), in arbitrary ways with no consequences.
if we want to somehow generalize the ethos of whatever is legal should be allowed (so basically he thinks Twitter is too strict) then we might conclude that he favors more "open dialogue" and this does feel contrary to firing employees for criticism. (though I haven't seen the letter, it's possible the authors/signers explicitly said something that simply make it clear that they won't continue to work in this or that way, and the company decided that okay, the company won't change so they have to go anyway - see the Gebru ultimatum)
There was a saying in Eastern/Communist Europe (Poland?):
Do not think. If you think, do not write. If you write, do not publish. If you publish, do not sign (your name). If you sign, do not be surprised.
You can vote for a new government but in the end what happens in your workplace will have more consequences on your life.
criticism should be seen as an indication of engagement. When your employees don't criticize and don't care then you have a problem...when people start phoning it in and not giving their best at work because apathy has set in.
And I'd also be willing to bet cash that all these employees were very low level, likely new hires out of college, and are all of the political activist type. Because for all his bluster, Musk really hasn't done anything THAT objectionable besides openly shit on Democrats. (No, I don't believe the bogus sexual assault allegation from an anonymous friend of a friend, there's no evidence).
Working for Musk - no. You already knew everything.
We created a rule that politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work. A couple of people quit in response, and morale improved dramatically.
If one wants to be a political activist, perhaps go find a job that's better suited for that type of behavior.
I don't care about the political or religious beliefs (if any) of people I work with, and they shouldn't care about mine. If I really cared, then we could have off-work discussions...which I've done a few times (and they were respectful and productive).
I also think it's important to say that I'm not in the US of A, where political discussions seem to penetrate every aspect of life.
Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? (E.g. pronouns in email signatures or having the company take a public stance on some contempory issue like BLM) And is what you're advocating for considered "lefty"? And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Then it's woke.
Who is doing that? Please cite something.
> And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago?
Where does 20 years ago time frame come from? That's pretty arbitrary and seems more to be based on your feelings than fact.
We've all heard there are facts and opinions, but there's a 3rd category I think: definitions.
And this is awful :(
It's normally the Worst Argument in the World: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
Arguing about whether a definition is particularly useful or outlines a cluster of similar things can be good, but it's rare.
Certainly sometimes it's good to debate a word but this crossed the line into incessant requests for people to do work to come up with ever more definitions and citations.
From my perspective you asked "What does woke mean?" and I drew from my personal experience to answer how I have seen it used. The examples I choose of pronouns in signatures and having a BLM position were very common ones that also occurred at my current company.
Does that make sense now? I'm not actually sure what you want a citation on... that people push for pronouns in email signatures? That this does not have a direct and obvious link to workplace performance? That pushing for such was unheard of in 2001? That this is how people use the word "woke"?
Were they talking about green peace? Climate change? Save the whales? Homelessness? Air pollution? Food preservatives? Obesity? Genocide? Under-representation of Jews in the NBA? No.
No apparently you can not be actively working to better those situations and you’re just fine and definitely not part of the problem. Oh but this one cause? Yeah we declare you’re part of the problem.
Sorry but there are a lot of causes in the world. You simply cannot pick and try to guilt me into actively supporting it in leau of all the other causes I might be personally connected with.
That was quite the insulting seminar.
Wokeism (ˈwəʊkɪzəm), noun: 1) a type of progressive activism whose adherents like to play word games about whether or not they exist.
Humor aside, when there's even dictionary and Wikipedia entries about wokeism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke) that outlines common themes of woke progressivism, that sort of rhetorical trickery just comes off as disingenuous.
Arguing for “inclusivity” in a corporate setting is delusional wokeism (as companies are exclusionary by definition, they don’t hire most people)
Seems like we've redefined "political" to mean "things that make me uncomfortable."
If almost everyone would agree on the turdishness given a couple of facts on the case (none of this "heard from a friend of a friend" bullshit) then discussing and raising might be possible (though I'd probably still just leave).
But if people's assessment of the truth of that statement will depend hugely on that network of beliefs and values called "worldview" as well as exposure to different facts on the subject... then it's going to be hard.
Like leading an effort to unionize? I know that's socialism talking, but democracy in the workplace is as important as it is outside of it. And the free sharing of ideas (up to a point) is paramount for that process. A company could well benefit from active and engaged employees that make a company and its goals their own.
Of course, if your company has a top-down leadership culture fostering exchangeable employees (and let them feel that), then maybe employees that do have an opinion about the company and its leadership are indeed "toxic".
This is a broad term that different people might understand differently. Please define it first, then use it.
> politics and religion
This is off-topic. The mentioned discussions and disagreements at SpaceX were unrelated to these matters.
In general, it is in my opinion dangerous to say that an opinion different than the one of the boss is unwelcome at a company. This is how cults and autocracies operate. It amplifies the opinion of the leader and unjustly silences everything else.
Respectful discussions about the topics of disagreement are in my opinion essential for a company to preserve its defined ethical standards and not deteriorate into a community ruled by herd mentality and groupthink influenced predominantly by a single person.
Not with proof, just hearsay.
This is political.
That's not what seemed to have happened here. Basically a bunch of employees said they were embarrassed by Musk's behavior. It's like saying the CEO is a clown. If you expect to still have a job after expressing publicly such opinions, well that's very naive.
Yeah sounds totally believable.
Seems very believable to me.
And who benefited from that? Not talking about it is politics. You cannot avoid that. It's literally impossible.
Also, if someone does that to me, the first thing that comes to mind is "Fuck off". Unapologetically.
Not a good way to convince people.
The method in this case, writing an open letter, seems like a way to weaponize network effect and have an outsized influence over say simply talking to your manager or using an internal feedback system. I think SpaceX is right to say this causes social pressure internally to sign on and not be on the wrong side of the "if you're not with us you're against us" attitudes of politics today.
Hard to disagree with that.
> the exact issues you care about could be very different from someone else's and having all these discussions is pretty distracting.
Definitely, which is part of why women and minorities get ignored and hence exploited when the status quo is embraced.
> weaponize
God I'm so tired of people's exaggerations. Nonsense.
its *
How would you feel if you asked me about a hot button issue important to you at work and I declined to talk about it. Would you approach HR?
No it's not. Trying to change society is politics. What you're saying is akin to "silence is violence" which is just as ridiculous.
Well, no. Not talking about something, is nothingness, silence, an absence of speech. I can demand that void of speech be filled with literally anything.
At some point common sense kicks in and you realize that talking to your wife about the colour of her favourite mug, is not politics. You realize, deciding what bread to eat for breakfast hasn't been calculated on how many votes Ron Paul got in the last primary, or whatever.
Making politics everything and making everything about politics, turns it into a religion. It isn't one, it's not a cosmology, and it'll never satisfy as a 'theory of everything'. Politics is one category out of many.
It's just a method of wrangling everybody's desires together for the purpose of governance. That's it. It's got nothing to do with coding up a widget for some factory and it's economic aim to serve the entire population with quality mugs at a cheaper price.
if there is a social conflict (and boy are there social conflicts), not talking about those social problems is tacit support for the dominant position. pretending that one's work life can be neatly compartmentalized and has no bearing on the rest of the world is a fantasy of those who value their own comfort over the well being of others
Why are we surprised when employees then want to talk politics?
And yet, all I've heard from the left over the past decade is that corporate employees have no free speech because oh it's not covered by the first amendment, as if that gave you the right rather than acknowledging it, and how oh actually it's not a free speech issue, it's a safety issue, or whatever excuse of the week, and anyway the company can do what it wants regardless. (In this one instance only, of course.)
So! Fine, normally I'd be against this sort of thing of people being fired for voicing opinions, but in this case there is a big heaping of schadenfreude involved.
Leopard fence was good for something after all, was it!
The solution is, of course, employment protections and unionization, but 'free-speech liberals' aren't actually very liberal, and dogmatically hate both of those things.
I'm much more in favor of unionization than you'd think, but I don't think unions are a reliable defense from these kinds of leopards.
Most on progressive twitter though were pro Damore being shot into the moon, but are defending these SpaceX activists (by CORRECTLY pointing out that Musk is a hypocrite with his interpretation of 'free speech')
And most on HackerNews were defending Damore, yet today think it's absolutely correct to expect to be fired from a private company for the smallest sign of dissent.
I don't have proof it's the same people, but the upvotes tell a narrative.
Me, personally, I'm in the first group. If you work for Musk you have to understand he's a petulant child who will take every slight way too seriously than what would be expected from The Richest Man In The World. And I'm not even mad that he's a hypocrite. I know he is. Everyone with a braincell knows he is.
But it is wild to see how deep Musk's cult goes that he can inverse Eurasia and Eastasia and people just fall in line.
Also, in the end Damore's continued employment became political thing, so it was probably inevitable he had to go. But the form - especially the crazy doublespeak - of his firing was the problem.
if executives were bringing these topics into the company through their outside interactions on twitter, would it be a violation of the policy?
> Activist employees are toxic to company culture.
I would argue that musk's personal "activism" (or whatever you want to call his twitter account) is far more harmful than this letter is to company culture
Does that include Musk himself, with the way he's been acting on Twitter lately?
I think ESG is the overarching umbrella that has compelled corporations to normalize activism.
One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter.
Do we know in which department the sacked employees worked? For all we know, they could have been employed in marketing or HR, not exactly the area that "builds cool shit" but often those that are active on social media and bent on bringing SJW politics into the working place.
I didn't see any SJW politics in that letter but concern that Elon's behavior would reflect badly on the company itself. Which is certainly true but if you have a megalomaniac boss I guess you also need to expect to be fired for telling the truth.
Is that what you mean?
Edison and Tesla were definitely NOT equally capable. Tesla was an absolutely genius inventor and scientist, and Edison was a genius businessperson and good inventor. (Or something like that, TBH it wasn't Edison's biographies I poured over in highschool!)
Tesla received life-long backing and support from Westinghouse, major investment from JP Morgan, and more.
Edison tried, and for a chunk of time, did succeed at pushing Tesla out of the way, but I'd strongly argue that the things that sunk Tesla were not ways that Edison pushed him out of the way, nor would I argue that Edison ever really succeeded at pushing him out of the way.
That kind of confidence is pervasive in every aspect of their being. They don't have room for doubt.
Reading about wartime generals solidified the thought in me. Many generals like Patton weren't even very gifted strategically, but they were confident and authoritative in their decisions. Oftentimes, that's enough to pull off a victory.
It is literally just wasting resources.
Tell that to Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. They’d love to know. . .
They’re built to serve government. Any extra customers they get is just the icing.
Um. They are. SpaceX had almost as many commercial launches as gov ones last year.
Its getting taxpayers money because the official money hole called the NASA can't manage to launch anything in space anymore.
On the other hand, there has to be some capacity for this type of discussion to occur. Musk owns less than 50% of SpaceX, and I generally think employees should have some manner of input into the operations of the company they work for. History is full of cases where the justified party tried to convey their problems politely, were ignored or quietly silenced, and had to raise the problem loudly to get any traction. I think it's a reasonable desire to want to work for SpaceX, but not want someone's first reaction to hearing that you work at SpaceX to be bringing up whatever stupid thing Elon has done this week.
If someone has the answer on how to find this balance, please popularize it. In the meantime, I've left the large corp I was at and joined a small company with 7 others where I don't have to deal with such problems or such activists.
Like a lot of things, the blame for this falls on the news media.
If the mefia ignored him rather than running a story every time he runs his mouth the world would be a better place.
The man is the richest person on the planet. The media is going to report on what he says because, you know, he's the richest person on the planet.
I heard the exact same arguments about how the media shouldn't cover Trump spouting off, and it's absurd for the exact same reasons.
These people hold incredibly sway over industry, politics, public policy, etc. Hell, Musk's behaviour has led to the Texas AJ investigating Twitter! Not shining a light on their behaviour would be journalistic malpractice.
The very idea that journalists should just ignore these people when they behave badly betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of journalism in an open and democratic society, while also failing to appreciate how much sway these people have over the way our world works.
90% of what they report on Musk is irrelevant.
But let's face it, you don't actually care about any of this. It's clear from the comments you're shilling for Elon. The thing I don't understand is why.
That wasn't an angle I'd thought of (making the rich and powerful in general seem like they are accusable) and it makes things a lot of people have said in the last make more sense, so I thank you for suggesting it and have an upvote.
That said, the pattern of what the media publishes about celebrities in general, and Musk in particular doesn't fit. I am also skeptical it actually accomplishes this goal or that the benefits outweigh the costs.
> It's clear from the comments you're shilling for Elon. The thing I don't understand is why.
Taking this in the most charitable light of "what is motivating you to make all these somewhat pro-Elon posts over the last day?" I did some introspection.
Unfortunately, the answer is very long and complex and I couldn't figure out any way to condense it without being misleading and giving you the wrong impression (seriously, I tried! Unless you have a similar memeplex every shortening pattern matches to something I don't believe!).
I can say a bit about what the reasons aren't: I gain nothing tangible for this (I hold no stock in any Musk companies and am not employed in anything relevant). I have no person connection to Elon and he may indeed be an arsehole, I don't know. Colonizing mars is a fools dream. TSLA is overvalued by at least 2x.
The other 50% are not woke.
Also I genuinely think you are an idiot.
Musk has done great things but these days I think he’s at his lowest point.
/I’ve said this about three times now in threads like these.
Tesla is about to explode in production with their "biggest building in the world factory" in texas, berlin and china.
SpaceX is about to achieve the holy grail of the space industry (an affordable and reusable rocket) not to mention Starlink.
Also, "reusable" doesn't matter as much as "affordable" for rockets. I am waiting for one of the smaller companies with a dirt cheap rocket to eat SpaceX's lunch.
This is the typical sleight-of-hand that comes at Musk companies. The atoms in the fuel are cheap, but the process of turning those atoms into usable fuel is very expensive. This is the case for almost all rockets.
The Soyuz is partly cheap to launch because it doesn't need a lot of special fuel handling.
The idea somehow that Soyuz is cheaper than Falcon-9 is laughable.
Are you being obtuse on purpose? The atoms of the fuel, really? Where can I buy fuel by the atom?
If you want rocket fuel from those chemicals, you are going to have to pressurize them and cool them or warm them, and you need a lot of energy and equipment to do it. That is the expensive part. Often, rocket fuels are heavily pressurized orsupercooled, and supercooling a gas is expensive. That allows you to store more energy in a given volume.
Everyone can see his tweets, public statements and interviews. Musk is doing a great job embarrassing himself without the help of “the media”.
I'd like to know though, what statement do you think is "embarrassing"?
Combined with the risks from their autopilot system and their mistreatment of workers and their CEO being a right wing edgelord? There's plenty of reasons to think Tesla might not be on a good path.
An electric car, competently built, will wow most folks. Remember that the satisfaction numbers are comparing apples to oranges, given the limited competition Tesla has at the moment.
Many people like the things Tesla does well enough to not be bothered by the things it does poorly so are satisfied.
Tesla seems to have the best EV drivetrain in the business (I'm counting the battery as part of the drivetrain) and the best charging network, but seem to be worse in most other aspects.
My guess is that the other car companies will catch up on EV drivetrains faster than Tesla can catch up on the rest of a car.
