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SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

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

#61
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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That's not a left or right issue - it's simply a fact of life. 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 t…

So being banned off Twitter is a consequence for your free speech, right?

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

#62

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…

On one hand, I agree with you. I've personally seen low level people at a large corporation believe they were unequivocally in the right, and tried to use the weight of their moral conviction to impose their view of things onto everyone else. It's not your job to do this, and it's not my job to care.

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.

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

#63
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

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

#66

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.

It seems like that because these kind of assholes also wrote the history books (or paid the guys that did)....

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

#67

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...

> it's not out there competing in the free market...

Tell that to Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. They’d love to know. . .

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

#68

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.

> Activist employees

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.

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

#69

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…

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