Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 1001 posts

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

#681

Post by jimbob21 »

enriquto wrote: post #619
bko wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of the letter seems to have been “Musk’s behavior is detrimental to the company.” This implies that they care about the company and want it to succeed, and that their loyalty lies with it, not with Musk. As well it should. Tesla, SpaceX, etc are (or should be) companies, not cults. Here's an experiment. At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Mak…

> At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

I'm not the person you're responding to, but yes I would argue academia is not the real world i.e. private sector companies. Its academia. There are a whole different set of rules because it is not a privately run for-profit company. And nothing ever happens specifically because that's absolutely par for the course in academia. There's a whole different culture there.

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

#682

Post by evan_ »

fullshark wrote: post #634
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 the same old Elon, the pedo guy tweet and taking Tesla private at $420 are just as embarrassing if not more so , he’s just on the other side of the culture war divide now (I.e the Republican side) so he’s now considered shameful in many parts.

weird comment, many many people considered "pedo guy" and everything else to be shameful at the time

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

#683

Post by JackFr »

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…

tan·ta·mount /ˈtan(t)əˌmount/ equivalent in seriousness to;

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

#684

Post by runarberg »

bko wrote: post #579
HillRat wrote: post #497

Earlier 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…

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 fami…

Common. If your CEO is making extremely inflammatory political statements publicly, and you don’t agree with those statements you are kind of in a dilemma. You either remain silent and and be perceived as broadly agreeing with—or at least tolerating—the CEO’s statements, or you speak out against them. In either case you are making a political decision.

Elon Musk put his workers in this dilemma and he should have expected a subset of them to speak out critically against him. I honestly don’t know other large organizations in our industry that is in the same situation, so there is really nothing to compare it with.

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

#685

Post by squarefoot »

At every place I've worked at there were rules on the contract I signed that forbade me to engage in any activity that could be detrimental to the company public image, and I'm sure SpaceX contracts contain such clause too, so technically they can fire those people, but doing so at first strike and without warnings is pure evil and is the sign of just another company in which executives live in a different universe than their workers.

> Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”

This is absolute bollocks. Feeling intimidated and bullied because some colleagues criticized the CEO? Come on...

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

#686

Post by concordDance »

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'm sure you can think of reasons other than "feelings getting hurt" for these firings...

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

#687

Post by cloutchaser »

colpabar wrote: post #571
HillRat wrote: post #497

Earlier 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…

> 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 com…

I think it’s probably even worse than that, it’s a group of people wanting attention and publicity, using a cause that an Elon hating mainstream can use, for mutually helping each other.

I principled person would at least quit before making a scene in the media, rather than spamming many people in the company.

This is look at me behaviour coupled with politics at its worse.

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

#690

Post by RangerScience »

triceratops wrote: post #449
remarkEon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you know there weren't equally capable non-assholes that the assholes pushed out of the way? Isn't that the story of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison?

That's a really excellent historical example to bring up, and, "no".

Edison and Tesla were definitely NOT equally capable. Tesla was an absolutely genius inventor and scientist, and Edison was a genius businessperson and good inventor. (Or something like that, TBH it wasn't Edison's biographies I poured over in highschool!)

Tesla received life-long backing and support from Westinghouse, major investment from JP Morgan, and more.

Edison tried, and for a chunk of time, did succeed at pushing Tesla out of the way, but I'd strongly argue that the things that sunk Tesla were not ways that Edison pushed him out of the way, nor would I argue that Edison ever really succeeded at pushing him out of the way.

Post reply on HN