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

#571

Post by colpabar » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

HillRat wrote: post #497

toomanyrichies wrote: post #434

To 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…

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…

> Is it indicative that "free speech absolutist" Musk believes your right to speech ends where his feelings get hurt? Certainly!

I don't really get how musk's feelings on free speech apply here. SpaceX is not the government, and it's not a communications platform. I also think it's unfair to say "his feelings are hurt" - it seems perfectly logical to get rid of employees that so strongly disagree with the way the company is being run.

And I have to wonder, why even work there if that's how you feel? This just looks like another example of a group of people who have "problems" with their company but don't want to give up the pay that it provides them.

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

#572

Post by Aeolun » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

Damn, SpaceX sounds like a company I would never want to work for. What a horrible atmosphere. Who wants to be bullied by people that do not understand the irony of calling the sending of that open letter as distracting.

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

#573

Post by rootusrootus » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

This is entirely predictable, and they should have expected it. But it does not mean that Musk isn't an asshole for having them all fired.

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

#574

Post by fwip » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #477

mint2 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s teetering on the edge of being Howard Hughes 2.0

lol - no he is not. Howard Hughes was mentally ill, didnt leave his house or shower (was a germaphobe), was super secretive (didnt meet people in person for years), never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane) and inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams. Musk is none of those things.

> inherited a lot of his initial money

Elon Musk is literally the child of an apartheid emerald mine owner.

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

#575

Post by mesofile » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #477

mint2 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s teetering on the edge of being Howard Hughes 2.0

lol - no he is not. Howard Hughes was mentally ill, didnt leave his house or shower (was a germaphobe), was super secretive (didnt meet people in person for years), never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane) and inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams. Musk is none of those things.

> Howard Hughes was mentally ill

Not his entire career, his later decline became famous due to the scope of wealth and influence that allowed him to indulge in some truly eccentric behavior, but he didn't build said wealth & influence peeing in jars.

> never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane)

Never built anything? How about Las Vegas? Or the several companies he founded and ran successfully across wildly divergent fields? The man designed, built and flew an aircraft that broke world speed records at the time.

> inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams

Seriously? Do you not know Musk's family background?

Actually the more I think about it the more I think mint2's comparison was apt, Musk really is a Hughes-like figure, quite brilliant in ways, but with a powerful thirst for publicity and corresponding need to control his image. I could see his paranoid tendencies tending to dominate in the years to come, especially if his halo fully disintegrates

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

#576

Post by mbreese » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

waffleiron wrote: post #552

samatman wrote: post #528

Earlier 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.

I wouldn’t assume that - this was well publicized. That publicity had only one purpose — to put pressure on management to act. But I doubt the authors anticipated this particular action.

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

#577

Post by fzeroracer » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #502

Quoted post unavailable.

I get you're trying to do a parody thing, but your comment is already almost identical with some of the flagged/dead comments here.

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

#578

Post by GameOfFrowns » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

bhaak wrote: post #30

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…

That’s what you get if your priorities clash. One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter.

>One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter.

Do we know in which department the sacked employees worked? For all we know, they could have been employed in marketing or HR, not exactly the area that "builds cool shit" but often those that are active on social media and bent on bringing SJW politics into the working place.

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

#579

Post by bko » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

HillRat wrote: post #497

toomanyrichies wrote: post #434

To 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…

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…

What other organization wouldn't let go of someone under these circumstances? Are there any employees that openly, pulicaly and very vocally criticize their leadership

Imagine working with someone like this? If you've been in an organization with people are constantly getting into flame wars about political issues, its incredibly distracting to those that want to get work done.

Some people buy the whole "we're a family" HR spin, but its not true. You're there to do a job and you're paid to do so.

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

#580

Post by gfodor » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

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.

The far left has been entirely captured by the illiberal (really, anti-liberal) sociopolitical frameworks of Critical Theory, and this has now fully been integrated into most modern day institutions by the ruling class, such as universities, corporations, etc. This is backwards looking, it’s already happened. Before I can vote for the left again (which I used to) I need to see them explicitly reject many of the principles behind Critical Theory.