This depends a lot on the factory / year of production. E.g. the 2021/2022 from Giga Shanghai have great quality. Of course, consistency is the key, Tesla has to achieve it across all of the factories.
And I have no idea what 'risks' are you talking about regarding autopilot.
Other than tire rotation, cabin air filter change, and wiper fluid refill, our cars have required no maintenance.
But arguing from anecdote doesn't really help.
There are plenty of billionaires with unpopular politics. Only a few are in the news. That is by choice.
Unfortunately for civil discourse, it’s more effective to create controversial messaging that resonates with your followers, than sanitized messaging that is generally inoffensive. Controversial messaging makes your supporters increasingly loyal and attentive, as the noise from vocal ‘haters’ just keeps feeding your base. It’s perverse, it’s toxic, it’s exhausting but it works.
Look at the price earnings ratio of Tesla. What else is it but the world’s largest meme stock? His messaging vibes very strongly with Wall Street Journal readers and the Reddit trading community.
Musk has been more unhinged in his online activities than ever in the past six months or so, coinciding with a 45% slide in TSLA share price. Hypothesizing that his social media addiction is central to his 'success' would be pretty easy to test by simply comparing TSLA's performance to another auto manufacturer, e.g. Ford or GM. Doing that, TSLA is not showing any advantage - all three have suffered about the same amount of share price decrease.
So just looking at the numbers, it's clear Musk could just focus entirely on productive work, skip the 'influencing' and wanton reputational damage to the businesses he manages, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. TSLA and the others would arguably be in the same place if the average person had no idea who Elon Musk was.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lashing-out-recess...
If anything, Musk should focus entirely on the influencing and stop making decisions about product (see [1]) -- that is what he is good at!
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15347233/musk-attributes-...
His followers show up to the annual meeting like a pack of cult members.
None of this is to say he's a bad guy, he seems like a good guy. But he's a marketing genius too. No vitriol spewing required.
Those aren't the options. You can - and many do, as a matter of course - create effective, powerful messaging that is not 'sanitized' or offensive. You can see it all the time on HN.
What does SpaceX do again? Uh Oh.
I say as I type into a seperate social network. It's hard to escape, honestly...
1 - make it uncool (no more james bond smoking in cinemas, packaging that reminds of diseases)
2 - make it expensive (tax the hell out of it)
3 - make it a hassle (no smoking in closed spaces, airplanes, universities etc)
The thing is, both weed and social networks became popular right about when smoking stopped being popular. So maybe there is an extra step, a perverse one:
4 - provide a substitute addiction.
Personally, the thing that got me to quit smoking weed was getting really into brazilian jiu-jitsu.
It may be possible to generalize this.
Besides that, I really like your post, the 1st 3 points are solid. ^_^
It is a slippery slope.
What's next?
No more cup cakes because sugar gives you diabetes?
How about no more hip hop music because it largely celebrates violence and influences kids to join violent gangs?
No more cars because AOC might whine with another 24 tweet wall of bar-stool wisdom?
Internalizing externalities is one of the primary functions of government. I’m incredibly happy I rarely have to smell cigarette smoke.
What are Elon Musks accomplishments? His ability to get financing? Hiring the right people to push the success of SpaceX and Tesla? His ability to inflate the stock price of his company (above that of a historic bull market).
This isn't a cynical comment, I'm honestly trying to understand his actual accomplishments other then the ancillary praise one gets in America just for getting rich(er).
Probably this. Its not easy to do.
I think there is also something to be said about the singularity of vision Musk brought to these companies. Its easy to dismiss (and I haven't been a fan of him much since the whole Thailand incident) but its one of those annoying aspects that eludes the desire of developers' (i.e. the average reader of this site) desire to quantify everything.
It makes me think of the story of Steve Jobs after his return to Apple, where he called a meeting of team leads, made a quadrant on a white board with the edges labeled "desktop" and "portable" on the vertical, "consumer" and "professional" on the horizontal, and demanded the company only produce 1 product to fill each of the four squares, eliminating the rest.
I'm obviously not a fan but I agree he likely deserves a lot of credit for this. But at the same time, don't a lot of people participate in hiring decisions throughout a company? The board? Other executives?
It irks me that Musk should get all the credit of what is undeniably a team effort.
If you're actually curious there is a good book on SpaceX early days.
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53402132-liftoff
If you read the book I think you'll agree, desperate is the correct word in the title of that book and Elon did plenty.
I still can't believe they're landing rockets backwards. When I took control systems it was the canonical example of an unstable system. Guess those books need updating. :)
Regarding the landing rockets issue, I've found BPS Space's youtube series on trying to land a model rocket in a similar matter very enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMT44LFUjs
The word we use to describe people-managing at this high level is "leadership".
Fisker Automotive and Better Place are two electric car startups that were founded after Tesla that you've probably not heard of, even though between them, they raised close to a billion dollars.
The reason why he gets so much praise is because he tends to do quite well—better than other smart folks that are similarly resourced (i.e. access to VC capital)—in industries notorious for high rates of failure or where it is hard to break even.
Social media is the effect, not cause, of his bad behavior.
He was known to be an impulsive bully long before he ranted on Twitter.
Yes, but could mean a lot to the talent pool discussed in the open letter, in the face of growing competition to SpaceX and Tesla, which ultimately will impact the product, revenues and value. Seems shortsighted or almost as if he’s done working on hard problems.
Umm no. Just no. Ignore media hype and look at the numbers - SpaceX is arguably closer to monopoly in all areas of its business than ever before.
Musk is none of those things.
I didn’t say he is Howard 2.0 Hugh’s, I said he’s teetering on the edge of it. If in a few years he goes full Hughes would anyone actually be surprised?
Elon Musk is literally the child of an apartheid emerald mine owner.
"After Maye and Errol divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna"[0]
"Errol returned to South Africa with a half-share in a Zambian emerald mine, which would help to fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers." [2]
[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/africa/elon-musk-so...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20211122143742/https://www.busin...
And at one point his father made a small investment in a mine. And even that is grounded on shaky evidence.
This mine investment might have been profitable (we dont know) but the idea that his family had some waste emrald mines is nonsense and that investment certainly didnt make the family rich.
And given their bad relationship, Elon lost support from his father when he came to US/Canada.
Not his entire career, his later decline became famous due to the scope of wealth and influence that allowed him to indulge in some truly eccentric behavior, but he didn't build said wealth & influence peeing in jars.
> never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane)
Never built anything? How about Las Vegas? Or the several companies he founded and ran successfully across wildly divergent fields? The man designed, built and flew an aircraft that broke world speed records at the time.
> inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams
Seriously? Do you not know Musk's family background?
Actually the more I think about it the more I think mint2's comparison was apt, Musk really is a Hughes-like figure, quite brilliant in ways, but with a powerful thirst for publicity and corresponding need to control his image. I could see his paranoid tendencies tending to dominate in the years to come, especially if his halo fully disintegrates
What a brain-buster!
Musk far more helpful gift was the fact that his mother was Canadian.
His father didnt want him to be in the Canada/US and didnt pay for most of it.
Musk certainly has no inhereted wealth, his father is alive.
Musk hasn't inherited hardly any money at all (a couple thousand when he left SA and a bit more later when he started his first company). I think you're the one who doesn't know Musk's background.
"After Maye and Errol divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna."[0]
He has had a charmed existence his entire life.
[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o...
Hell, even CNN is backpeddling with the current Democratic party's agenda: https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/15378570794105774...
I just listened to a Vox Conversation where the guest said fat phobia wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for black people or slavery. It was insane and I felt like I lost IQ listening to it; but it would be naive to think the other ends of the political spectrum isn’t also crazy. That’d be like saying Alex Jones represents the Republican Party.
Elon describes himself as a moderate, the closer to the center you are the easier it is to go back and forth over the party line. Don’t read too much into it.
The journalists decided to publish the article anyway.
He’s lying and turning his fan base into hating the democrats who have nothing to do with the article.
That’s who he is, that’s what he does.
He’s lying and turning his fan base into hating the democrats who have nothing to do with the article.
That’s who he is, that’s what he does.
That's a defensive projection from both Musk and Republicans to incite his "new side" to arms and protect him implicitly from any criticism whether it's about labour rights or sexual harassment.
Maybe it's 4D chess to get the Cybertruck to be popular with the right wing.
But for most of us who are progressive and environmental, we have been pushing back against his ego and authoritarianism for years - worried that he is sabotaging his stated cause more than he is helping it.
For me the last straw was The Boring Company. I was still All In on Musk as a real-life Tony Stark who would make humanity interplanetary and solve the computer-brain barrier all the way up to Neuralink. Even Hyperloop seemed compelling if he could execute on it and seemed like it might be a clever hack to work around American resistance to high-speed rail.
The Boring Company revealed to me the self-aggrandizing fraud that he is.
Have you ever been outside?
>“Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable,”
So it was a mass internal email chain, using company resources? And it sounds like they were asking Musk to be gone, with plausibly deniability. Is it honestly any surprise that they got fired? Hijacking internal systems for a publicity stunt like this will always put a target on your back.
Of course, SpaceX (and Google, along with a stack of other "tech" companies) wasn't supposed to be just another large company; they wanted to disrupt things, and wanted fanatical buy-in from their employees, customers, and fans. (Corporate fans? Really?)
It'll take a while, because religions don't die easily, but eventually it will become clear to anyone except the die-hard that it's just another company.
So much for "changing the world." You're not changing the corporate world, that's for sure!
The reality of it is there are a lot of extremely well paid people across the US that wear the emotions on their sleeves and take everything as a slight these days. This is the course correction, you're going to see it more and more.
Just as extremists have been saying about social media if you don't like it, go build your own.
Nope, the word cult has a definition.
Say you work for General Motors. You can gripe about management all you want, but there's no expectation that you are going to be able to send out a company-wide memo saying the board should boot the CEO.
Now say you work for Tesla, or one of the other companies that is desperately trying to hang on to their "startup culture" as they get bigger. For that, it's vital that you buy into the mission, believe that you personally are changing the world.
The other half of that intellectual and emotional investment is the feeling that you have control and input. If the company makes a business deal that you don't agree with, you threaten to organize a walk-out; if the CEO is behaving like an idiot (and not like your own lovable idiot), you feel like you can get everyone together to tell the board to boot him. After all, you, personally, are changing the world.
But that's not how it works in a company that won't fit entirely into a single conference room. You as an employee may have dedicated your life to the company, and you may think the company should be responsive to you. But that's not how it works (see example 1 above), you just haven't realized it yet.
What's interesting to me is that capitalists and usually conservatives and libertarians who worship capitalism are all too vocal when it comes to socialist and communist economic policies supposedly leading to fascism, although they don't, but yet, they are fully behind corporations literally acting as fascist dictatorships. And by interesting, I mean it boggles my mind and frustrates me. It shows these peoples' true colors: greed at all costs.
It's easy to draw a categorical divide between authorities who are (ostensibly) submitted to voluntarily or transactionally; and authorities whose power is asserted by sovereign monopoly of force.
Many social organizations from families, to churches, to corporations are essentially authoritarian, but (conceptually if not always practically) you're able to remove yourself from them straightforwardly.
I find it interesting how this populism takes shape in the tech industry. It manifests as companies pretending to be all about mission, community, changing the world, billionaires pretending to be pro-freedom, capitalists pretending to be anti-establishment...
"Turning rebellion into money", as Joe Strummer sang.
0. https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/free-speech-absolutist/4...
He seems to treat his own speech as if it is completely unfettered by any restraint, regardless of consequences for self or company (see the sheer number of times he’s upset the SEC via tweet compared to any other C-level in the world), while restraining the shit out of his subordinates’.
Musk has stated in his own words that he is a "free speech absolutist", and given his complaints about Twitter it seems that his interpretation of that is not limited to government censorship, but all censorship.
————
For what it’s worth, I agree with you, but I think that’s one of the least interesting parts of the issue.
From the context of the worker, there’s isn’t too much of a functional difference. Musk is acting as the arbiter of others’ speech. So he’s allowing anybody to say anything, unless it goes against the company line.
It’s not governmental control of the little people, but it’s still hella control of the little people, by a body that can’t be held responsible to the workers (the chances of Elon being voted out are nil).
Ultimately, I think we’re both agreeing that there can and should be social consequences for speech, it’s just that Elon has an army of well paid lawyers to help him avoid those consequences. In this case, the giant power imbalance seems like pretty fundamental framing to this issue. It’s not like both parties would suffer the same consequences for making the same statements.
(In short, if you don’t trust the government to regulate your speech, why on Earth would you trust a single unelected individual to do so?)
Maybe. I think what he does with Twitter (if the deal goes through) will prove it one way or the other.
But this leads to a pretty blatant double standard if he fires his employees for participating in public discussion and criticism of himself.
So does that mean you should be allowed to think your boss is an asshole too??
Definitely not biased at all.
“Insubordination (noun)- refusing to obey orders from someone in authority.” [1]
Unless they had received direct orders not to criticize Musk at all, internally or externally, they are not guilty of refusing to obey orders. And if they had received such orders, that only adds to Musk’s burgeoning reputation for pettiness and immaturity, in which case these are the kinds of orders one could be forgiven for disobeying.
The whole point of the letter seems to have been “Musk’s behavior is detrimental to the company.” This implies that they care about the company and want it to succeed, and that their loyalty lies with it, not with Musk. As well it should. Tesla, SpaceX, etc are (or should be) companies, not cults.
1. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/insub...
Therefore, the relevant question is not "is the company within its rights to fire these employees", but rather "was it a good idea for the company to fire these employees".
edit: Given how fast this post hit -4, I have to assume that these people are *OK* with being able to fire gay or trans people at a whim. That ain't cool, one bit.
Supreme Court rules workers can’t be fired for being gay or transgender
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/15/supreme-court-rules-workers-...
Instead it's called "lack of culture fit", "insubordination", or a myriad of any other right-to-work excuses as to fire someone you disagree with.
But yes, for those stupid enough to put "Fired because of gay", well, it still is legal due to the loopholes a Mack Truck could drive through. https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-we...
There are also laws that prohibit employers from punishing employees in certain circumstances relating to organizing/petitioning when in regard to concerns about workplace issues.
For example:
>You have the right to act with co-workers to address work-related issues in many ways. Examples include: [...] joining with co-workers to talk directly to your employer, to a government agency, or to the media about problems in your workplace
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
Somewhat untrue in theory. Completely untrue in practice. There are a few things you legally cannot be fired for, and a whole plethora of things a company would need to very very careful about firing you for, lest they wind up in court.
I don't really get how musk's feelings on free speech apply here. SpaceX is not the government, and it's not a communications platform. I also think it's unfair to say "his feelings are hurt" - it seems perfectly logical to get rid of employees that so strongly disagree with the way the company is being run.
And I have to wonder, why even work there if that's how you feel? This just looks like another example of a group of people who have "problems" with their company but don't want to give up the pay that it provides them.
I principled person would at least quit before making a scene in the media, rather than spamming many people in the company.
This is look at me behaviour coupled with politics at its worse.
Imagine working with someone like this? If you've been in an organization with people are constantly getting into flame wars about political issues, its incredibly distracting to those that want to get work done.
Some people buy the whole "we're a family" HR spin, but its not true. You're there to do a job and you're paid to do so.
Any organization that's worth working at, obviously. And there are plenty of them.
