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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

#421

Post by zthrowaway »

dwringer wrote: post #313
rajin444 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your post implying being conservative is inherently bad? It seems like that’s the unspoken crux of your argument - ie you actually have an issue with a “conservative” (I hesitate to label musk as one) winning the culture war. Conservatives make the same argument about “don’t be political” when liberals are winning. I’m mostly in agreement with what you said, but I don’t think your reasons are coming from a princip…

For me the weak point in that post is using the phrase "coming out and supporting Desantis" to refer to Elon Musk responding to the questions of if he'd be voting republican ("tbd"), and who he's "leaning towards" ("DeSantis"). That said I think it's a horrible look and DeSantis's response to the matter is one of the most tasteless and tone-deaf things I've heard from him all week. I like this take in The New Yorker[…

Why is supporting a republican a horrible look?

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

#422

Post by ma_advertising »

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 valid only on the wrong side of the Atlantic

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

#423

Post by logicalmonster »

scarab92 wrote: post #372
logicalmonster wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat. Nobody can read minds of course, but I think it is smart to not always take people at face value and consider all of their motives in saying anything. Personally I think Elon Musk is probably strongly supporting working in the office for 2 reasons. (Obviously pure speculation) 1) Forcing an ultimatum is a…

Not sure about the stealth layoff take. It's too unfocused, you'll lose people you want to keep and keep people you want to lose. Severance isn't that expensive and gives a lot more control. Agree with your second point though. There's even people absuing remote work to work multiple jobs simultaneously.

> Not sure about the stealth layoff take. It's too unfocused, you'll lose people you want to keep and keep people you want to lose.

Given how political worldview seems to be pretty correlated with concern about stuff like Covid-19 and the new labor movement that has emerged, I'd suspect that it's reasonably focused.

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

#424

Post by AlexandrB »

onion2k wrote: post #415
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.

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.

So he's in favor of "cancel culture"? It's hard to keep up.

Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?

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

#425

Post by mint2 »

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 teetering on the edge of being Howard Hughes 2.0

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

#426

Post by huhwat »

pc86 wrote: post #416
huhwat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out speech about working conditions is protected. You can't be fired for sharing your wages, for instance. I would not be shocked to hear that this results in a lawsuit over protected concerted activity.

Speech about working conditions is indeed protected. Nothing in the letter is about working conditions.

> many employees continue to experience unequal enforcement of our oft-repeated “No Asshole” and “Zero Tolerance” policies.

Sure sounds like a discussion about workplace policies and enforcement to me.

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

#427

Post by zthrowaway »

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.

It used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. But the past 10 years everyone wants to be an activist now. I'd like to see more rules around this in every company. It kills productivity and really distracts from the company goals.

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

#428

Post by dont__panic »

whymauri wrote: post #393
unboxingelf wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Literally digital opium. I say as I type into a seperate social network. It's hard to escape, honestly...

Lots of civilizations have struggled with drug problems in the past. The Americas, China, India all had lots of problems with opium addictions during colonial times, IIRC. And of course the USA post-WWII has dealt with a slew of drug problems, from cocaine heroin to meth. How have past civilizations broken free from the yoke of drug addiction? Maybe we can take some cues from the past.

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

#429

Post by [deleted] »

germinalphrase wrote: post #229
gfodor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I’ve disconnected myself from the contemporary political back and forth, but my outsider take is that it rather seems like the US left has… mostly accomplished little? What sweeping changes or policy platforms have them ‘off the deep end’? This is an honest inquiry.

[deleted]

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

#430

Post by ahelwer »

atlgator wrote: post #374

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. Maybe it does and we just don't hear about it. Free speech does not exist within the confines of employment, and there's a big difference between speaking truth to power and inciting mutiny or rebellion. Musk has absolute control of SpaceX, and if employees do not agree with his policies, views, or anything else they need to vote with their feet and quit. Same for any oth…

I see this type of comment a lot - "if you don't like it then leave!" - and at best it seems to indicate a lack of vision. Change is possible! First, there are two possible motivations for saying the above:

(1) The practical advice sense (an "is" statement): "workers currently have little power in large corporations and so trying to change the company will not succeed and is a waste of time, therefore you should leave"

(2) The moral sense (an "ought" statement): "corporate leadership should not respect the opinions or desires of workers; the hierarchy exists for a good reason and should be maintained, and trying to have influence beyond your position in this hierarchy is wrong; therefore you should leave"

If you meant your comment in the second sense, fair enough, although you should be explicit so I know we have nothing more to talk about. If you mean it in the first sense then this ignores the option of collective worker organization, which among the oft-touted compensation improvements also gives workers an actual say in the running of their workplace - and certainly the ability to talk about what they want without fear of being fired.

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