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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

#651

Post by andrepd »

bko wrote: post #579
HillRat wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, they're not protected against being fired -- circulating an internal letter criticizing leadership is, in a right to work state without existing workplace union agreements and outside of a whistleblower or other protected situation, enough to get you fired, though not fired for cause. Are the optics bad? Yes. Is it indicative that "free speech absolutist" Musk believes your right to speech ends where his fee…

What other organization wouldn't let go of someone under these circumstances? Are there any employees that openly, pulicaly and very vocally criticize their leadership Imagine working with someone like this? If you've been in an organization with people are constantly getting into flame wars about political issues, its incredibly distracting to those that want to get work done. Some people buy the whole "we're a fami…

I have privately and openly criticised my employer on several occasions, and never have I been sacked for that.

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

#652

Post by bko »

enriquto wrote: post #619
bko wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of the letter seems to have been “Musk’s behavior is detrimental to the company.” This implies that they care about the company and want it to succeed, and that their loyalty lies with it, not with Musk. As well it should. Tesla, SpaceX, etc are (or should be) companies, not cults. Here's an experiment. At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Mak…

> At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

People have been fired for a lot less at universities. Often time its not even attacking the organization or people, just for saying the wrong thing about a political issue.

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

#653

Post by noasaservice »

enriquto wrote: post #619
bko wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of the letter seems to have been “Musk’s behavior is detrimental to the company.” This implies that they care about the company and want it to succeed, and that their loyalty lies with it, not with Musk. As well it should. Tesla, SpaceX, etc are (or should be) companies, not cults. Here's an experiment. At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Mak…

> At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

Academia follows some really strange rules, including things like tenure regarding academic freedom and speech. They also hire copious amounts of teacher assistants at poverty wages called "stipends", which also seem to bypass minimum wage laws.

Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.

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

#654

Post by logifail »

HillRat wrote: post #497
toomanyrichies wrote: post #434

To those arguing that this letter is tantamount to insubordination and is therefore a fireable offense: “Insubordination (noun)- refusing to obey orders from someone in authority.” [1] Unless they had received direct orders not to criticize Musk at all, internally or externally, they are not guilty of refusing to obey orders. And if they had received such orders, that only adds to Musk’s burgeoning reputation for pet…

Even so, they're not protected against being fired -- circulating an internal letter criticizing leadership is, in a right to work state without existing workplace union agreements and outside of a whistleblower or other protected situation, enough to get you fired, though not fired for cause. Are the optics bad? Yes. Is it indicative that "free speech absolutist" Musk believes your right to speech ends where his fee…

> Musk believes your right to speech ends where his feelings get hurt?

It could be that Musk recognises that a significant group of his staff - likely the majority - simply don't want a loud minority group - possibly a tiny minority - "making waves" and intimidating others into joining their cause.

I've just started Nassim Nicholas Taleb's latest book, but in previous work he wrote about "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority"[0]

This example could easily be one of those instances.

Back in the old days(!) one was expected to do one's job well, to treat others professionally - and to expect others to treat you well - but don't bring your private causes into the workplace and expect everyone to love you for it. Do what you like on your own time, but on the company's time, follow the rules.

[0]https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

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

#655

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

enriquto wrote: post #619
bko wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of the letter seems to have been “Musk’s behavior is detrimental to the company.” This implies that they care about the company and want it to succeed, and that their loyalty lies with it, not with Musk. As well it should. Tesla, SpaceX, etc are (or should be) companies, not cults. Here's an experiment. At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Mak…

> At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.

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

#656

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#658

Post by srveale »

pvaldes wrote: post #543

To put things in context, the astonishing amount of five employees were fired. And more than 9400 employees weren't fired. It sounds like most Space X employees are doing fine. And we are talking about an example of "soviet management" here?

We have no idea how many other employees agreed with the five, and the point is that we'll never know, because the precedent of "speak up and you're fired" has now been set.

Being an autocrat doesn't mean getting rid of everyone who disagrees with you, just the ones who dare to do something about it (or potentially might).

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

#659

Post by jackson1442 »

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.

> politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work

if executives were bringing these topics into the company through their outside interactions on twitter, would it be a violation of the policy?

> Activist employees are toxic to company culture.

I would argue that musk's personal "activism" (or whatever you want to call his twitter account) is far more harmful than this letter is to company culture

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

#660

Post by mbesto »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #525
HillRat wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, they're not protected against being fired -- circulating an internal letter criticizing leadership is, in a right to work state without existing workplace union agreements and outside of a whistleblower or other protected situation, enough to get you fired, though not fired for cause. Are the optics bad? Yes. Is it indicative that "free speech absolutist" Musk believes your right to speech ends where his fee…

Except for Montana, every state in the US is an at-will employment state. Meaning the employer (and the employee) may terminate employment at any time, with or without cause or prior notice. In circumstances like this, the idea of "X is enough to get you fired" loses its meaning, since "X" could mean anything or nothing at all. Therefore, the relevant question is not "is the company within its rights to fire these em…

Which makes this whole thread hilarious, because so many people are implying wrongful termination, which, to your point, doesn't really matter. Unless of course the individual is a protected class.
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