I don't have any complaints about my current organization, but whenever I feel something has transgressed my personal code of ethics I'm first very vocal about it internally and if necessary externally. I've only ever left companies voluntarily after this, and most have made efforts for me to stay. And it's not like I've been working at the most progressive companies ever.. maybe just don't work at a Musk company.
I personally think its obnoxious and counterproductive for someone to call management out publicly. That's no way to operate an organization. Its a sign that someone is toxic. Some orgs like Bridgewater tried that but that's def not a place I would want to work. The appropriate channels and structure exist for a reason. They're not perfect but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better than everyone else
https://www.cnet.com/tech/google-fires-another-ai-researcher...
Seems like we have come to the real root of things! We can agree to disagree.
Huge difference between calling out issues and publicly demanding the CEO to be fired.
Elon Musk put his workers in this dilemma and he should have expected a subset of them to speak out critically against him. I honestly don’t know other large organizations in our industry that is in the same situation, so there is really nothing to compare it with.
Real trade can happen without the speculation game. Some people may not get to build rocket engines in such a system but the species doesn’t owe a minority of first world engineers everything they want anymore than it owes an even smaller minority of billionaires.
The propaganda has worked really well; you seem to actually believe human agency is coupled only to the money making endeavors before us today.
Past technology is a joke relative to ours and so will these fancy things we make today seem to the future. Fleeing Earth on rockets is not the only path. It’s the only path we are allowed to speak to. Alternatives would cause the wrong people to lose privilege and power.
Of course they are. Concerted workplace activity to improve workplace conditions is protected under NLRB. It's literally the definition of protected activity.
It could be that Musk recognises that a significant group of his staff - likely the majority - simply don't want a loud minority group - possibly a tiny minority - "making waves" and intimidating others into joining their cause.
I've just started Nassim Nicholas Taleb's latest book, but in previous work he wrote about "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority"[0]
This example could easily be one of those instances.
Back in the old days(!) one was expected to do one's job well, to treat others professionally - and to expect others to treat you well - but don't bring your private causes into the workplace and expect everyone to love you for it. Do what you like on your own time, but on the company's time, follow the rules.
[0]https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
That's also Twitter's policy on trolling and harassment which his totally sincere "free speech absolutism" seeks to end.
Intimidation isn't asking fellow employees if they agree with the content of an open letter, it's public figures calling a blogger and telling them if their blog criticising Tesla isn't taken down, their totally unrelated boss will be getting a phone call . Guess which one Musk personally involved himself in...
Errm, if fellow employees feel intimidated by you pitching up and asking them to sign, that's what we call intimidation, at least these days.
If you want to organise an open letter, put it up somewhere public, tell everyone involved, and wait for people to sign it? Or not, it's their choice.
So far, the only person who has suggested employees felt intimidated is the COO defending the decision to fire them. Just in case you were inclined to actually believe that her priority was to encourage employees to speak out against harassment and not intimidate them into silence she added that the company had "too much critical work to accomplish", no place for "activism" and told remaining employees to "stay focused",
I mean, I accept it's theoretically possible the real intimidation wasn't the COO firing 5 people for the "unacceptable" sending of emails asking people if they agreed with their views about management and the anti-harassment policy "during the work day", but I'm going to file that one away under very unlikely
Perhaps people who support activism should just start their own companies - as majority shareholders they could easily mandate that management specify time to be spent on activism... no need for focus.
> Perhaps people who support activism should just start their own companies
Got it. Employees should sort of organise an open letter and tell everyone involved but also not organise an open letter or tell anyone because how employees spend their waking hours and what they should think is up to management.
Also, sending an email circular asking people to sign a petition is intimidation, but telling people that activism is an "unacceptable" loss of focus whilst announcing firings is all about protecting people from intolerance of other viewpoints.
I mean, employers can and do fire people all the time for embarrassing the company, though doing it for criticising the CEO and insufficiently strong protections from harassment tends to be dodgy ground. But the idea that they're doing so to promote tolerance is the most Orwellian bullshit take imaginable. Popper's paradox of tolerance is about what level of safeguard is necessary to prevent free speech democracies from collapsing, not making it clear that people aren't allowed to criticise their boss and especially not on company time.
It's not clear whether employees should be using company resources and company time to organise against the company or its management. Is that something we think is a given right? If so, why?
There is a reason that during a (legitimate!) strike pickets have to stand off their employer's property. We had that in the 70s with the NUM, we had that in 2010 when BA strikers were prohibited from entering (private) Heathrow property[1]
> the idea that they're doing so to promote tolerance is the most Orwellian bullshit take imaginable
1) there's quite a lack of tolerance left of centre, and 2) context is everything.
Your starter for ten: I'll give you a quote, so without searching, take a wild guess who said it...
> "Everybody understands all lives matter. Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/mar/16/british-air...
Indeed. The context has nothing to do with weird digressions about the tolerance of the left or picket line legislation in the UK. The context is that a company fired some people for sending emails criticising a CEO with a long track record of being even less tolerant of criticism than the average CEO whilst asserting it's unacceptable for staff to question the company's anti-harassment policies. The context is the CEO also has a track record of threatening to get people who never worked with him fired from their completely unrelated job if they don't take their blog posts criticising him and his company down. Stating that he may be legally entitled to do this is one thing. Citing the paradox of tolerance to argue that cancelling people who criticise Elon Musk and ruling out the possibility of debate on SpaceX harassment policy is in fact compatible with "free speech absolutism", because email circulars questioning the boss' behaviour and harassment policies (or blogging on SeekingAlpha, I guess) intimidates people is... something else entirely.
Excluding of course, the CEO of the company in question. He can say anything he wants, fight with and call people pedophiles on Twitter, run a crypto pump and dump scheme, spread pandemic conspiracies, etc etc etc to the point that investors in his companies have spoken up about it and now his own employees are writing letters. That behavior is totally professional and ok.
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia%27s_Polling_Index:_Gener...
As Terry Pratchett so wonderfully put it in Making Money (Discworld #36)[0], there is "a piece of ancient magic called [..] fifty-one percent of the shares".
As far as what happens at SpaceX goes, Musk isn't the minority. He's the (?? 78%) majority owner.
So, if you work at SpaceX and don't like him, I think the options boil down to: a) suck it up, or b) find somewhere else to work ...
... or maybe c) leave and start your own SpaceX? We all know competition is good. Of course in that case you'll really have Skin In The Game[1] - and coincidentally that's the Taleb book I've been reading this afternoon.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Money [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_in_the_Game_(book)
Also, that linked post is something else. In the span of one really long essay, he went from halal food, to trying to intellectually rehabilitate Brexit, to a maximally-extended version of the Paradox of Tolerance, and then finally to disproving the right-libertarian thesis that market manipulation is impossible. I genuinely can't tell if this is brilliantly considered, or just authoritarian right-wingers trying to specifically feed me propaganda.
I strongly hope the fired individuals do look into getting a labor lawyer representing them.
I'm sure you can think of reasons other than "feelings getting hurt" for these firings...
This is totally incorrect.
Free speech in this case is an opinion. The right to free speech is not freedom from consequences for voicing opinions.
Point me to the place he’s said you have a capital-R Right to not be banned from Twitter.
The most powerful response is to have a top level stakeholder meeting, identify changes from the letter which need to be made, then: fire everyone who wrote the letter, and make those changes.
This sends the message that management is responsive to worker complaints, and will also send you packing immediately if you defect on the company by making anything public which should be an internal matter.
If they do only one of these things, it's either demoralizing or mutiny. Neither of those outcomes is good, one is completely unacceptable. So this is what happens.
I assume they tried making it an internal matter before going public. Pushing your employees to have the feeling they need to go public instead of being able to solve this internally is a failure of the company.
"This should have been kept internal, where we could have fired you without publicity"
One could argue that those writing the letter should have known it would be leaked. But you could also say that about any kind of internal criticism. I'd counter that this argument has the 2nd-order effect of preventing any kind of internal criticism, constructive or otherwise, lest it be leaked at some point in the future.
Not to mention, the "demoralizing" label could also be applied to Musk's public behavior, which is the bulk of the point that the letter and its authors are making.
Insubordination also might be "Directly questioning or mocking management decisions". [1]
Another example: 5 insubordination in the workplace examples [2]
1. Refusal to complete a task
2. Refusal to come into work
3. Refusal to remain at work
4. Disrespecting authority figures
5. Sabotaging team or organizational activities
[2] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/insu...
As for the 2nd example- which of those 5 points are the letter's authors guilty of? The only one of those 5 that looks even remotely relevant is #4, but even that's a stretch since there's a difference between "criticizing" and "disrespecting".
Musk might believe those two things are one and the same, but they are, in fact, quite different.
I never said they are, and that's not why they were fired. From the article: "The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views," Ms. Shotwell wrote.
Their orders are to get to Mars.
Employees that are bikeshedding, sowing internal discord, engaging in mutiny, are not working toward the goal and in fact actively hindering it. That's all the reason needed to prune them from the otherwise focused and ambitious team.
Personally I don't. I also don't take offense at anything Chris Rock or Ricky Gervais says. Others do take offense to what they say. That's their choice, their opinion, and not one that can or should be enforced on others.
I'm not saying what they did is right or wrong but your outright dismissal of their (valid IMHO) concerns is missing lots of nuance.
1 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te...
Mhhh... I don't think so. We should consider also the possibility that his activity in Twitter could be beneficial for the company.
In fact it could accelerate the process of sending him to Mars as soon as possible.
Everybody is happy, so... keep tweeting? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
...except when that free speech is a respectful letter crafted by his employees asking him to tone down his social media because it's reflecting poorly on their work.
Here's an experiment. At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. What should the appropriate response be?
You have to work with these people and its incredibly distracting and out of line. These are children that think they can just shout down leadership and suffer no consequences. The rest of us who live in the real world understand that hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily and we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face.
What should the appropriate response be ?
I am sure the people who wrote the letter are adults. You don't have to insult people you don't agree with.
TBF, the behaviors they are complaining about are so far away from "what adults do". Honestly, tma lot of people could be having a better inagine of SpaceX now that their letter is on the open than during the awkward silence phase.
And someone isn't entitled to spit in your face just because they pay you. Respect for people should go both ways, and the view that just because someone is rich, above you in the ladder, you should just shut up and take it, isn't a good one too.
Workers have very little power to fight back, yes there might be consequences but they wouldn't have written this letter if they didn't feel they weren't already living under the consequences of bad leadership.
How is Musk spitting in their face? By shitposting on twitter? By voting for the wrong candidate? These people need to get over themselves. Not everything is about them. They're free to leave.
And how do you not apply this to Musk, who fired people after a bit of critique?
I would argue it was a good move. Like I said, its a distraction and completely out of line. Imagine you were managing someone and they think its okay to arbitrarily go above your head and call you out publicly. This is incredibly toxic and not a person living in the real world.
Also, you're comparing complaints about the company's double standards with a cleaner complaining about shitty interior design? Do you really think those two things are equivalent?
1. https://wccftech.com/elon-musk-now-owns-less-than-half-of-sp...
People don't have to like him, but it doesn't seem he's actually done anything other than make people work hard at their jobs...
"At SpaceX, we have a 'no a--hole' policy," Shotwell said in a virtual speech to graduates in Northwestern University's 2021 commencement ceremony. "These kinds of people — a--holes — interrupt others, they shut down or co-opt conversation, and they create a hostile environment where no one wants to contribute," Shotwell said. She is also SpaceX's chief operating officer.
Interrupting others stifles innovation and stops people solving difficult problems, Shotwell said.
"In short, the best way to find solutions to hard problems is to listen harder, not talk louder," she said. "Embrace the ideas of your fellow workers, especially when they differ greatly from yours."
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-president-gywnne-shot...
Why does it matter whether his actions are in the context of SpaceX? He is associated with his companies (and vice-versa) to a greater extent than probably any other current head of business. Separating Musk from his companies in the minds of the public would be an exercise in futility, and his personal branding and thirst for public attention seem designed to encourage this. Therefore, every public action he takes has an effect on each of his companies, including SpaceX, regardless of whether said action took place "in the context of" those companies.
With that said, here are some of Musk's "greatest hits":
1. The tweet comparing Bill Gates to the pregnant man emoji [1]
2. referring to the guy who rescued the Thai cave divers as a "pedo" [2]
3. committing securities fraud [3]
4. tweeting that he'd start a STEM school called Texas Institute of Technology & Science (aka TITS) in an industry already rife with casual sexism [4]
5. implying that Tesla employees would lose their stock options if they unionized [5]
6. branding Tesla's driver assist technology as "autonomous", implying it requires no human intervention and therefore meets the criteria for full self-driving. [6]
The above actions range from needlessly trollish to outright illegal. One could argue that you don't build multiple billion-dollar companies without being an asshole to some of the people some of the time, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue that these are not the actions of an asshole.
1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496
2. https://time.com/5339219/elon-musk-diver-thai-soccer-team-pe...
3. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/elon-mu...
4. https://qz.com/work/2082746/elon-musks-tweet-captures-everyd...
5. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808
6. https://screenshot-media.com/technology/ai/tesla-autopilot-u...
Well it does matter, because these people consciously came to work at HIS company.
It's like people that move into a noisy neighbourhood and then start to complain about the noise.
Elon is eccentric, yes he tweets some things that people don't like, but he's also built friggin SpaceX...
Unless he's specifically done something to the people at SpaceX then I really don't think they've got anything to complain about... it smells of entitlement and the outrage culture that's appeared in recent years.
You're asking questions that were answered in the letter:
"Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks... As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values."
His behavior devalues their work and denigrates the image of the companies they work for.
Then they should go work elsewhere if it bothers them that much. Nobody is forcing them to work for a company ran by Elon Musk.
And I don't know about you, but many people don't just run away when faced with a difficult situation - they face it head on and try to improve it.
Furthermore, if I spent years of my life contributing to a mission that I believe in, giving a company my best work, I'm not going to just walk away because of the actions of a single entitled individual, no matter how rich he is.
Workers (especially the average HN reader) have incredible power to fight back… find a new job and switch companies. Lots a companies are hiring even with the macro economic issues.
From an employee perspective it’s insane to me that one would put so much energy into fighting their leadership rather than just leaving the company for a better one.
Outside of the tech industry (and even then), this ain't anywhere near as easy as you assert. Lots of companies are "hiring"... for positions with shit pay and inflated qualifications.
> From an employee perspective it’s insane to me that one would put so much energy into fighting their leadership rather than just leaving the company for a better one.
From an employee perspective it's insane to me that one would be entirely oblivious to both the risks inherent in quitting (especially given the current economic conditions) and the notion that maybe people might like everything about their company aside from one or two things that need changed.
I bet you'd be fired.
I said the same thing by the way about the guy who got fired from Google for circulating a misogynistic rant about female engineers. That was also stupid and unprofessional at the very least.
Politics at work can be generally problematic. Political rants at work that criticize leadership or coworkers or are broadly offensive are probably going to get you fired.
Yes, I know Tim is gay.
It's something you use when trying to address a delicate subject whilst minimizing the blowback. Calling out the head of your organization publicly via a scathing open letter would not be it.
First paragraph of the article.
And of course there is also this, "In an email, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”"
I find the entire notion of calling for the CEO's ouster with "tact" a bit disingenuous.
Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest!
Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?
Universities are a unique creature where ideas and debate are the whole point, “more so than getting things done.” That’s also part of the “real world” in some sense, but it isn’t the world nearly all of us reside in. I would recommend any organization that wants to be successful outside of that unique context to not emulate the model of universities. That includes non profits and NGOs. Hierarchy exists almost universally in human organizations. That’s not an accident—it’s necessary for groups of humans working together to be effective.
Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.
Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.
We are all in the same world; this whole "you are not real enough" argument is ridiculous, and doesn't really mean anything.
People in academia do not. The fact that you missed this and thought comparing the number of people in a particular industry subset of a capitalistic enterprise to academia would somehow prove a point basically shows me how poor the thought/logic skills are in academia... The one thing they're supposed to be better at.
If you are attempting to compare liberties those in academia have to corporate employees e.g. most people who are employed, no its not like the "real world".
This happens often: I'm guessing about once a month, and nothing happens. The difference is that Zuckerberg is not a needy, thin-skinned billionaire,and will directly address employee criticism in Q&As - as well as press leaks like a well-adjusted adult
They do if they want customers. ULA and Blue Origin would love nothing more than for SpaceX's leadership to piss off NASA and burn some of those juicy government contract opportunities.
No, it does not, but it still happens. Most of our internal[1] Q&A discussions leak to the press (especially criticisms of leadership[2]), but Zuckerberg decided it's the cost of internal openness. I'm yet to hear of anyone fired for leaking company discussions, or even witch-hunts to find leakers. Musk is being a baby, I hope they bleed irreplaceable talent.
1. These have remained unchanged post-IPO, have nothing to do with public listing, and Meta would like them to be confidential
2. One of our recently-promoted execs was publicly and vociferously criticized by employees for something they did, and the critics are still employed, because the execs are not petty.
SpaceX doesn't get those contracts for nothing - they're the first to commercialize reusable rockets in a serious way and have massively reduced costs as a result.
All of this stuff was explicitly laid out by Musk (despite massive knee-jerk criticism which continues despite the proved success) and his companies were able to execute on it.
It's not luck to do this repeatedly in multiple extremely challenging verticals (at the same time) successfully.
Do you know why he paid back early? In the contract the DOE would have had some ownership in Tesla after the payoff period. He paid it early so that the Tax Payer wouldn't benefit from the deal. It would have been a better deal for the US Tax Payer for him to have not paid it back early. It should be clear to anyone owning TSLA stock that we, as the public got screwed there.
And yes, it was a bailout. The government was trying to create a EV market and Tesla was about to fail. The market for EVs just didn't exist at that point and the DOE LPO had a driving mission to create one. So they bailed Tesla out because they wanted a market (notice private equity didn't believe in Tesla succeeding, otherwise Musk would have raised the cash from the private markets).
This is how governments create markets, by paying for technology until the market matures. This is true of Computers and other high technology.
If the government didn't care to create an EV market, Tesla would have been dead a long time ago. Is this Musk's genius or the genius of our policy makers?
SpaceX is exactly the same story. The government wanted a private space industry and so NASA was given a mission to create one. SpaceX is barely surviving now even with the government help.
And of course we have no idea what kind of bribery Musk must have participated in to get the loans and contracts he did from the government. I'm sure time will reveal them. But It's naive to think there wasn't anything.
It didnt say Elon was "all wrong"... it criticized 1 or 2 things. For all we know they agree with the other 99%.
This is a common in these responses defending Elon. They take the letter, turn it into something much much worse.. and then say: dont they deserve to be fired?
The version of the letter youre describing does not exist.
But I also disagree with their argument simply because Musk's actions are very public and represent the employees who stand behind him. It would be one thing if these were internal decisions that employees disagreed with, but that's not the situation. Musk is a leader, and the people who choose to stand behind him rely on him to represent them well. If they feel he is not doing his job, they are well within their rights to voice their concerns to him. If he reacts like a baby-man who can't take criticism, then the workers should be ready to take their skills elsewhere.
Yes, it does.
I have seen plenty of examples of scathing verbatim against leaders at several different companies. Not to mention poor and declining scores on questions like "I trust my leadership blah blah" year after year on internal employee surveys. Were those people fired, no!
Exactly. Although, it's hypocritical of Musk to fire employees who criticize him but criticize Twitter for banning/censoring accounts for spouting opinions that Twitter doesn't align with. If SpaceX has this right, Twitter should too.
At most places, leadership actually… leads. Musk is a token publicity figure at best at this point, a mascot.
> "Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters
> and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable."
1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/spacex-fired-emp...
Also, if the SpaceX president's statement is false, then the fired people probably have a lawsuit to file. Would the SpaceX president be that dumb? Maybe.
So a normal day in any business with more than a few hundred folks.
Wouldn't it be ironic if a man who is "fighting to preserve free speech" fired employees for their speech he disagrees with? Oh, wait...
But it smacks of "one rule for me, one rule for thee" from Mr "free speech absolutist" Musk, right?
https://web.archive.org/web/20211029205638/https://newsyndic...
I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Whether what they said is right or wrong it was still damaging to the owner of the company and the company's reputation as well.
Its like the Tesla guy who was fired a few months back. Yeah it was his own car. Yeah it was on his own time. But he, a tesla employee was making the company look bad by uploading videos of the car failing to self drive to Youtube.
You don't get to not be a representative of your company just because you are off the clock. If people know that you work for X company then anything you say or do may be seen through the lens of "An X company employee"
But that’s exactly the point that the letter’s authors are making about Musk himself, and his tweets. Either the same rule applies equally to both Musk and his employees, or there’s an unfair double standard which should be remedied.
Now we can discuss how we think it ought to work all day long. But that is how it does work today. It's not an even relationship and never has been. The guy signing the checks gets to decide if he wants to employee you. If people decide that he's a dick and don't want to work for him then he will find it hard to hire good talent.
> SpaceX has fired at least five employees who were involved with circulating a letter around the company that was critical of CEO Elon Musk…[1]
Further, if this link is to be believed, he is no longer a majority owner of SpaceX:
> According to filings that SpaceX has made with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Musk currently owns 43.61% of SpaceX's outstanding stock as of August 2021.[2]
1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/06/17/spacex-fires-employees-a...
2. https://wccftech.com/elon-musk-now-owns-less-than-half-of-sp...
According to whom? If that admonishment had the desired effect and had occurred in his PayPal days, we wouldn’t have SpaceX, Tesla, etc etc etc
This letter. Unless mere mortal workers staying focused is more important than the God-CEO staying focused. In which case, maybe compensation needs a serious re-think.
Okay, asshole PoS.
A lot of people (myself included) really respect SpaceX and I think that's the last pillar on which Elon's reputation stands. Tesla honestly isn't that interesting and there's a real chance it gets eaten alive as other car manufacturers have caught up. The Cybertruck is still vaporware whereas the F150 Lightning is real and, from what I've seen at least, very highly regarded.
What I think is finally giving people Elon fatigue is his politics. The Twitter acquisition is deeply tied to that. He's just another rich cringe conservative. That's it. Coming out and supporting DeSantis, for example, should surprise literally no one.
He has a very thin skin (remember the whole "pedo guy" incident?), inflates his own accomplishments (eg claiming he founded Tesla) and honestly just comes off (now more than ever) as just an awful human being.
Stories I've heard seem to reflect that SpaceX and Tesla aren't great places to work (at least compared to big tech companies).
I really get the sense that people are increasingly getting sick of hearing from or about him. YMMV.
I'm just a rando on the internet so maybe not representative, but this uBlock snippet makes anything related to Twitter or Elon invisible on the Guardian front page. Definitely improved my QoL
##.fc-item__container:has-text(/\bElon\b/)
##.fc-item__container:has-text(/\bTwitter\b/)"Lorde Edge" is outstanding cringe. He's focusing on and making his image intentionally out of cringe. It's utterly bizarre.
Does Boeing and Lockheed Martin not have “actual engineers” and “actual factories”? Of course they do. Probably had more and better for most of SpaceX’s life.
They just can’t utilise what w have, because they have no vision beyond “cost-plus contracts”. That’s on management. That’s why Elon literally caused SpaceX and all/most their successes.
Build quality wise? Definitely, Tesla has a lot of issues there which the established industry has ironed out and perfected over the last hundred years.
Other problems? No way in hell the others can catch up. The old guard of automotive manufacturers simply is too stuck in their old ways - they have to manage the expectations of dealerships (as the only service most electric cars need is brake pad changes and Teslas are sold online, their existence is threatened) and suppliers (your average ICE alone takes something around 1000-2000 distinct parts, whereas electric cars need far fewer for the drivetrain), and no automotive manufacturer has anything resembling a history with developing modern software and it shows everywhere.
When there's a recession, no one's going to give a shit about a car with a bunch of bells and whistles. They want a car that they can afford to buy and afford to drive. In any case, that's what I want.
The car manufacturers that are associated with attributes like "affordability" don't have much experience with electric vehicles, so they will have to buy that experience or do it the same way Tesla did, which means they will need a decade.
How much experience do you think is required? Other companies like Chevy, Chrysler, Hyundai, and Ford already have semi-electric vehicles for sale today. They don't all need to be successes. It can take just one of them to come out with an affordable electric vehicle when the economics are right, and sticking to plug-in hybrids gives them plenty of time to get experience.
Lots of people have not internalized what's going on at Tesla. They still seem to be stuck on the idea that when the large, experienced auto manufacturers start really ramping up EVs, Tesla will be swamped.
What seems to have gone unnoticed is that Tesla has significantly higher margins per vehicle than all other major automakers, including Toyota. Tesla is years ahead on batteries. While the rest of the industry is fighting over a limited supply of third-party batteries, Tesla is buying nickel directly from Vale, for their own batteries, in their own form factor, with their own chemistry.
Tesla is beating the established automakers on scale and profit margins.
OTA Updates? Rapid iteration cycle? Supercharger network? Doubling factories every few years?
Tesla has lots and lots of problems, from servicing, to pricing, to build quality, to various ethical issues. But they're years ahead on EVs.
I feel like this is because they charge BMW prices for less than Honda quality, especially with the Model 3. Maybe they can keep this up, but we’ll see. Tesla tech is certainly better than most if not all and is a huge selling point.
Cringe, yes, he may be. Conservative? Maybe in the opportunist sense. At most, I think he's much closer to being libertarian and would otherwise be left leaning if the mainstream left hadn't drifted so far left. Elon really wants people to get out of the way of his view of progress. Yes, I'm sure ego is a part of that, but when is it not with anyone? I'm not even sure what Elon would be conserving other than whatever ability he has to launch cars into space or dig pointless tunnels.
A better example of a "cringe conservative" would be the My Pillow guy or even Lindsay Graham. And many would of course say Trump.
For example, never in its history was the SCOTUS so conservative compared to the views of the general population. It used to be one of the most progressive actors in society, forcing race and gender equality judgments to a country where working wives and interracial couples were still a faux pass.
I don't care about Mr. Musk's politics. But I dumped all of my Tesla stock recently because of his increasingly erratic behavior.
To me, it demonstrates an inability to make wise decisions. And I can't trust my money to people who can no longer reliably make wise decisions.
He's impulsive, and entertaining to watch; but now I will do so from a distance. And so will my money.
During a more conservative time... waaay back. A company was doing very well but the CEO had an affair. The public caught wind of the affair and the stock tanked, because people had your exact same philosophy. Those people cared about the behavior of the CEO while ignoring the metrics of the company. Warren Buffet looked at the fundamental performance of the company and saw that it was doing quite well, so he bought it at super low prices.
Eventually the stock price changed and began to reflect the fundamentals of the actual business as people forgot about the behavior of the CEO.
You shouldn't care about his erratic behavior. You should care about the business sector and the overall performance of the company.
The underlying performance of the company does not change based off of random tweets. If Tesla is good enough to take over the entire automobile industry even the CEO pulling off his pants walking around in public is a separate issue to actual performance.
The CEO with the affair could presumably be replaced if romantic fidelity is important to the company or if the relationship violated company policies, but if it doesn't affect their business choices, maybe it's not needed.
A CEO with strong control is a lot harder to replace, and fighting over replacing such a CEO is likely to happen in public and be a negative for the company. General impulsiveness is, IMHO, more likely to show up in business choices than romantic impulsiveness (if that's what was the basis for the affair), and business choices made for impulsive reasons at the very least increases volitility and may likely reduce expected value. If I'm investing in an established company, I think I want stability and rational choices, not volatility and impulsive choices. But then, I don't invest in individual companies, apart from stock based compensation.
All that said, in this case, as you point out, there are multiple reasons to be dumping stocks of companies owned or influenced by this guy. At least until we have a better handle on what's going on. If nothing's wrong, we can always buy it back. But right now, very few of the market's concerns have much to do with politics. He's acting in an unpredictable manner just when the market appears to be entering a period of uncertainty. It may be because of his politics, but the market doesn't care about the why. Rational people are looking for some level of safety, stability and security at the moment. Unpredictable leaders who appear bent on market manipulation fly in the face of that.
My money, my decision. Over the last 30 years, it's worked quite well for me.
I also believe that taking advice from randos on the internet is not a sound investment strategy.
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/toyota-pushes-back-ag...
This car is the supposed Tesla killer. Take it from me, it is not. The interior is claustrophobic reminiscent of early Nissan Leaf. If you are 6'2 or taller, you are going to have a bad time. Its clear that center console was not tested by any tall person. There is nothing appealing about this car in my opinion other than the Toyota badge. It is ugly inside and out. It is neither a bog standard car(which a lot of people want) nor a stunning looking EV(which a lot of people want). It is the standard mismash OEMs have created int he past. They always make EVs "weird" when they don't have to be. Sure this car is going to sell out whatever limited production they can make because demand for EVs far outstrips supply but Tesla killer it will not be.
For Ford I wonder about their cost structure. The teardown of their EVs indicate that they are still implementing old school thinking from the ICE world that adds unneeded cost to the sticker price. This is uncompetitive with Tesla long term. They need to really reform the organization and fast so their next gen EVs do better.
YMMV indeed, because every conservative I talk to is seeing him as a hero who is finally speaking truth to power, and calling B.S. on the establishment (political, corporate HR, academic) narratives that have been running through the culture.
They aren’t sick of him at all - they’re cheering him on.
People are buying teslas and the immediately flipping them for $10k of profit to people who don't want to wait. The demand for teslas right now is insane.
After testing several different cars in a lab, I got the sense that the people at Tesla know a lot about how to integrate technologies, but only possess the bare minimum viable knowledge base about how to build a car. Whereas the people at Toyota know an insanely ridiculously huge amount about how to build a car, but are risk averse with integrating technologies.
I will say that was a purely technical analysis however. It didn't include things like how marketing might effect perception for instance.
Sounds like Toyota is good at making cars people don’t want. What does that say about Toyota?
Consider that well over half of all Teslas have to go in for service within the first month of ownership. For such an expensive car, that is not a good look. Look at how many ex-owners now say they'd never buy another and refuse to recommend them to friends. Go ask GM and Ford how hard it is to regain a reputation that you have squandered.
