Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 1001 posts

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

#181

Post by nowherebeen »

user_named wrote: post #144
axg11 wrote: post #110

This is a very predictable consequence of criticizing your employer via a public letter. Criticize internally all you want, and influence the changes that you want to see happen. Employment is a two-way relationship. If you don't like your employer, you are free to leave. If they don't like you, they are free to fire you (within legal bounds). Publishing an openly critical letter and signing it is a quick way to get…

They critized Musk, factually. Musk is not their employer, SpaceX is, but you just proved their point since you believe Musk and SpaceX are one and the same.

Musk is the CEO, he has the right to fire any employees that damage the company's reputation. You could argue that Musk is doing it himself and that the employee was simply stating facts, but it doesn't change the fact that the board decide to place him in-charge. Any other CEO would have done the same.

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.

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

#182

Post by orangepurple »

notafraudster wrote: post #145
blocked_again wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't understand why "4. Stay at your company and try to change culture within by organizing collectively, either through the guise of a union or informally" isn't also something you are free to do, besides that you think doing so is not "do[ing] something positive to the society", but is instead "becoming a bunch of cry babies." Also why is 3 binary? If I am a minority investor in a company, I am not free to criti…

To accomplish (4) you have to become a sociopath and sociopaths won't attempt to substantially improve culture for its own sake because they lack empathy.

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

#183

Post by justrando »

jmyeet wrote: post #153

I'm really starting to wonder if 2022 won't be looked back as the year that Elon finally jumped the shark. 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…

> 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/)

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

#184

Post by pclmulqdq »

onelovetwo wrote: post #152
chasd00 wrote: post #125

Twitter is the worst thing to happen to Musk. The social media addiction knows no class/age/wealth/religious/creed boundary. It’s like social cancer that slowly destroys your relationship to society. 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.

He's at his lowest point in the eyes of the media (which is how most of us see the world) but hes actually at the highest point in his career and achievements. 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.

Tesla has always been "about to explode" in one way or another. When will people realize that manufacturing businesses, when they are limited by property and equipment, are slow-burning?

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.

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

#185

Post by smotched »

nocoolnametom wrote: post #148
Tepix wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the people working at SpaceX and Tesla "Silicon Valley tech workers"? I think most of them aren't. > 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 should have just left out the "Silicon Valley" part of that, true. Unionization of developers and technology workers is starting, but remains slow because unions are usually formed when the cost of speaking out becomes worth more than enduring the negatives and unreasonably low pay is usually one of the biggest issues for workers and we don't really have pay issues. Musk's approach to treating his employees as cogs…

Do you guys really just think of unions as just being a good thing? you see no issues with this massive unions at all?

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

#186

Post by martythemaniak »

jmyeet wrote: post #153

I'm really starting to wonder if 2022 won't be looked back as the year that Elon finally jumped the shark. 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…

Yeah, it's pretty sad. I think what happened is he "crossed the chasm" so to speak and became mainstream. He was famous for his work, which is super interesting and so he was appreciated by a subset of nerds. In the last year or two he bacame famous for his personality, which turned out to be "generic right-wing edge lord". Thing is, there's very few people who can talk in depth about rocket design or actually bring their wild schemes to life and he's one of them. On the other hand, there's a whole spectrum of thousands of celebrity right wing edge lords to choose from if that's your thing and there's absolutely nothing interesting or unique about his take on this.

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

#187

Post by snowwrestler »

speedgoose wrote: post #119
leesec wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would companies be democratic? That would be an extreme historical rarity

Why would governments be democratic? That would be an extreme historical rarity

It should go without saying, but governments and companies are not the same things.

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.

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

#188

Post by jacquesm »

andsoitis wrote: post #154
nocoolnametom wrote: post #97

Musk may end up being the most influential person to: 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…

> democracy as long as it's not within his companies. Can you name a single company that operates as a democracy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

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

#190

Post by evolve2k »

user_named wrote: post #144
axg11 wrote: post #110

This is a very predictable consequence of criticizing your employer via a public letter. Criticize internally all you want, and influence the changes that you want to see happen. Employment is a two-way relationship. If you don't like your employer, you are free to leave. If they don't like you, they are free to fire you (within legal bounds). Publishing an openly critical letter and signing it is a quick way to get…

They critized Musk, factually. Musk is not their employer, SpaceX is, but you just proved their point since you believe Musk and SpaceX are one and the same.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN