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SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#131

Post by YetAnotherNick »

sumeno wrote: post #98
AlexandrB wrote: post #61

Musk's conception of free speech is completely incoherent. On the one hand he claims to want to fund the legal defense of people fired for their tweets[1], on the other hand we have stuff like this. The simplest explanation is that his idea of speech that should be free is: "stuff I agree with" and anything that falls outside of that box can be freely censored or actioned against. Is there an alternative explanation…

His conception of free speech is that he should be able to say whatever he wants with no consequences. It doesn't go beyond that, he doesn't want other people to be able to say whatever they want with no consequences unless they're saying nice things about him.

I am sure Musk has lot but issues but he has repeatedly said and acted like he is fine with consequences of his speech. Like he is fine with advertisers leaving twitter/X[1] for his speech.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK91Ji6GCZ8

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#132

Post by etchalon »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #127
geysersam wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the opposite of meritocracy. And abuse of power on your bosses part. Don't know why so many in this thread seems to support obviously corrupt behavior.

Abuse of power is a relative term. If something is the norm, then doing it is not abuse. It's fine in most companies to complain about the boss to HR or to the boss themselves, but not fine to complain it to someone else. If I had bad boss who isn't doing anything illegal or breaks company's policy, I would likely switch my job rather than taking the impossible task of fixing them if they don't want to fix themselves…

> If something is the norm, then doing it is not abuse

The sheer number of historical atrocities this would excuse is almost hilarious.

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#133

Post by gitaarik »

roamerz wrote: post #48

If I was openly criticizing the boss my expectation would be I was putting my continued employment at risk. That ain’t rocket science.

But being fired the next day for a open letter that has some reasonable critique is something else. And there's also employer rights btw.

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#134

Post by sokoloff »

geysersam wrote: post #103
roamerz wrote: post #48

If I was openly criticizing the boss my expectation would be I was putting my continued employment at risk. That ain’t rocket science.

That's the opposite of meritocracy. And abuse of power on your bosses part. Don't know why so many in this thread seems to support obviously corrupt behavior.

Is it? If I have serious on-going disagreements with my CEO's strategy and tactics to lead the company and I choose to take those disagreements public in a scorched earth style, I fully expect that I'd get sacked for it. And I think I should be (presumably with the typical severance for a other-than-cause termination).

I'm standing here thinking "yup, that's about right" and other posters are thinking this is "so not right as to be obviously corrupt".

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#135

Post by Veserv »

jeswin wrote: post #102
AlexandrB wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote Musk's Tweet[1] on the topic: > If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. > No limit. > Please let us know. Now "unfairly treated" leaves some wiggle room, but the obvious implication here is that if you get "unfairly" fired for Tweeting something Musk will fund your legal bills. Why would he make this offer if he did not…

"On this platform". That's not circulating grievances/politics on a company's internal channels. How are we confusing these two?

Because literally every company in existence would think that employees publicly airing their grievances about their employer on Twitter is strictly less of a problem than on the company's internal channels.

If you think people should be legally protected for anything they say publicly on Twitter, then you should also believe they should be legally protected for anything they say in company internal channels. Anything else is incoherent.

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#136

Post by wkat4242 »

teh_infallible wrote: post #111
flandish wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leeway? No. He’s a capitalist and his priority is well documented. Stop pretending he’s at all altruistic.

Isn’t everyone on HN a capitalist? Startups, venture funding, etc?

I'm not a capitalist for sure :P

But I'm a salarized employee at a traditional tech firm :)

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#137

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

emmelaich wrote: post #114
tw04 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shotwell literally wrote an email telling them they had to stop discussing the issue or she would consider it insubordination then fired them the next day. No need for HR to do anything when the person in charge is incriminating themselves.

FWIW 'gwynne' is typically a male's name. [edit - but in this case looks very much female]

I have never heard of that association. The Wikipedia article lists 11 notable people with it as their first name, and the gender distribution is just about half and half.

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#138

Post by maxbond »

systemstops wrote: post #121
maxbond wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clearly newsworthy. Lots of news organizations are reporting on it, not just NYT. I don't think we need to assume that a newspaper is corrupt for reporting that the government published a document, that's a huge part of their job.

Maybe - but the deluge of anti-Musk articles in the media the last few months is a probably more newsworthy. We can't ignore the fact that after buying Twitter and getting rid of some of the speech restrictions, he has been sued by several federal agencies, lost major federal contracts and all sorts of (questionable) scandals about him are now suddenly being discovered.

I don't think it's all that sudden, he's had a steady stream of scandals for as long as I've been paying attention (years), and he's increasingly in the public eye because he is increasingly relevant (buying Twitter being one reason he's more relevant now than in the past). So there's an increasing public interest in reporting on his steady stream of controversial behavior.

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#139

Post by YetAnotherNick »

etchalon wrote: post #132
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse of power is a relative term. If something is the norm, then doing it is not abuse. It's fine in most companies to complain about the boss to HR or to the boss themselves, but not fine to complain it to someone else. If I had bad boss who isn't doing anything illegal or breaks company's policy, I would likely switch my job rather than taking the impossible task of fixing them if they don't want to fix themselves…

> If something is the norm, then doing it is not abuse The sheer number of historical atrocities this would excuse is almost hilarious.

The world swings and the things which looks like abuse changes. And it's not like people are not dying due to their norms. We need to change their norm from within.

Re: SpaceX Illegally Fired Workers Critical of Musk, Federal Agency Says

#140

Post by catlover76 »

frob wrote: post #59
bboygravity wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It would be intesting to see how their payout compares to the payouts going to Reuters [1], the BBC [2], the Guardian [3], the ever-so-anticapitalist WSJ [4], and a few dozen other establishments reporting on it as well. Makes sense that every journalistic establishment out there is being paid off; hedge funds do have deep pockets. [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacex-illegally-fi... [2] https://www.bb…

This is too subtle for modern times; the only thing tipping me off to the snark is referring to WSJ as "anticapitalist", otherwise I could absolutely believe someone believing this, sadly.
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