I enjoyed my P3D. Mostly. It went like stink, which is why I bought it. Lots of misfeatures, though, and still missing obvious features every other car has. I'm in the camp of "won't buy one again, unless something big changes, the competition is better." and we are growing quickly in number.
Meanwhile in the real world "Tesla tops the list of most satisfied customers in the entire auto industry"
It’s a big crowd, and getting bigger.
I’m mostly in agreement with what you said, but I don’t think your reasons are coming from a principled place.
That said I think it's a horrible look and DeSantis's response to the matter is one of the most tasteless and tone-deaf things I've heard from him all week.
I like this take in The New Yorker[0]
[0]https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/elon-musk-an...
The difference between Elon and others is that Elon doesn't put on as big of a facade.
There are CEO's who are psychopaths and are much worse then Elon but are much better at keeping their actual persona hidden.
Elon is just as awful as the next human being. We tend to have a higher set of expectations for people in Elons position. Very rarely does anyone actually meet these expectations. Most people just pretend to meet this expectation. Elon fails at both meeting the expectations and pretending to meet it.
It is fascinating to me that you see Elon as not putting on a facade, rather than his public face constantly being a changing facade.
As far as I can tell, Elon has two modes: "engineering", which is where he's super awkward and, as far as I can tell, totally and completely honest, if optimistic on capabilities and timeframes, and "public", which is where he's totally erratic and populist.
His twitter persona is almost totally public. Nothing is serious, everything is flippant, and his opinions sway with the breeze, or on the basis of who he feels slighted him most recently.
A good analogy is a small child pretending to be an adult.
Would you describe your inner circle of friends as "quite awful"? I really hope you wouldn't. I certainly don't. And I presume most people don't. So there must be sizable amount of human being that another sizable amount of human beings consider good humans. The CEO of the multi-billion dollar company I work for seems and acts like a normal (meaning decent, as opposed to your definition "quite awful") human being. Never goes on rants like Elon, quite worker-friendly, always there to chat, doesn't fire people on the spot because they can't answer a question that he only started verbalizing halfway though his stream of consciousness rants. And we compete in the same industry as Elon. Isn't trying to influence politics with his position on several dozens of matters that have nothing to do with out company. Also doesn't cultivate a cult following with himself as the head of the cult.
That's all that matters to me, if there no evidence of him being an awful human being, it would be downright unethical for me to assume that he is an awful human being hiding behind a facade.
Also: Before anyone hits me with the "Well your CEO isnt a visionary trying to get us to Mars". Well, yeah. I'd rather be stuck on Earth with him than live under whatever fantasy a sociopath is promising to unfold on Mars.
I would describe all humans including myself, my circle of friends and everyone I met to have an immense awful side that they cover up. Only when the media focuses on your every movement will these flaws be exposed.
I'm not a fan of Elon Musk. But unlike the people who hate him, I don't see anything abnormal other then failure to put on a facade. He's as inconsistent and emotional as any other human being.
Keep in mind. What he does, from his perspective appears justified and if you can rationalize from his perspective, you will be able to at least understand how it is justified. Very few people on this earth knowingly act out pure malice.
I don't. Which is why I don't think this discussion will go anywhere. I would never in my life call anyone with an "immense awful side that they're trying to cover up" my friend.
When resources are plentiful things are different. When resources are scarce our base nature is exposed.
This is part of the reason why it's covered up. Even for yourself. You don't realize how awful you can get until you've lost everything.
You can analyze the psychology of a country like China where something like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/17/world/asia/china-toddler-hit-...
is common place. What is the statistical likelihood for this to be an anomaly? Of two hit and run drivers running over a child AND every passerby just ignoring it? You can make a somewhat true statement here that most of the Chinese populace is quite awful. I would know, because I am one of them.
The fact that I am chinese myself, and I am calling MY own race/country quite awful shows you how dispassionate and logical my analysis is. It is very hard for someone to recognize the evil within their race, let alone themselves. This is how you know my answer lacks bias, which is very much different from your outlook.
But you must also ask yourself, what causes the Chinese to be like that?
It's because China was once a hard place to live. The mentality of harder times still pervades much of the populace. There was once a time in colonial america where the mentality was much the same thing. There are even parts of modern america, where you can see the same thing.
Go to places where resources are scarce and people are barely scraping buy. The projects, the ghettos. You will see evil in it's purest form. Evil is a biological base necessity because it is what humans must turn to in order to survive hard times.
Either way this is not an explanation for why Elon is "awful" but it is an explanation for how low humans can sink. For how much capability for being awful we have in our nature. Elon is well within these typical boundaries.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/tesla-motors-founders-now-there...
"On Monday, a Tesla representative said that Eberhard and other principals in the dispute have come to an agreement. The company did not reveal any details of the resolution, except to say that there are now five, rather than two, agreed-upon "founders" of Tesla.
In addition to Eberhard, other founders include current CEO and chief product architect Elon Musk, current chief technology JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, and Ian Wright."
Do folks view this as "this is an ambitious, hardworking genius whose lack of social constraints due to his success is making him run off the rails, mentally" or is it a case of "Musk has always been more asshole than genius, it's just his 'marketing veneer' that is starting to falter."
I agree, I've always viewed Musk with a sense of awe and amazement ("How can someone have the time and energy to run THREE major companies??"), now I just want him to STFU because what comes out of his mouth/tweet feed is such incessant verbal diarrhea.
An easy way is with... Amphetamines.
I suspect this is less true than you think; since federal prosecution is blocked by law for state-legal use, one of the major security clearance reasons for it to be an issue (the leverage that the criminal behavior might give others over you because of prosecution risk) is very much affected by state law.
But wouldn't debt of any kind, or regular motivations such as greed, family (maybe a relative got into drugs/trouble) be the same or even worse?
It just seems like a left-over relic from the 'reefer madness' days.
A big part of my early distrust for police stems from the lies they told me in D.A.R.E. 'class'. Marijuana will turn you into a drug-fueled criminal, it eats your brain cells like this spray paint on a Styrofoam cup, and they never come back, this is your brain (egg), this is your brain on 'drugs' (but it's an anti-weed commercial) and the egg starts frying in a pan. They spent years trying to convince the very young and very old that weed==narcotics.
As I've gotten older I've realized almost everyone has some issue- addiction, drug use, over-indulgence of whatever, just seems some are hell bent on hiding it and pretending they don't.
It just makes no sense to me, maybe it did in the cold war era.
https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1468223510724190208
https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1334879994896666624
It sounds like it differs greatly between departments and whether the usage was in the past or the present.
Source for that? One would think the supremacy clause overrides any idea of state law.
> This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me that if its federally illegal its still illegal within the states. The only question is if the federal government really cares to enforce the law in states where a large population of the state is openly breaking the federal laws.
I would guess that there's a culture of delusion surrounding this wherein because "it's the rules" they are actually followed. You know because rules are rules. The world, especially those like the Elons of the world, don't care to follow them as diligently as perhaps a command and control military / public service style structure demands. I'd even be surprised if even in the federal government those with security clearance were completely sober and free of the drugs considered illegal under US law.
You know Elon is gonna do what he wants to do. For better (electric cars, reusable rockets) or for worse (open his twitter feed any day of the week).
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-security-cl...
- "Musk has refiled his SF-86 security form, which requires a federal employee or contractor seeking a clearance to acknowledge any illegal drug use over the previous seven years, according to the official, who asked not to be identified. SpaceX has contracts to launch satellites for the U.S. military."
- "Musk’s “adjudication” review by the Defense Security Service continues with no decision yet, the U.S. official said. Typically during an adjudication, a person keeps his or her security clearance but loses access to information classified as secret, according to the official. If the drug use involves minor issues or doesn’t appear to contain any serious security concerns, the unit reviewing the case could just close it and update Musk’s record."
I don't think either of those apply with Musk, because he is a pot afficianado and openly pushing it, and pro-legalization. Some states have legalized because they want those juicy tax revenues, There is a significant part of the populace that realizes pot has been overcriminalized particularly for those with medical issues. While there are risks and dangers associated with all of these (see Alex Berenson), I don't see an adjudication authority seeing Musk as a security risk.
Dollars talk, and saving the federal government hundreds of millions with cheaper launches probably influences this some. But, the feds prolly see the long view and recognize Musk is likely to push the Americans into the infinity cash supplies of space tourism, space freight, deep space exporation, space mining, and the national prestige of first humans to Mars. Why would they want to impair that over a bit of weed?
This is about weed, what are you talking about?
Or maybe ... he doesn't?
You know, if it's too good to be true, it probably is.
I think you just don't understand how anything works. That's okay. You'll grow up eventually.
Interviewer: Neil Armstrong says he doesn‘t want a private company like SpaceX to launch humans to tue moon because it‘s unsafe. What do you think about that?
Humble Elon, literally crying: I… I just wish he could come out here and see what we are doing.
That‘s the picture I carried with me for a long time, together with some really smart remarks about climate change on panels that were way ahead of their time.
These days, it‘s really all an ego shitshow, memes and YOLo. He definitely changed a LOT the past few years.
https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...
I don't want to generalize or stereotype ASD in general, but it does produce tangible differences in how people relate to the world.
So, that diagnosis is some minor influence somewhere, but does not explains the rest.
Things people say about him reveal more about the speaker than the subject, I mean.
https://autisticempath.com/the-autistic-jerk-is-just-a-jerk/
Delegation.
Did you know that he used to sleep in a bathroom stall at the Tesla plant because he couldn't afford a studio apartment? A true hero
I dont believe his current account balance went below 7 figures at any point while Tesla has existed, so no I didnt know that.
Is this sarcasm or a thing that you actually believe?
Elon couldn't run a Python script sent to him.
And incidentally, yes- many poor people despise the rich, just as most rich people despise the poor.
Mamy are the critiques of Musk here, nowhere did I read it was because he's hoarding money.
Edit to add- rich people change laws and construction to benefit them, they can displace and ruin the lives of the poor with a thought. They have all the power and most of the money. They live in gated communities far out of sight of the working class. They literally have an embarrassment of riches while people die around them. There is a very good reason the affluent only live amongst each other in fancy gated communities.
People don't hate the rich because they are rich, it's because of the impact they have on the lives of those without means.
Can you actually give an example of the criticism you claim to see or do you only have the claim?
Edit:
> I think people are just upset because he is rich
Thanks :)
This very comment thread has people saying, among other things, that Musk oversteps on Twitter, bring up the SEC charges, bring up the twitter purchase, bring up his freedom of speech absolution, it goes on for days.
So you are either blind incapable of reading, or are a troll. Since you shoved words in my mouth and are still parroting 'bcuz rich', I'm going with the latter.
I never said you said anything? How is making baseless claims good faith?
> Musk oversteps on Twitter, bring up the SEC charges, bring up the twitter purchase, bring up his freedom of speech absolution
So people are upset with what Musk spends his riches on?
> They literally have an embarrassment of riches while people die around them.
Im willing to bet we are both living in a rich country with ruining water, electricity and plenty of food while little slave kids make our shoes. We are all embarrassingly rich in the context of the real world but I don't think the people upset with Musk are upset about this. I think they just see some one with more than them and get upset and then they use it as a scapegoat that only the richest man in the world has the power to free those little kids making your shoes, and that the rest of us are powerless to do anything but go along with it and keep buying the shoes made with child slavery.
To your points, stop inserting words into my mouth. Having those issues with musk is in no way an issue with his money. I happen to have both by the way, so this is a possibility as well.
I don't hate him for being rich, nor do the others whose salient points you so succinctly boiled down incorrectly again to 'bcuz rich'.
He has had many issues, and continues to do so. You can pretend it's simply because of his money but for myself I can at least assure you, that is the very least of the issues I have with Musk.
Pointing to poor people and saying there are poorer people in 3rd world countries is a poor argument.
I reiterate Musk has tons of money, sure. And that much wealth consolidation is an issue, to be sure. But that has no bearing on the many, many issues all over this thread people have with him.
Edit to add- your ninja edit and the reason I read your initial response wrong is because you removed the line about him being rich, and added right-wing- not cool.
You said:
> Edit to add- your ninja edit and the reason I read your initial response wrong is because you removed the line about him being rich, and added right-wing- not cool.
I said:
> The only criticism I have seen here of musk beside money is that hes right wing, not really a criticism.
He has money and is right wing, people who have money are rich. I never edited anything.
You haven't read anything I wrote you just make claims you are unwilling to substantiate and then when I quote you, you accuse me of putting words in your mouth.
And it's looking more and more like the doesn't so much run three major companies as owns three major companies.
I will be extremely sad if Starship ends up being his Spruce Goose. Yes that's a reference to a former employee talking about him on JRE.
Knowing that this would be leaked and make news, they could have framed the letter to all employees in the best possible way for the company (both PR and HR). Let's hold out and see what SpaceX insiders and the fired employees actually say.
That sounds like their CEO.
It's conservatism in a nutshell. The end game is a class of people protected by the rules, but not bound by them, and another class that's bound by them, but not protected.
Concerted activity at work regarding working conditions is protected by US labor law.
> and intimidation of their peers.
Speculation.
That's not speculation, it's quoted by the SpaceX president...it may not be true, but it's not speculation.
Imagine.
This seems like a funny statement to make when your CEO is literally out buying Twitter.
And apparently putting 90+ hours into Elden Ring, while still insisting to be working 14-20 hour days. [0]
Musk does maybe 50 hours of work a week, it's just that it's spread out over time and not 10 hour long shifts like he forces on his employees.
Your point makes no sense. It’s a free country, just because Elon is buying Twitter to make different rules on it makes no difference to this point. He has the resources based on building multiple billion dollar businesses.
These activist employees can do the same over 30-40 years and buy companies and implement whatever they want.
But don’t expect to not get fired from a private company if you don’t align with its values
Having seen the full text of the letter it has a bit "But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion with equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo." Which sounds quite cancel culture.
(letter https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/read-spacex...)
Yeah let's normalize racism! Yeah cool!
So I imagine Musk believes anyone who causes him displeasure, in any form, even by association, should be put in their place by measures including, and up to, loss of livelihood.
I'm not so sure he gives a damn about anyone in the military, unless they run afoul of the ideas presented in previous statement.
I guess they haven't processed the famous XKCD on this issue.
No, you just want to snipe at Musk, and you see this is a way to do it.
It's completely wild how over the past twelve months the anti-Musk people have somehow eclipsed the pro-Musk people in their monomania and inability to step back and objectively consider any situation.
He's a perpetually online guy, it was bound to happen. If he shut up every now and then it would help.
If he realized he can't derive unified theories of social behavior through logic untainted by the real world and then proudly announce them to universal acclaim, he could probably go back to the widely enjoyed persona of a year or two ago where the only die hard haters were Boeing stock holders.
> objectively consider any situation
hHaha, ok, I look forward to the objective discussion of the relative merits of calling someone a "pedo". Super objective!
This isn't at the root of what we're discussing here. That would be like applying Postel's law to natural language, confirmed by your own experience of receiving maybe a few passing "death threats" per month while bantering, while brushing aside the predicament of someone who receives ongoing death threats from a persistent stalker.
Rather, this topic just seems to be basic hypocrisy. If one cannot stomach a critique written in good faith to make one's company better, it's utterly disingenuous to invoke appeals to free speech elsewhere.
