SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk • Hacker News Board

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

#811

Post by thereddaikon » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

toomanyrichies wrote: post #789

thereddaikon wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty simple universal rule that you don't try to make your boss look bad. And doing so is a great way to end your employment. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Whether what they said is right or wrong it was still damaging to the owner of the company and the company's reputation as well. Its like the Tesla guy who was fired a few months back. Yeah it was his own car. Yeah it was on his own time.…

> You don't get to not be a representative of your company just because you are off the clock. If people know that you work for X company then anything you say or do may be seen through the lens of "An X company employee" But that’s exactly the point that the letter’s authors are making about Musk himself, and his tweets. Either the same rule applies equally to both Musk and his employees, or there’s an unfair double…

It doesn't work that way when one of them owns the company. If Musk were CEO then maybe they would have a point. But Musk isn't CEO. In fact I don't think he's an employee of SpaceX at all. He is the majority owner of the company. The most important of the investors. And legally speaking the company has a duty to him, not the other way around. CEO's can and do get fired for making companies look bad. Happens all the time. You can't fire an owner.

Now we can discuss how we think it ought to work all day long. But that is how it does work today. It's not an even relationship and never has been. The guy signing the checks gets to decide if he wants to employee you. If people decide that he's a dick and don't want to work for him then he will find it hard to hire good talent.

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

#812

Post by juve1996 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

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.

Musk has many achievements, that's why it's so frustrating to see him act this way.

There are plenty of billionaires with unpopular politics. Only a few are in the news. That is by choice.

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

#813

Post by mavhc » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:57 PM UTC

uncomputation wrote: post #810

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…

It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue. Musk likes to whinge about “censorship” amounting to banning a Twitter account but seems perfectly okay firing someone and removing their livelihood for speaking critically of him. Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.

If your ability to stay alive depending on you keeping your job you wouldn't go around signing public letters.

Did he attempt to supress the letter?

Freedom of speech != freedom from action

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

#814

Post by rland » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #790

riazrizvi wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst thing? His influencing is central to his success. Unfortunately for civil discourse, it’s more effective to create controversial messaging that resonates with your followers, than sanitized messaging that is generally inoffensive. Controversial messaging makes your supporters increasingly loyal and attentive, as the noise from vocal ‘haters’ just keeps feeding your base. It’s perverse, it’s toxic, it’s exhausti…

> Worst thing? His influencing is central to his success. Musk has been more unhinged in his online activities than ever in the past six months or so, coinciding with a 45% slide in TSLA share price. Hypothesizing that his social media addiction is central to his 'success' would be pretty easy to test by simply comparing TSLA's performance to another auto manufacturer, e.g. Ford or GM. Doing that, TSLA is not showing…

Tesla wouldn't have been capitalized in the first place without Musk (and, by extension) without Musk's twitter.

If anything, Musk should focus entirely on the influencing and stop making decisions about product (see [1]) -- that is what he is good at!

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15347233/musk-attributes-...

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

#815

Post by notyourwork » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

uncomputation wrote: post #810

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…

It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue. Musk likes to whinge about “censorship” amounting to banning a Twitter account but seems perfectly okay firing someone and removing their livelihood for speaking critically of him. Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.

No post body was provided.

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

#816

Post by foobarian » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

uncomputation wrote: post #810

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…

It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue. Musk likes to whinge about “censorship” amounting to banning a Twitter account but seems perfectly okay firing someone and removing their livelihood for speaking critically of him. Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.

I don't know, what they did according to the article is a little bit more than speech. If someone did that at my workplace the silent majority would be thankful that someone removed that kind of nuisance.

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

#817

Post by pyronik19 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

rg111 wrote: post #213

pyronik19 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have freedom of speech just not freedom from consequences :)

> freedom from consequences is such a meaningless, bloated phrase. Only consequence of speech should never be more severe than speech. "Freedom from consequences" is a weak argument used by supporters of autocrats, mobocracies, cancel-culturists, religious bigots wanting to punish blasphemous comments, and so on.

I am mocking the justification that leftist used censorship and deplatforming by using their own bloated phrase.

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

#818

Post by res0nat0r » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

phailhaus wrote: post #336

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…

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.

To be fair though, Elon is in no way a "free speech absolutist", he just plays one on Twitter because he wants to freely manipulate the market to line his pockets, but still won't tolerate people critical of him.

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

#819

Post by mcguire » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #193

mcguire wrote: post #180

Earlier 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?

Not quite.

Say you work for General Motors. You can gripe about management all you want, but there's no expectation that you are going to be able to send out a company-wide memo saying the board should boot the CEO.

Now say you work for Tesla, or one of the other companies that is desperately trying to hang on to their "startup culture" as they get bigger. For that, it's vital that you buy into the mission, believe that you personally are changing the world.

The other half of that intellectual and emotional investment is the feeling that you have control and input. If the company makes a business deal that you don't agree with, you threaten to organize a walk-out; if the CEO is behaving like an idiot (and not like your own lovable idiot), you feel like you can get everyone together to tell the board to boot him. After all, you, personally, are changing the world.

But that's not how it works in a company that won't fit entirely into a single conference room. You as an employee may have dedicated your life to the company, and you may think the company should be responsive to you. But that's not how it works (see example 1 above), you just haven't realized it yet.

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

#820

Post by res0nat0r » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #264

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.

Worst thing? His influencing is central to his success. Unfortunately for civil discourse, it’s more effective to create controversial messaging that resonates with your followers, than sanitized messaging that is generally inoffensive. Controversial messaging makes your supporters increasingly loyal and attentive, as the noise from vocal ‘haters’ just keeps feeding your base. It’s perverse, it’s toxic, it’s exhausti…

Eh, Warren Buffett has been doing just fine for decades now and I don't believe has ever done any shitposting on Twitter.