"Stay focused" is a little funny from the guy behind the SpaceX flamethrower, Neuralink, OpenAI, the Boring Company, and a $40B attempt to buy Twitter.
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
#472SpaceX leadership is clearly within their legal rights to fire these people, but the classic "CAN vs SHOULD" principle is important. The letter, which is pretty benign, is available at the bottom of https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
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.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them. It just throws cold water on all his grandstanding about being a "free speech absolutist". 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.
Being fired was a consequence of their 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.
That's non sense, or then everyone has absolute freedom of speech, you just have to open your mouth or type a text.
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".
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#474No post body was provided.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprised? No. There's no large company in the world where attacking top management won't lead to major consequences. 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…
I'm not sure I fully understand your point. Are you saying that because they wanted to be "different", they should allow behavior like this?
He's saying SpaceX is just another company. They demand full loyalty (fealty?) from their employees, effectively creating a religion. They shouldn't be surprised when their employees actually expect the company to be different. Now the whole world can see SpaceX is just like Every. Single. Other. Company.
So much for "changing the world." You're not changing the corporate world, that's for sure!
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#476I can't imagine trashing my CEO and expecting to keep my job. Maybe that's a Gen-X thing?
No post body was provided.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#477Twitter 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 teetering on the edge of being Howard Hughes 2.0
lol - no he is not. Howard Hughes was mentally ill, didnt leave his house or shower (was a germaphobe), was super secretive (didnt meet people in person for years), never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane) and inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams.
Musk is none of those things.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given this is HN, I'm just mildly curious about how people who knew Musk 15-20 years ago view him now. I mean, I know this is tangential, but pg had an essay talking about what a bad idea it was that Musk demanded Windows over Linux when Musk ran PayPal - I just got the sense that pg was never a fan. Do folks view this as "this is an ambitious, hardworking genius whose lack of social constraints due to his success is…
My wife, ever the empathetic, reminds me constantly that Elon is not neurotypical. He has aspergers, and that can explain some of his bluntness, some of his work-life demands, etc. I don't want to generalize or stereotype ASD in general, but it does produce tangible differences in how people relate to the world.
> There’s a common idea that surrounds autistic people, especially those with above-average intellectual ability. This idea states that we have no empathy, that we’re robots who will never understand relationships, that we’re incapable of acting human. TV Tropes calls it Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery, and notes that Asperger’s is a favorite excuse. The Autistic Jerk has become such an ingrained idea, many people expect and assume that we are going to be assholes. But I’m here to tell you: the autistic jerk is just a jerk who happens to be autistic.
https://autisticempath.com/the-autistic-jerk-is-just-a-jerk/
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#479It seems that what is happening here is that “woke” people (ultra left) working at spaceX and Tesla are finally realizing that Elon Musk is actually not part of the “woke” (ultra-left) movement but more like good old Republican.
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.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
To be honest, I kind of went the other way. I saw what republicans are really about and noped my way out. I used to believe them when they said they were USA first, bring the jobs back to America, stand up to foreign dictators, small government, etc... But the past 10 years have put a lie to their posturing on nearly every front. January 6th was a turning point for me, all of a sudden there was a chance that we were…
I can empathize, but my point was in regards to the accusation of being a “conservative” by just coming down in the other direction on the lesser-of-two evils calculus. Sane Americans are struggling with the fact that there are good arguments to be made that both political parties in the US presently present meaningful existential risk. There are several methods one could argue in how to tie break, purely in the interest in minimizing the risk of collapse, tyrannical overtake, or the development of a police state. From example, you may vote against the ruling class broadly, which is left-aligned, if you feel that the broader ruling class has power superiority over the narrow set of elected leaders at a given time. Under that framework, no tyrant can successfully seize power unless they are aligned with the ruling class.