I read the letter, and thought it was reasonable. If it was my company, I would allow it. Been a founder several times, so that’s not just wild speculation. The only way to get your reading of it is if you have super thin skin and can’t take any criticism.
(Leaving aside your tangent of trying to make those decisions for others)
He makes it so easy, and everyone can tell by his personality that it grates on him.
Yes. Every day of the week. Yes.
It’s a different time.
Gen-X was more--call out "the man" and then taking being fired as a badge of pride
Gen-Z wants to call people out without repercussions.
People should be called out. Musk is always talking about upending established orders and questioning the status quo - guess he's more interested in loyalists.
>People should be called out. Musk is always talking about upending established orders and questioning the status quo - guess he's more interested in loyalists.
Depends what you mean by calling out because must of current call out culture is toxic garbage. I think successful organizations need to encourage questioning decisions. But questioning isn't the same thing as loudly criticizing in a public manner.
Courts in the E.U. would not look kindly upon being fired in retaliation for criticizing the public behavior of one's employer.
I'd guess not. We (gen x) grew before social media wokeism and have an understanding that thrashing your company or boss publicly isn't the smartest move. I bet these are some entitled zoomers right out of a college.
Same dude as this? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/elon-musk...
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences, if said consequences do not restrict future freedom of speech.
Example: you are free to verbally shit all over your boss and company in public; just don't expect to work there for much longer.
Another example: you are free to call the 1.93m thug who bumped into you a blind idiot, just don't expect to face no physical consequences for exercising your right to give him a piece of your mind.
It's funny how some people try and make this a political issue when it's really not and never has been.
It's like being banned from the regulars' table for constantly being a nuisance and then complaining to the bartender that your former buddies don't want you at their table anymore.
It's also no secret that he's very much fine with Claqueurs and boot lickers, but amusingly thin-skinned when it comes to critique aiming at his person, ideas, or companies. He even shut down his personal "The Onion"-clone for fear of its activity might reflect badly on him or one of his companies at some point in the future [0].
[0] https://www.mic.com/p/elon-musks-first-foray-into-comedy-was...
Anyone can circulate letters in spacex, but spacex can fire you.
You can say whatever you want. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.
Critics of free speech need to realise this is a silly debate between them, no “free speech absolutist” wants speech without consequences. This is basically a NYT and CNN talking point and nothing to do with reality.
The place is context and result is comletely different.
Does everyone these days feel the need to become a martyr over completely insignificant personal opinions about all kinds of drivel that doesn't even affect them personally?
Is this really the hill some of you want to die on, because it's more important to you to discuss the relevance of genitals with billions of people, than to just keep this shit to yourself and maybe rage about it offline with friends and family and keep your job and future prospects?
Do you really have so little going on in your lives that you absolutely must have a strong opinion about everyone and everything and just have to share this in the most public, traceable, and persistent way possible, lest your mind implodes from all the piled up internal stress?
You might not like that, but I do.
And in case you don't believe the truly terrible effects of this, have a read in the detrans subreddit.
Trans groups are wide and varied. You will find plenty who believe in the weight of the decision and that it should be made accordingly.
This doesn’t excuse the huge amount of disrespect and hurt that gets thrown towards someone because they ask to be identified as a man or a woman. Just the other day someone burned a pride flag in Baltimore and ended up burning down three houses and sending four people to the hospital.
Surely in their mind somewhere, there was a thought that they were saving children from a “delusion”. But in this instance who has the delusion?
Heck, back then just a word from a disgruntled neighbour could land you a visit from the feds and potential jailtime. Today, it's getting banned from some oh-so-irrelevant social media platform that gets people all riled up.
You want to know what high consequences are? Outing yourself as homosexual in Iraq, Suda, Saudi-Arabia, or Jemen. All these countries can have you sentenced to death for just expressing your love to an individual of the same gender - or worse, just being accused of doing so.
It's truly fascinating how whiny some folks are about potentially facing negative consequences for trouble they voluntarily and willingly getting themselves into for no reason and over miniscule BS they just want to rage about.
Instead of doing the grown-up thing and writing letters to their representatives - you know, the people you elected to care about such issues and pass legislation that reflects your interests - they instead want to stand on a pedestal and shout their opinions for all the world to hear.
If you want to try and convince people, go talk to them. Do it in a context where it actually matters, like a school board meeting where rules are discussed that go against your conviction. No one's stopping you and no one's going to "cancel" you for doing so.
Honest to god question: what did people do in the early 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, etc.? Did they all spend their free time writing angry letters to newspapers, TV- and radio stations and have heated discussions in the middle of time square shouting their opinion at every passer by?
I mean we all know what you are saying here. It is objectively wrong. And yes, if you profess it, I genuinely hope you could not find employment for the rest of your life, subject to squalor and begging for chump change on the street corner.
That would be the ideal world.
If he is trying to be a free-speech absolutist in terms of every opinion being heard equally and fairly without punishment, which is what absolutist implies, he is also a hypocrite as shown in his numerous actions against critics.
Overall, no matter how you spin and turn it, Musk is not a free-speech "absolutist" in any way. He has no specific position on free-speech other than what has the basic law that applies to every citizen.
What a joke.
These employees should have expected this reaction; Musk doesn't seem like the type to pass up executing his right to impose consequences. Hopefully they were prepared and have achieved some of the impact they were hoping for.
I am pretty sure that is exactly what many many people have stated, implied, campaigned for etc.
Its a core part of the culture war
Except when that consequence is being banned from twitter, apparently.
His speech comments were always about public discourse. Not private organizational. In Twitter feed we are all equal. In Twitter internal there is hierarchy.
On the other hand, if someone posted something critical of a government policy (pick your poison), that is also protected free speech, in the United States. In this case, retribution from an employer, the (public) platform where it was posted, and the government should all be prohibited. The speaker should expect that future employers not care about policy preferences, only that the speaker can perform the job for which they are hired.
>Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
>Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
70% of people, including Musk and the consequences promised are all just plain wrong.
Clearly the the government (local, state, or national) is not punishing the speaker of any tweets, never has done, doesnt have any intention to etc - so what is the big deal, who are we "saving freedome of speech" from?
Also last time I checked, being critical of one's employer is neither a crime nor a violation of any employment contract that I have ever signed. Its a bad look sure, but to be honest it is boardering on a 1984 thought crime if you are instantly fired if you think your boss is a bit of a dick.
Free speech, refers to public speech, and especially in the context of the state not creating laws / rules that stifle dissent or criticism of the state or those holding public office
Free speech does not mean speak anything and it certainly does not mean my speech may not have any downstream effects.
The comment I replied to before is a non sequitur, this doesn't mean what Musk is doing is right, simply that mindlessly upvoting a Trump-rally-tier argument is not conducive to anything good.
Eventually HN will become reddit and we'll just upvote "our side", regardless of whether the argument has merit.
As far as I can tell, the only intellectual consistency within that movement is that the people pushing it want to be allowed to say anything they want anywhere they want, without any consequences.
The amount of much coverage Musk is getting these days is crazy. His stance on free speech and the advent of his Twitter purchase seemed to amplify disdain from certain groups. I'm no Musk fanboy, but I find that really interesting.
This is weird stance.
'If you don't like it you can leave.'
That's what parents say to discipline misbehaving kids.
The organizers wrote the letter because they care about their work and workplace, and are concerned with Musk's behavior that jeopardize their effort (as in spaceX as company whole).
The people that actually know whats going on in the company are its employees not CEOs.
And that is especially true to musk who is doing 1000 things, and those seems to most be: keeping up appearances that he is doing work + creating new PR disaster via twitter.
250,000 USD paid to keep a corporate jet flight attendant quiet about alleged sexual harassment by Elon and now the immediate firing of employees asking the company to clarify Elon's views don't reflect SpaceX's views or its culture. There can't even be a hint of criticism of Elon.
If this were true, I don’t see a problem here. This is harassment
No one will care if their competitors have similar issues, SpaceX was sold as different and the illusion of that is fading.
They are doing something NASA can't do so I think NASA is getting good value for the money.
Is it really? They're moving faster than anyone else right now, and hitting some good milestones on Starship. They're building a portfolio of business lines from Starlink, through smallsat ridesharing, to super heavy lift and human space flight for commercial and governmental customers. I don't see other space companies catching up soon.
The illusion of Musk being some sort of business guru is certainly fading, but I don't feel that SpaceX are losing their edge.
I doubt this affects their ability to win contracts in the slightest. Their biggest competitors are all defense contractors, not exactly more sympathetic to causes like this...
The "illusion" of what, building actually working and affordable space hardware? The only way that could "fade" would be if someone else like Boeing replicated their successes. As long as SpaceX is technically successful and others aren't, SpaceX being different will be not an illusion but reality even just on that basis alone.
1. Electrify our vehicular infrastructure
2. Get humans to the Moon, if not to Mars
3. Accelerate the unionization of Silicon Valley tech workers
His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat. Just as he's loudly supporting public free speech as long as it's his speech, I predict within a few months of taking over Twitter (assuming he doesn't just eat the penalties for dropping out of the agreement) he'll be loudly proclaiming his support of democracy as long as it's not within his companies.
While technically true, this seems laughably inaccurate in practice. Government bureaucracies are almost entirely composed of unelected employees.
"There are 542 federal offices: President, Vice President, 100 U.S. Senators (two from each state), 435 U.S. Representatives, four delegates to the House of Representatives from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, and one Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico."[0]
"Federal Civilian Employment ... Total, All Areas* 1,869,986"[1]
Yes, the latter number includes Dept of Defence civilian employees.
Examination of the situation in a state of your choosing is left as an exercise for the reader, however I suspect the ratios for state employees vs elected officeholders will be similar.
[0] https://www.fvap.gov/info/about-absentee-voting/elections#:~.... [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.
> Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.
Not if you value democracy in and of itself.
I don't value democracy. I value freedom and prosperity. I think democracy has become too holy to criticize.
I think the perfect world would consist of small autocratic city-states. There would be a single monarch in each city-state who chooses which laws are implemented. Laws would be on Github, everyone could suggest patches or fork them, and the monarch would just have to choose which set of laws they want to implement. Lots of people would collaborate on the laws in an open-source manner. Citizens could easily check which laws are implemented in each city-state, and choose where they want to live. I think something like this would be better than huge countries with democracy.
Unrestrained government was a really significant cause of death in the early 20th century.
Private businesses have an entirely different purpose.
Companies are synthetic people; there are a lot them in one place and they can die.
Governments are not synthetic people; there is only one per place and the idea is that it lasts forever.
One can generally avoid working for a particular company if one wants. One cannot avoid the government.
> he'll be loudly proclaiming his support of democracy
Unlikely, given his dependence on China - he'll stay quiet, just like Tim Cook does at Apple.
I think they are.
"Silicon Valley" is an idea or abstraction now, rather than a geographic location.
The second thing is that it isn't the right question. Anything make by humans is imperfect. The question is, does union representation lead to better outcomes for a larger number of people? And the answer is pretty clearly yes.
Also the amount of corruption within these organization is insane. They also lobby like corporations (just ask biden) They ARE "corporations" masquerading as a good cause, does that remind you of any tech giants?
I'm sure recruiters at Boeing, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic are lighting up phones today.
I give Gwynne Shotwell a ton of credit for actually running SpaceX on a day to day basis.
I think a lot of the issues with Tesla exist because as far as I can tell Tesla does not have a Gwynne Shotwell.
But Tesla has a Price/Earnings ratio of 100 while other car companies like Toyota only have a P/E of 10. So Tesla's stock price could drop a long way while still being reasonable.
And if Musk had got a loan against his Tesla stock to buy Twitter, a substantial drop in Tesla's price could have disproportionate results.
Then, your "sorta-neat stable business" has MASSIVE amounts of value from stock grants, capital it can use to hire more, pay more, finance debt for large purchases, etc. Kind of a superpower for an otherwise unremarkable company.
Of course, there's other externalities from the buffoon and his cultists. They can drive away good workers, or pivot the company in unpleasant directions, or just leave some day, tank the company stock, and then the company loses the superpower and all of the things that come with it. But if your main mission is growth, well, it makes a lot of sense...
Can you name a single company that operates as a democracy?
CHS, Inc up here in St. Paul does almost 40 billion in revenue as a cooperative.
Maybe this is news to you, but the arrangement isn't that uncommon.
Is that Tesla or SpaceX scale? Seems like it's in the ballpark.
Very odd that it's not happening now. People feel that it's OK to disparage lots of fellow colleagues with bad interpretations of science, but not OK to critique the CEO for specific actions are not a group of people I want to be associated with either, even though I have always been a "free speech" proponent. I just use different terminology.
I think there is a misconception here, SpaceX does not send anyone to space, NASA, ESA etc .. does.
SpaceX builds rockets that's it, they don't train astronaut or have a program for space exploration or missions.
I think that's why they call them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_astronaut
To me it's more space tourism that anything else, there is a reason why it takes years to train astronauts.
Inspiration 4, Axiom 1, Polaris Dawn, ...
Nobody can read minds of course, but I think it is smart to not always take people at face value and consider all of their motives in saying anything. Personally I think Elon Musk is probably strongly supporting working in the office for 2 reasons. (Obviously pure speculation)
1) Forcing an ultimatum is a means of achieving a stealth layoff. Tesla probably wants a few percent of people to quit and trim expenses without losing investor confidence, as their stock price is of course inflated. (My prediction is that many businesses are probably going to be needlessly promoting working from the office to try and effectively achieve a round of layoffs by having a percentage of people quit)
2) The people who are the loudest about working from home probably are the biggest workplace trouble-makers about relative non-issues. To give an example: I know that this is genuinely a sensitive issue for some, but we all know that there are at least some people who are loudly trying to milk Covid-19 for eternity so they can stay home from work and meanwhile are going out to eat at restaurants and living life care-free.
If someone’s productivity slips from wfh then address the issue sure.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's what I've been strongly advocating for during the last 2 years. Go out there and live your life normally as you see fit.
One problem is that at least some people out there are trying to milk Covid-19. Publicly, they tell their employer they're too scared of Covid-19 to come to the office so they get to stay home. Privately, they go out every weekend and interact with people normally and live their life.
Agree with your second point though. There's even people absuing remote work to work multiple jobs simultaneously.
Given how political worldview seems to be pretty correlated with concern about stuff like Covid-19 and the new labor movement that has emerged, I'd suspect that it's reasonably focused.
Where does the idea originate that there has to be a democracy in a private company?
If I were to take my money and start a company, and risk it all, I would go to great lengths (within the law) to make decisions that make my venture successful.
That does involve exercising my rights to choose employees that further this goal, and firing those that don’t.
Democracy in politics where we have an inalienable right to vote, happens in a different domain.
I fail to understand why everyone gets so worked up.
We don’t have the data to determine the long term viability of work from home. Maybe we never will - causation is not correlation, and I don’t see any RCTs happening.
Like most decisions, we can’t simply consult ”science” or ”the experts” - we have to use our instincts and our priors.
It must suck to simp a sociopath who doesn't even know your birthdate.
Humans, especially most top corporate executives, are definitely primates. Some lower-down members of the SpaceX troop issued (de facto) a very clear and public challenge to the dominance of the troop's alpha macho male 900# gorilla. They failed to get a chorus of overwhelming support from other members of the troop. They don't appear to have any serious 900# backers from outside the troop.
