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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

#851

Post by picture_view »

Etheryte wrote: post #823
uncomputation wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Much like you're free to offend, the other side is free to be offended and employment goes both ways. Firing someone because they fundamentally disagree on how the company should be run is not censorship, it's keeping only people who align with the direction you're headed.

I think that’s the point.

Elon takes the “freedom from consequences” interpretation of free speech when it comes to his complaints about twitter and “cancel culture”, then turns around and effectively cancels these employees for speaking their mind.

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

#852

Post by redler »

snarf21 wrote: post #344
reaperducer wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think is finally giving people Elon fatigue is his politics. I don't care about Mr. Musk's politics. But I dumped all of my Tesla stock recently because of his increasingly erratic behavior. To me, it demonstrates an inability to make wise decisions. And I can't trust my money to people who can no longer reliably make wise decisions. He's impulsive, and entertaining to watch; but now I will do so from a distan…

That isn't a great reason to dump Tesla. A good reason to dump Tesla is that Ford and Toyota are poised to run them out of business. Between the fires and the "autopilot" crash issues and price and production delays, Tesla will end up going the way of the Delorian.

Delorean sold about 7,000 cars, total, in its existence. Tesla sold about a million last year. Regardless of how you feel about Tesla, it's safe to say it's now a major, fast-growing auto maker that's not going away.

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

#853

Post by meatsauce »

CodeMage wrote: post #610
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…

> This is a very predictable consequence of criticizing your employer via a public letter. The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is "So what?" Yes, it's predictable. I don't believe people who wrote the letter haven't thought of this potential consequence and haven't felt any trepidation whatsoever. So what if it's "predictable"? So what if it's legal? The point is not whether it's currently legal and…

No post body was provided.

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

#854

Post by dubswithus »

ceejayoz wrote: post #471

"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.

He raised a lot of zero dilution cash with the flamethrower. How many people can do that?

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

#855

Post by depereo »

mlindner wrote: post #824
uncomputation wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People keep misconstruing his opinion on free speech. His opinion on free speech isn't "freedom to say anything anywhere to anyone and have no repercussions". He specifically believes Twitter should be treated as a virtual town square, i.e. you can say what you like without fear from being removed from the town square, but it has zero bearing on what people say about you on that town square. SpaceX is not a town squa…

This is exactly correct. It absolutely lines up with his stance that everything he does or wants to do is fine and probably good, and that people that are not him should suffer consequences.

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

#856

Post by xeromal »

wallaBBB wrote: post #55
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…

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...

If you own a gas station and a copy fills up, are you "funded" by tax payer dollars?

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

#857

Post by xeromal »

remarkEon wrote: post #49
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…

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.

My understanding is the same and I believe it's pretty obvious why they always seem to be that way. It takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence to push through "the system" in any meaningful way and that often comes off as assholish. It also causes them to behave the same in every aspect of their life. They don't compartmentalize being an asshole in business, but they're a Mr. Rogers for everything else.

That kind of confidence is pervasive in every aspect of their being. They don't have room for doubt.

Reading about wartime generals solidified the thought in me. Many generals like Patton weren't even very gifted strategically, but they were confident and authoritative in their decisions. Oftentimes, that's enough to pull off a victory.

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

#858

Post by sacrosancty »

mlindner wrote: post #829
phailhaus wrote: post #336

Earlier 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.

"Free speech absolutist" doesn't mean "freedom from consequences outside the town square (either literal or virtual)". It just means you won't be forcibly removed from the town square. Just like you can go walk in your Nazi parades in the US, it doesn't mean you won't get fired from your job if people see you in that parade, but you can still keep doing your parades.

What are your actual principles there? Does it also apply to freedom to be openly gay? Walk in your pride parades but get fired from your job as a consequence? I don't think you're using any general principles, just picking argument salad to fit your belief.

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

#859

Post by jonathankoren »

mlindner wrote: post #824
uncomputation wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People keep misconstruing his opinion on free speech. His opinion on free speech isn't "freedom to say anything anywhere to anyone and have no repercussions". He specifically believes Twitter should be treated as a virtual town square, i.e. you can say what you like without fear from being removed from the town square, but it has zero bearing on what people say about you on that town square. SpaceX is not a town squa…

But Twitter isn't a town square either. It's a private company. No one is guaranteed an audience.

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

#860

Post by meatsauce »

unboxingelf wrote: post #304
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.

Well put. His accomplishments are long and impressive but it seems social media has distracted, if not corrupted his line of sight.

Or, maybe, and hear me out; you just don't like what he has to say, which in the real world, means absolutely nothing to 99.999% of the planet.
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