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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

#51

Post by kumarvvr »

andy_ppp wrote: post #29

Sounds like SpaceX employees should get a Union to protect all staff if they want to stand up to the boss.

Yeah, unions are not about standing up to the boss.

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)

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

#52

Post by Spartan112 »

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…

That's just the most hypocritical thing to be. Free speech means not being prosecuted by the government, so being a free-speech absolutist as an indiviual is completely meaningless.

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.

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

#53

Post by Spartan112 »

koheripbal wrote: post #25
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.

No post body was provided.

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

#54

Post by ALittleLight »

numair wrote: post #22
cloutchaser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “multin…

The "political" aspect of the situation is that a newspaper is reporting what an anonymous person says her friend told her in confidence years ago without any real corroborating evidence. If the media organization were not motivated by political animus they would not run such a flimsy story. Or, I don't know, maybe they would, but that's how I interpret "political".

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

#55

Post by wallaBBB »

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…

Generally OK, but I'm not sure if we should have different perspective for SpaceX considering it's funded by taxpayers' money, it's not out there competing in the free market...

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

#56

Post by mola »

cloutchaser wrote: post #21
qayxc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, good luck standing in court against a billionaire... His money puts him above most laws, especially non criminal ones. This is ok because he owns stuff is an antithesis to a democratic free country with a rule of law. It's basically a step towards monarchy.

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

#57

Post by dmurray »

remarkEon wrote: post #49
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…

This is sort of a meta comment, but if you look across history the men and women who forced civilization and technology forward were typically gigantic assholes. I'm not sure what to make of that, and Musk definitely is an asshole, but that doesn't mean I don't root for his space company that's finally returned the United States to the stars.

For most of civilization we've been able to overlook the fact that our leaders and heroes are gigantic assholes, and judge them by their great deeds rather than minutiae of their private interactions.

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

#58

Post by ReptileMan »

lkrubner wrote: post #44
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…

The workers have a right to organize a labor union. They have a right to go on strike and shut the company down. They have a right to critique any process or rule in the company that they might wish to stop. They have a right to weigh in on the consequences of any of the company's processes, goals, or aims. The workers have had these rights recognized in law for most of the last century.

We are not talking about internal company problems here. We are talking about letter about behaviour of the boss outside of the company which is of no concern of employees.

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

#59

Post by andy_ppp »

kumarvvr wrote: post #51
andy_ppp wrote: post #29

Sounds like SpaceX employees should get a Union to protect all staff if they want to stand up to the boss.

Yeah, unions are not about standing up to the boss . 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 t…

That depends on what the union members decide is important.

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

#60

Post by uejfiweun »

wallaBBB wrote: post #55
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…

Generally OK, but I'm not sure if we should have different perspective for SpaceX considering it's funded by taxpayers' money, it's not out there competing in the free market...

That's a fair point. But I'd say that then the issue is decided by the voters and our elected representatives - if we wanted, we could get the government to cancel their contracts if Musk does something really terrible (not saying it would be easy). I'd prefer it be done that way rather than internal activists pushing their own beliefs onto the company unilaterally and disrupting operations - that's one way we can be SURE our tax dollars would be wasted.
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