Can anyone give an example of such a situation ending well for the challengers?
This move is embarrassing.
You can't just fire people for criticism.
is such a meaningless, bloated phrase.
Only consequence of speech should never be more severe than speech.
"Freedom from consequences" is a weak argument used by supporters of autocrats, mobocracies, cancel-culturists, religious bigots wanting to punish blasphemous comments, and so on.
Why do you believe that?
But after so many events of signalling support of free-speech, I think it is massively embarrassing.
(I am neither a Musk fan nor a hater)
For example: if these employees had been other employees (or Musk himself) people racial slurs I think that's reason to fire them but I don't think it's reason to excise them from the public discourse.
Don't give them an inch.
Fire them immediately. Name and shame them so that they have to explain this behavior to their next employer. This type of thing is so toxic and so abusive to everybody they try to suck into it.
This is the significant part.
> Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”
This is absolute bollocks. Feeling intimidated and bullied because some colleagues criticized the CEO? Come on...
Anyone who knows these people and their friends knows that the situation as described in the media was not out of the realm of possibility. Unless Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, was on that plane and witnessed exactly what happened, she is not qualified to assist in burying someone’s totally insane traumatic experience.
My fellow HN readers, the space startup scene is growing fast. Don’t work for a CEO/COO that is willing to throw any and everyone else under the bus to ensure they can continue to collect their own multi-billion dollar paycheck for “making the world more connected.” This has shades of Sheryl Sandberg all over it — and we know how that worked out for society.
The government needs to work harder to build competition against these people, and regulators need to be a lot more careful about allowing them to blast all of their crap into space.
I would guess we are a few years away from some former SpaceX employees with exit liquidity revealing the dirty truth as a means of handling their own PTSD.
I for one think the timing of the sexual claim makes it obvious it’s political, but no one has to work for musk.
So leave if you want to, if musk is so offensive. Not everyone company is an ESG obsessed multinational.
SpaceX is operating in a highly regulated industry and shoving crap into space, which affects every person on Earth for the next several decades. They are way more accountable to society than almost every “multinational” you can think of.
Yes, it’s political.
Why didn’t the employee go to the police? Why didn’t her friend reveal this information years ago.
Your point is ridiculously naive.
You're calling someone naive, while also asking why an employee didn't go to the cops with an accusation of sexual harrassment against their employer who is the richest man in the world?
There is no level of evidence that would meet standards, and the reason why this became a 'political shitshow' was because Musk caught wind of the story ahead of time and as powerful people often do, tried to spin it into an us-vs-them story.
Or maybe, just maybe, she knows more about the case than armchair experts like yourself? She would have been involved the investigation/settlement review so would know the full details.
I've already sold some of it, just to assuage my conscience a little (as well as lock in some of my profits). The next good opportunity to get out, I will, regardless of my belief that the company could well be worth $2,000 a share. It's just not worth being associated with such a terrible human being.
But I have a deep aversion to trolls. They cause pain deliberately. That pain is diffuse and hard to account, but so widespread that (a little bit) times (a lot) adds up to a large number. And I think it's pretty clear that Musk enjoys inflicting pain on people.
Perhaps that's too low a bar to set for the title of "terrible human being". But that's my bar, and he sails right over it. I tried to ignore it for a very long time, and I'm not sure how much longer I can.
He's also running a company that is making enormous strides in getting the world off of fossil fuels -- and pushing others to do the same. (I have quibbles with continuing the multiple-cars-per-household lifestyle, which I think will need to be reconsidered if we're going to stabilize our effect on the environment, but at least he's doing something -- and it includes reducing fossil fuels in areas besides transportation.)
And he's running a company that is revolutionizing space transport. I don't believe in his goals there, but I think good will come of it. He's doing it for real, not just running his mouth off.
And yet, on balance, he's contributing to an American social climate which keeps nudging closer to literal civil war. You probably think that's hyperbolic, and perhaps it is, but it's undeniable that its making a lot of people angry a lot of the time. He's in a position to know better, and it looks to me as if he enjoys it. To me, that merits the designation "terrible human being".
You can legitimately disagree with that, but I think we can agree on the reasons I say it.
So Elon is a troll because he posts things you disagree with? Because that's the only explanation I can think of here. You didn't provide any evidence to support this assertion.
Musk's comments are moving us closer to a civil war because people are putting too much weight in them. If general society viewed musk as someone who wasn't a "terrible human being" but rather just someone they disagreed with, there would be no justification in their minds to consider a civil war as the response. Someone (even someone with less influence then musk) who says the "bad things" on twitter will likely get more media coverage and outrage then someone doing objectively evil things on a smaller scale.
But I think in this case(if the news articles are accurate), SpaceX actions were not entirely unjustified. It is an internal matter of a private company.
Free speech is a constitutional right that applies to every individual. Employment contracts and terms of it do not have to adhere to it.
Unions are there to protect worker rights and none of those rights involve questioning the business decisions or administrative decisions of the management.
Frankly, worker unions have abused the serious power they hold and have diluted it by protecting slackers. And they have earned their reputations.
The job of a worker is to be honest, sincere and be dedicated to work assigned to him. The job of a union is to ensure that the work assigned to a worker is reasonable, safe, legal and properly compensated (Over time, etc)
Tell me you've never seen a union without telling me you've never seen a union.
Which union in particular? There is only one in the US that you could reasonably say that about and it’s the police union.
These companies are nothing without their workers. Remember that.
It sounds like most Space X employees are doing fine. And we are talking about an example of "soviet management" here?
This people can sink a startup really fast. The kind of people drawing caricatures of the CEO where they should be doing calculus on critical parts of the system. Letting they go is the correct move. They are 100% free to fund a better, more moral and more ethic Space-Z with their own money and promote a CEO that they like more.
Being an autocrat doesn't mean getting rid of everyone who disagrees with you, just the ones who dare to do something about it (or potentially might).
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172913/spacex-complaint...
I wonder whether this could have worked in a publically traded company with a board - someone who could try to rein in Musk but the hierarchy doesn't work this way here.
(1) The practical advice sense (an "is" statement): "workers currently have little power in large corporations and so trying to change the company will not succeed and is a waste of time, therefore you should leave"
(2) The moral sense (an "ought" statement): "corporate leadership should not respect the opinions or desires of workers; the hierarchy exists for a good reason and should be maintained, and trying to have influence beyond your position in this hierarchy is wrong; therefore you should leave"
If you meant your comment in the second sense, fair enough, although you should be explicit so I know we have nothing more to talk about. If you mean it in the first sense then this ignores the option of collective worker organization, which among the oft-touted compensation improvements also gives workers an actual say in the running of their workplace - and certainly the ability to talk about what they want without fear of being fired.
If you feel it is worth it to risk your career on a letter do not spend one second of company time on it and do not use a single bit of company technology.
Honestly sick of these Prima Donna employees who think they can LARP as activists on company time and equipment.
If it is that important to "speak truth to power" do it on your own time.
Politicize and campaign on your own time. I’ve had to keep my mouth shut at work for decades. Time the fanatical left learn the same.
> The letter upset many staffers, Ms. Shotwell [SpaceX's President] said, saying they felt pressure to “sign onto something that did not reflect their views.”
> “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism,” she said in the email.
[edit] p.s. Did anyone read the comments here before posting? It's just the same comments over and over and over and over again, wtf is this shit. Can't we do better?
That was the accusation by the former employees, but that seems more like projection. The small gang behind this is an embarrassment and causing distraction, and little else.
These 5 or so clowns also:
> made other staff feel "uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-fires-employees-in...
I could understand if it’s bad working conditions or discrimination.
But bruh.
People need to grow up and do work at work then be activists outside of work.
Good step by SpaceX
I still don’t think it’s wrongful termination but do want to appreciate your point.
This sounds strange to me. Since there's a massive power imbalance between employee and employer, how is that seen as an equivalent tradeoff?
1. In places where termination is for cause, termination often causes an employee not to have access to various government benefits 2. At-will employment likely encourages more hiring in the first place, so it's possible that with more restricted firing you'd never have gotten the job.
I do not feel these benefits make up for the drawbacks and do not favour at-will as an organizing principle for industrial relations. But I just figured it would make sense to at least say the apparent argument.
They just have to find an excuse.
At-will only benefits the employer.
It does not benefit the employee in any way.
At all.
At-will, in a sane world, means that a company cannot fire an employee unless they severely disrupt business operations, but the employee can quit and recieve unemployment benefits.
But I don't trust you to understand basic human decency so let me communicate that in a way you can understand: goo goo ga gah, bllblblbbb goo goo ga gah.
The letter is insubordination, it is fireable, and the employees that wrote it are also correct. Elon Musk would likely get fired for his behavior if he were a different executive - certainly disciplined - and that's a problem for SpaceX (and Tesla, and Twitter). It makes it seem like he's not accountable to anyone. Steve Jobs would not have done behaved this way publicly, nor would any other singular founder/execs I can think of at his level.
Whatever the situation, this is just brazen propaganda techniques. How shameful and obvious. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been called out in this discussion.
Employment requires sustained two-way consent. An employer should not have to pay someone money only to have that person make their lives more difficult than otherwise. Just as an employee should be free to quit a company whose goals they find disagreeable.
Cancelling is when a 3rd party comes into an otherwise consensual employer-employee relationship (or publisher-author relationship, really any business relationship) and demanding that to end.
I am pro free speech, but would never dream of using company resources to try to publicly embarrass my CEO. And certainly not when the issue at hand is not related to company performance.
> would be scared to go to mars with this guy.
Anyone who is against Musk will add this to their litany of complaints. Anyone who loves him will be baffled why this is a story ;)
As an aside, even negative publicity is publicity, and I imagine that this whole Twitter deal will lose Elon gobs of cash, but make his other companies more valuable. "Distancing themselves from Elon Musk", from a purely capitalist perspective, sounds like a bad bet.
Have you tried considering that you have no spinal column?
I don't think that was the letter, I think that was the firing.
Typically there are channels to voice criticism internally within a company that don’t involve public statements.
And if the answer back is “we disagree with your criticism” I mean the options are: 1) drop it or 2) leave.
As the economy falters we’re going to see a lot less coddling of employee behavior that undermines the business itself.
I mean Google put up with their own employees complaining publicly about their customers. That wouldn’t fly in any other company.
I wonder if these employees tried any internal avenues to voice their concerns before going open with it? If not, it seems more like grand-standing and the firings are more acceptable. But if internal discussions were ignored this is out of line.
Lmao thats pretty funny tbh. Employees should be allowed to say what they want but the firing was to be expected and maybe some of the employees learned unfortunately they do not have the power they thought they had.
It's only a small step until these activists start demanding similar things regarding random public people they don't like. Like DeSantis. Surely any sane leadership would condemn DeSantis' harmful behavior?
I hope firings will continue until this kind of activism subsides.
If you criticize your employer, expect to get fired. Just got fired? What do you care, you don’t like your employer anyway. Just fired everyone smart enough to criticize you? Enjoy your dwindling years with the team of incompetent cronies.
This is a perfect snapshot of the human condition.
Sanders always had a giant ego and a lust of showing off and thumping his chest. We all took this with an eyeroll, well, some of us did. At one point it was too much, had a bunch of internal promotional posters and flyers made depicting himself as a buff Indian Jones whipping Intel, while his playboy-bunny wife looked on longingly at her hero.
Many AMD employees literally saw him as a muscled hero savior and themselves as victims, like Rambo-Trump photoshops of today, or the sycophantic adulation of Musk worshipers. This lead to people picking sides: Sanders had so distracted his employees with his mouth and antics by creating a schism where some people were like "knock off the rich-guy BS", while others were like, "Go get 'em!". It created a lot of internal conflict. I was only there for a while, but it was amazing how you couldn't do your job without some image of Sanders as hero being shoved in your face by some fan employee.
I can relate to the SpaceX employees, having a mercurial asshat for a boss is tedious, even if the pay is great. But AMD was floundering technologically at that time, and it wasn't until Sanders FINALLY stepped down that AMD really took Intel to task: beating them to 1 GHz and 64-bit processing. I can only imagine the brain-drain due to his asshole behavior was the problem, but that's just my $0.01.
What happened in recent weeks?
The letter is condemnation by innuendo. They don't say exactly why they want Musk removed and only hint at it and make general statements.
An advantage of that approach is that it is difficult for the accused to defend themselves. The disadvantage is that if the accused has power they can squash this and the accusers are exposed because vague accusations are difficult to justify as they are to defend against.
I suspect they don't say why they want Musk removed because their reasons stated clearly and directly would be unpalatable. I think the reason they want him removed is because he expressed support for the Republican party. In the USA, in many circles, it is still unacceptable to condemn people based on political affiliation.
It is however, more acceptable to use innuendo about racial and sexual rights as a weapon for indirect political persecution.
I also welcome left-leaning people to research hardline right to have a reality check and realize he's taking pretty centrist stance.
What is Elon doing in public that’s so bad, exactly? He’s against authoritarian governments? The horror!
If I were a tech company recruiter now, I would 100% go shopping for musk companies’ employees right now…
As a recruiter, you could seriously poach some amazing talent just because Elon can’t keep his fucking mouth shut. They aren’t idiots over there, and Elon should realize that most of the people working for him are likely much, much, much smarter than he is.
He doesn’t seem to like being held accountable for his shady tweets too much, does he?
This is not the company we want taking us to Mars.
If Elon just watched his mouth he could import fentanyl and nobody would complain.
But also valid if people felt pressures to join in on employee activism they don't care about, I’ve seen that trend and I’m totally find curb stomping that whole mentality. I can empathize with the lack of employee power in the US that could lead one to these outcomes, there are other ways (that may not be available to those employees or in the US at all)
For Shotwell, I still think it is disingenuous to suggest there aren't other daily distractions people don't get fired for
I knew HN skewed toward tech-bro libertarianism, but this is a bit much even for that.
People tried to get corporations to “use their platform”, some started doing that at the annoyance and exclusion of employees that werent interested in having those unrelated causes and discussions in the workday while being told “silence means you’re against us and for whatever we’re against today”
The corporation does not exist for that and is a conduit for revenue exclusively
Some other type of organization is more suited for that, they exist. It may be incompatible with someone’s ability to exchange time for food and shelter but thats exclusively their problem
So its nice to see more examples of complete and immediate excision, a reversion to the mean
As god decreed. Was that on the 5th day? I lost count. Corporations are human creations and as such are malleable.
Is this a thing? Like feeling pressure to leave a tip or something?
> We have 3 launches within 37 hours for critical satellites this weekend, we have to support the astronauts we delivered to the ISS and get cargo Dragon back to the flight-ready, and after receiving environmental approval early this week, we are on the cusp of the first orbital launch attempt of Starship. We have too much critical work to accomplish
There are times for open discussion and there are times to just shut up and get with the program.
Where these 5 employees went wrong was in writing it as an internal memo, and attempting to rouse the rabble. That's clearly unacceptable and they misjudged how swift and certain the reaction would be. I do wonder what they were expecting.
Where they went wrong was by posting their criticism as an internal memo using internal resources. They should have taken to twitter.
"SpaceX fires employees who wrote letter slamming Musk’s “embarrassing” behavior"
We are no longer fans of free speech.
Stay tuned for daily updates.
