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SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#21

Post by cloutchaser »

qayxc wrote: post #10
blitzar wrote: post #2

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, recently described himself as a "free speech absolutist."

He is. He just - like most other free speech proponents - conveniently fails to mention the part about consequences. 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 s…

Anyone can sue musk if he libels them with his tweets.

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.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#22

Post by numair »

cloutchaser wrote: post #19
numair wrote: post #16

The most disgusting fact I learned in this article is that Shotwell personally backed Musk on denying claims he sexually harassed the flight attended. What? 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 bu…

Indeed, if you don’t want to work for musk, go work for bezos and build rockets for him. 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.

The fact that you’ve inserted “political” into a fact-based happened-or-didn’t situation says more about you, and your willingness to buy into people’s conspiracy theories, than anything about the situation.

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.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#23

Post by wnkrshm »

I understand that drama like that can't be easily tolerated in a company but if it's the owner causing drama all the time I also get the frustration of the people taking part.

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.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#24

Post by lprd »

Good. The organizers are free to leave the company if they aren't comfortable with the leadership, or disagree with the company's direction. I'm not sure why this is getting so much coverage in the first place. Employees have been fired for less at places like Google.

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.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#25

Post by koheripbal »

uejfiweun wrote: post #18

Here's my unpopular opinion - good riddance. It's not a free speech issue because SpaceX isn't a public square. It's a company, and companies are top down. If these employees are at Musk's company, then they had better be prepared to play by Musk's rules, and they did the exact opposite, essentially leading a mutiny against the boss and sowing discord within the company in the process. SpaceX isn't an activist organi…

Activist employees are toxic to company culture.

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.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#26

Post by checker »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #15
checker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly sounds hypocritical if you're willing to play liberties with the definition of free speech. However, free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences of such speech. The audience can respond any way they like without infringing on the speaker's rights (and it's not a right to work at SpaceX). These employees should have expected this reaction; Musk doesn't seem like the type to pass up executing his ri…

He has most definitely been arguing against consequences as part of it. You know, like getting banned on twitter.

He's free to whine about it, buy the company, or start his own platform. If he truly cared then he'd be lobbying for Congress to limit the "ban rights" of companies and individuals running platforms like Twitter (personally I would not vote for anyone supporting such a bill). Before the recent Supreme Court I would say that it would take an amendment; now I'm not so sure that such a bill would be overturned.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#27

Post by cloutchaser »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #8

> We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism. This seems like a funny statement to make when your CEO is literally out buying Twitter.

These activists employees are free to get funding to buy spacex if Elon can be persuaded to sell.

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

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#28

Post by hrbf »

qayxc wrote: post #10
blitzar wrote: post #2

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, recently described himself as a "free speech absolutist."

He is. He just - like most other free speech proponents - conveniently fails to mention the part about consequences. 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 s…

The consequences of “free speech” are way easier if you’re the one doling them out as opposed to receiving them. There’s a massive power imbalance that this particular billionaire is looking to escalate in his favor.

Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

#30

Post by bhaak »

uejfiweun wrote: post #18

Here's my unpopular opinion - good riddance. It's not a free speech issue because SpaceX isn't a public square. It's a company, and companies are top down. If these employees are at Musk's company, then they had better be prepared to play by Musk's rules, and they did the exact opposite, essentially leading a mutiny against the boss and sowing discord within the company in the process. SpaceX isn't an activist organi…

That’s what you get if your priorities clash.

One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter.

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