Because of course they did. Elon is that kind of boss.
SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
561–570 of 1001 posts
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#562Based on what management said it wasn't necessarily what was in the letter, but the behavior surrounding the formation of the letter and soliciting people to sign it. Basically they were fired for using company resources for personal use and intimidation of their peers.
I'm not sure I totally believe that. But loud, public, insubordination is a fire-able offense in most companies. Create bad PR for your company = ticket to firing. Even in the companies that pretend that isn't true, they would still fire you if your "call out" wasn't socially sanctioned.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#563Earlier 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…
Could this be a protected concerted activity? In the US, there are some basic protections when two or more employees work together to improve the conditions of their employment. I don't know what does or doesn't qualify for this protection, though.
And there are probably not clearly defined rules for this. What would need to happen now is for them to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and that group could make a ruling about whether this is protected activity or not.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#564To 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…
Exactly, if they didn’t care they’d leave, instead they risked a lot in an effort to save the company from its teenager CEO.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#565To 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?
Surely they feel a bit intimidated now. The Stasi also left a lot of people alive in East Germany as well, doing just fine.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#566I'm picturing Apple employees writing an open letter criticizing Steve Jobs and saying they don't want him to be the face of the company, or Amazon employees saying they don't want Jeff Bezos to be the image of the company, or GE employees saying they don't want Jack Welch to be tarnishing the brand of the company, or...just about any other big corporation. The CEO's job involves, among other things, being the public…
> If you don't think the CEO is doing their job well, you leave the company, or hunker down and shut up about it.
If nobody ever speaks up, then how does change happen? Say you dislike the CEO or other executives but like the company. Then you can vocalize this and change happens and you stay, or no change happens and you leave.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
An open letter like this puts management in a difficult position. I'm going to discuss that without considering other perspectives, to keep the comment on point, please don't read that as endorsement of either the system or, well, anything else. The most powerful response is to have a top level stakeholder meeting, identify changes from the letter which need to be made, then: fire everyone who wrote the letter, and m…
> you defect on the company by making anything public which should be an internal matter. I assume they tried making it an internal matter before going public. Pushing your employees to have the feeling they need to go public instead of being able to solve this internally is a failure of the company.
Yeah a lot of people have a very authoritarian bent without realizing it. For many people it is hard to find any example of protest or dissent from the less powerful about the more powerful, ever being acceptable unless it is the type of protest that is easily ignored.
"This should have been kept internal, where we could have fired you without publicity"
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#568Earlier 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.
WHen the NY Auto Show rolled around this year I went straight to the Toyota booth to try out the BZX4 (What a stupid name now that I think about it)
This car is the supposed Tesla killer. Take it from me, it is not. The interior is claustrophobic reminiscent of early Nissan Leaf. If you are 6'2 or taller, you are going to have a bad time. Its clear that center console was not tested by any tall person. There is nothing appealing about this car in my opinion other than the Toyota badge. It is ugly inside and out. It is neither a bog standard car(which a lot of people want) nor a stunning looking EV(which a lot of people want). It is the standard mismash OEMs have created int he past. They always make EVs "weird" when they don't have to be. Sure this car is going to sell out whatever limited production they can make because demand for EVs far outstrips supply but Tesla killer it will not be.
For Ford I wonder about their cost structure. The teardown of their EVs indicate that they are still implementing old school thinking from the ICE world that adds unneeded cost to the sticker price. This is uncompetitive with Tesla long term. They need to really reform the organization and fast so their next gen EVs do better.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#569This 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…
Wasn't it an internal letter that was leaked? I mean sure, being leaked is a predictable consequence, but it may be a distinction with a difference if the criticizers didn't themselves leak it. Regardless, will be interesting to see how this plays out. If I were one of those employees, I'd be talking to a lawyer. If I was one of the employees still working at SpaceX, I'd be talking about a union. We recently unionize…
It's better to have each employee write a separate e-mail to HR or his/her manager. Letters like this are generally designed to be seen by a public audience.
Re: SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
#570To 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…
SpaceX is the most ambitious company on Earth, working toward the goal of making humans a multi-planetary species. Their orders are to get to Mars. Employees that are bikeshedding, sowing internal discord, engaging in mutiny, are not working toward the goal and in fact actively hindering it. That's all the reason needed to prune them from the otherwise focused and ambitious team.
But Elon's hyperbolic tweets and offensive behavior don't actively hinder getting to Mars? I mean, he's the guy running the company, you'd think what he says and does would have a lot more influence over the success or failure of the company's goals.