Elon is free to do whatever, he's a grown man, and as another grown man, I am not bothered. If you're embarrassed to work for him, just quit.
You are correct. Money and power does it, though. Your boss won't get fired for talking badly about you, in general, but you can get fired for talking badly about your boss.
I always find these collective actions strange. Like you if you want to change anything from the inside your only option is to (try to) unionize, anything else is pointless.
> In an email, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”
It's literally the same thing wokescolds do when somebody says anything they disagree with, only this time it's SpaceX and Elon Musk. There's not really any good argument for somebody who claims to care about free speech.
"It's a private company. They can fire whoever they want so long as it's not a protected class." And Twitter is a private company that can ban anybody they want. Don't like it? Go to Mastodon. Usually this argument doesn't fly for the people that defend his Twitter free speech position.
This is not realistic. It will not happen. Elon Musk is the founder, chairman, CEO and CTO. He owns 47% of the company and 78% of voting control.
A company you work for is not a democracy. You are not an owner. You don't get to call out, to make governance decisions, to create pressure campaigns, etc. This is doubly true for privately held companies. It would be truly bizarre if these employees weren't fired for this wannabe activism routine.
In short, go launch your own damn satellites.
You do realize this was true of most blue chips at some point in history right? Know who those people and their cults are now? No? Right, nobody does.
I also don't know who the unhappy underling people in those companies were. Nobody does, and nobody did at the time either (that's the difference).
Elon Musk can make a grade-A ass of himself, but within the bounds of the law to work for him is to serve at his pleasure. Complaining about him and NOT expecting the potential axe is madness.
=====================
An open letter to the Executives of SpaceX,
In light of recent allegations against our CEO and his public disparagement of the situation, we would like to deliver feedback on how these events affect our company’s reputation, and through it, our mission. Employees across the spectra of gender, ethnicity, seniority, and technical roles have collaborated on this letter. We feel it is imperative to maintain honest and open dialogue with each other to effectively reach our company’s primary goals together: making SpaceX a great place to work for all, and making humans a multiplanetary species.
As SpaceX employees we are expected to challenge established processes, rapidly innovate to solve complex problems as a team, and use failures as learning opportunities. Commitment to these ideals is fundamental to our identity and is core to how we have redefined our industry. But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion with equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo.
Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more. However, we feel an unequal burden to carry this effort as the company has not applied appropriate urgency and resources to the problem in a manner consistent with our approach to critical path technical projects. To be clear: recent events are not isolated incidents; they are emblematic of a wider culture that underserves many of the people who enable SpaceX’s extraordinary accomplishments. As industry leaders, we bear unique responsibility to address this.
Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.
SpaceX’s current systems and culture do not live up to its stated values, as many employees continue to experience unequal enforcement of our oft-repeated “No Asshole” and “Zero Tolerance” policies. This must change. As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.
Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone. Apply a critical eye to issues that prevent employees from fully performing their jobs and meeting their potential, pursuing specific and enduring actions that are well resourced, transparent, and treated with the same rigor and urgency as establishing flight rationale after a hardware anomaly.
Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. SpaceX must establish safe avenues for reporting and uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.
We care deeply about SpaceX’s mission to make humanity multiplanetary. But more importantly, we care about each other. The collaboration we need to make life multiplanetary is incompatible with a culture that treats employees as consumable resources. Our unique position requires us to consider how our actions today will shape the experiences of individuals beyond our planet. Is the culture we are fostering now the one which we aim to bring to Mars and beyond?
We have made strides in that direction, but there is so much more to accomplish.
Regardless of what people say their actions always betray them. I have no idea why people idolize Elon Musk when he has repeatedly shown us what he is. Then again the same is true for Donald Trump. I honestly don't understand it.
I’m not sure what’s actually wrong with him or if it’s at all clinical or just the billionaire disease of being surrounded by people who agree with you for too long. But I get a feeling there is something a bit off with his behavior and/or mental health, and that it’s been getting worse lately. I also don’t know if this shift is subjective and merely because I see more of him now than before. But I can’t help thinking that now he seems like a massive asshat in nearly every single human interaction whereas before he had some kind of likability.
It's why home care workers never wear necklaces because they could try to strangle you with one.
Quantitatively no doubt. There is a "pedo guy" incident every few days now and it is accelerating and it could be every few minutes before it gets too fast to measure and reaches some kind of singularity.
I thought he was just trying to imitate Trump but I think he's really trying to surpass Trump as "America's most unhinged."
I don't know that I ever found Musk likable though.
EDIT: I was thinking about my answer to "When did you stop liking Elon Musk?" and I suppose it was when he seemed to go on a tangent calling a rescuer a pedophile. That was a WTF moment for me.
There are two sides of this coin: 1) a company without its employees cannot function, 2) somehow everyone became entitled to everything during covid.
It's sad, I get the point of view of both sides. Hopefully they can reach a compromise.
I feel like the safe bet in 2010 was compete on government contracts and print money. Without Elon, SpaceX is just another Boeing. The best teams won't get to Mars if investors want them to crank the money printer or congress wants a jobs program.
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-aspergers-syndrom...
I don’t think that fully excuses or justified everything he does, but it has some explanatory power.
It’s obvious by his work output that he is not a very typical person, and it seems like society as a whole is gaining tremendous benefit from his eccentricity. I don’t think we have to like him, but speaking for myself, I still respect him and on the whole am grateful for his life’s work. I wish he’d stay away from Twitter… but, oh well.
In the history of items written on Musk in the past 20 years, was it ever mentioned prior to 2022?
Yeah, sure, like 90% of SV claims to be "on the spectrum", often as a behavioural excuse. Don't believe me? Look at any comment section of an article discussing the subject on these forums.
A quick google says 1 man out of 42 is autistic and 1 out of 200 workers in the U.S. is a software engineer. Let's assume every SE is a man and half the working population is men, that would mean 1 out of 100 men is in software.
Based on those numbers, it would be possible for every software engineer to be on the spectrum.
Labelling non-neurotypical behavior as "being a dick" or "poor behavior" is very neurotypical.
[Addendum]
I for one am happy to see the larger world and its expected rules of behavior get a taste of what it constantly dishes out.
Aspegers does not excuse intentionally hurting people you don't like.
Referring to the rescue diver as a pedophile is uniquely odious and as far as I’m aware the only time Musk has done that. Maybe you are closely tracking his public utterances against pedos, MAPs, and groomers and can shed more light on how that occasion is part and parcel to a broader pattern of behavior, unacceptable in your mind. Of note, the public letter didn’t coincide with that specific incident.
Sadly, the people who do the most to change the world are often unreasonable in their personal lives. And if a person sincerely believes they are working to prevent climate change or give humanity a backup planet they'll tend to view opposition based on quality of life issues or whatever as unreasonable.
I feel sorry for the progress of gender equality in Silicon Valley.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flig...
Firing a CEO for purchasing escort services would be quite a low bar to set. Note that I'm not saying I support the act.
i have a lot of respect for tesla and what they've done, i'll be able to maintain that respect with the tweets squelched.
So they are angry and they want to explain that to others. On the other hand, some people know that there is no “woke” white rich guy.
There are people who can fire the CEO if they think he's damaging the company's reputation. They called the "board of directors". If you're not on the board of directors, the way you register displeasure with your CEO is to leave the company.
Given the choice between "just leave" or "state my concerns about the company I believed in", I might do the latter. What does one have to lose in that case?
Or you write a letter to the board, those responsible for the situation.
Update: In the largest newspaper forum of my country, there are now 2 posts out of 96, agreeing with SpaceX (but more on the basis that the employees' action was ill-advised).
Sounds like getting enough employees to write a letter criticizing the CEO and damaging his reputation is a pretty good way to get the board's attention then?
If nobody ever speaks up, then how does change happen? Say you dislike the CEO or other executives but like the company. Then you can vocalize this and change happens and you stay, or no change happens and you leave.
We can easily do that. Most people can't. This disdainful attitude reeks of privilege.
What? No!? That is a sure way for your displeasure to never even reach the same hemisphere as the CEO. Even this letter is better, at least he’s aware, and the end result is exactly the same (not at the company any more).
I agree that activist workers are a problem for productivity, but the same could be said for activist CEOs.
If that's the case, it's not a bad strategy. They're easy to manipulate into thinking you're on their side if you say the right soundbites. And they're the toughest group of consumers to get on the green tech train. Musk could be acting as a chameleon in an attempt to simply get some of them to accept the reality of climate change.
The GOP is on track to take Congress. There is a decent chance they hold that through 2024. American politics have swung against “wokeism,” or rather, since I haven’t seen a good definition for that term, leaders who identify with “woke” cultural figures.
SpaceX sells to the government. Tesla relies on the government. He’s aligning with the new political winds.
Sure. But having the appropriations committee pissed off at you can curtail the sorts of funds they give e.g. NASA, or the caveats they add to it.
It's labor laws that keep things inclusive and accessible for all. What the left has been doing with great success is taking over HR departments and enacting new corporate rules that A) go well beyond the law B) are exclusively left-wing de jour and C) extremely authoritarian.
I know, their claims are the exact opposite, which is why they've been so successful at sweeping into HR departments but the writing is on the wall: letting far left activists take control of HR will mean one thing with absolute certainty: Morale will plummet and profitability will go right after it.
Disclaimer: Trying to use this definition prior to the year 2000 is unsupported and will result in some really weird shit.
I primarily wanted to highlight that the people quipping about "there's no far left in the US" or "the far left in the US is the mainstream left in Europe" are far left hence why they don't see much to the left of them in the US. Left-right, tall-short, skinny-fat, if you find yourself on a spectrum and one side of you is sparsely populated you are the extreme by definition.
Second, these people are generally ignorant of how far right some of the "other half" of Europe leans on social issues. Sure, they have lots of government services and safety nets, healthcare included. But they don't lean as far left on many social subjects as the US does. Identity politics, sexual orientation and abortions are three good examples of topics on which the left half of the bell curve of opinions on these subjects has more of it's meat to the right than the US equivalent. (Arguably a lot of this is a function of the US's history of reactionary politics but that's outside of the scope of this discussion, the positions today are what they are.) So even in a context that includes "nations who literally tried communism and kept the stuff they liked when they were done" the opinions of the "far" left in the US is decently out there.
I mean that's literally a fact, so... Even Orban is just a racist "far leftist"... Give me a break.
> Sure, they have lots of government services and safety nets, healthcare included.
Sure, they're 100000% far-left wing, but they're not far-left at all. Okay dude, gtfo.
> Identity politics, sexual orientation and abortions are three good examples of topics on which the left half of the bell curve of opinions on these subjects has more of it's meat to the right than the US equivalent.
Except most of the 3/4 of a billion people do. It's not a bell curve at all. Did you even bother to look into this or just go with your gut? Even in the east where it's the lowest, for example, gay marriage support is still 43%... higher than in the US in 2009 (Gallup)!
He’s saying the left went so far left that his only reasonable choice is a guy on the right. Imagine that. A guy who has voted Democrat is now moved to vote for a right wing candidate because the left's policies have deviated so much.
The far left have to come to terms that moderate liberals do not identify with people on the far left with their attitudes toward crime, identity politics, economics and other mainstream political issues that the moderate left of Bill Clinton and Gore of yore would not have supported.
If Bill or Al Gore or Kerry of 2004 were running, Musk would vote for them. So would the many who will vote out some democrats in congress come 2024. In large part people voted for Biden because he promised to return to the mean --but instead has embraced the left wing of the party rather than the center of the Dem. party.
You forget he's voted Democrat or independent in the US before now. He's leaving because he believes the left has left him (moving too far left for him).
But there are quite a few CxOs who are vocal and people don't complain much about them, including Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Hastings, Chapek, Gates (though retired), Bloomberg, Forbes, etc.
It absolutely would, and the CEO is responsible to the board. In such a case the board of directors would be well within their rights to can the CEO.
This is fundamentally the same kind of calculation that brands make when deciding to public-ally sponsor things that people feel strongly about.
No, five people were fired over this bruhaha.
Also, particularly exceptional contributors may continue to sign open letters about Musk.
But they’re also like a group dedicated to “saving the spotted skylark” once they save the skylark, their mission is complete. Do they disband? Of course not!!! Let’s find a new cause, the threatened fire ant!
> Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently.
Given as much, if this is really about Mr Musk's political endorsements, folks need to get over it. But inasmuch as he embraces dishonesty (one example: the "pedo" incident from way back) then I'd agree that the company should discipline him.
I dunno, jerk is arbitrarily defined by society. There’s no objective way to define it - which is why most companies that do end up on “whatever behavior makes us the most money”, ie acquiescing to power.
> Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently.
I wasn't keying in on a word "dishonest" (though I believe he knows exactly what he's doing with his crypto/dogecoin musings). I was keying in on "no-asshole" which while subjective, started with tweets like his famous "pedo" comment surrounding the youth soccer team stuck in a cave during floodwater.
> Musk's personal Twitter account
If your tweets impact the market substantially and the majority of your wealth is tied to those stocks, it cannot be considered a personal account. At best a hybrid account of some kind.
Being a public figure is hard, and you lose privileges. Lets not act naive and pretend this is not a well understood phenomenon.
That wasn't dishonesty, he genuinely thought the guy was a pedo (the con artist he hired to investigate also (falsely) reafirmed this).
Are you speaking from experience? As a consultant, I occasionally run into companies that have an asshole problem (it’s pretty rare, fortunately), and your comment seems like wishful thinking to the point of naivety. In fact, overly blunt and “honest” communication is one of the ways assholes express themselves.
The other thing about assholes in companies is that they’ve made themselves indispensable—often raising themselves up by pushing the people around them down—because the ones who don’t, don’t survive.
For every company I’ve been in that had an asshole problem, management was aware that they had an asshole problem, but felt they couldn’t resolve it because the asshole was a “star performer.” (They weren’t really. Overall performance typically increases when they leave, because previously-suppressed people are now able to step up and grow.)
Objectivity, honesty, and facts do nothing to fix this problem, except in a fantasy world where everything is measured and the impact of people’s actions is perfectly visible. That world doesn’t exist.
If you must insist that objectivity & facts are a fantasy world, and that people should be attacked for being honest, then there is nothing anyone can do to help you.
That’s not what I said.
I’d ask for you to elaborate on how you’ve seen assholes successfully dealt with, in your 30 years of experience, but you’re coming across as being more interested in “winning” than having a conversation in good faith. (Ironically, I don’t trust your response to be objective and honest.)
How can you even define all forms of unacceptable behavior? If someone doesn't put "pooping on coworkers desk" in the document, does that mean I won't be punished for it now?
Therefore as an employee I prefer these things to be vague and arbitrary, as long as I have some trust in the people making the decisions.
Of course in time they become formalized and problematic. Which is one of the disadvantages of working at a big company.
And this is how you get the modern Google, where there is lots of nepotism, politics, and a shift from being a company that makes cool innovative shit to one that hires AI "ethics" "engineers" that lose their marbles.
When people say "culture of objectivity, facts and honesty", what they really mean is "ability to inject my moral code into any conversation and have it be heard and accepted". In a company as high strung as Space X, there is absolutely no place for that.
I can't wait until this catches on and professionalism once again rules the workplace. Activism in the workplace is divisive and tiring.
The intercept had amazing article lately about how this attitude tears organizations apart.