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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

#731

Post by btilly »

kerblang wrote: post #617

One of the demands from the letter: > Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. That's exactly the problem with companies that like to brag about their "we-don't-allow-jerks-here" culture: It's arbitrary. If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and ho…

My experience is that the more you try to spell these things out, the more scope you give for bad actors to engage in language lawyering and make the problem worse.

Therefore as an employee I prefer these things to be vague and arbitrary, as long as I have some trust in the people making the decisions.

Of course in time they become formalized and problematic. Which is one of the disadvantages of working at a big company.

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

#732

Post by fakethenews2022 »

cmsonger wrote: post #490
rossdavidh wrote: post #337

I'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…

This seems right to me, though I will observe that if you joined an Elon Musk company 5 years ago, then you were joining a company whose head presented a very different public persona than he does now. It's an understandable situation that some folks ended up loving a company but finding the CEO's 2022 public persona objectionable and diminishing of the company. Given the choice between "just leave" or "state my conc…

You are wrong about his public persona. He seems to have always been this way. The first time I heard about Elon Musk was when he responded publicly to his ex wife's tell-all essay about their marriage. This was in 2010!

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

#733

Post by nr2x »

kerblang wrote: post #617

One of the demands from the letter: > Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. That's exactly the problem with companies that like to brag about their "we-don't-allow-jerks-here" culture: It's arbitrary. If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and ho…

Pulling out one’s dick uninvited is fairly easy to classify as “jerk behavior”, or you know, “sexual harassment”, or you know, “criminal”.

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

#734

Post by mc32 »

whatevenisthat wrote: post #718
mc32 wrote: post #532

I mean, this whole bruhaha was spearheaded by five (5!) people. Articles were presenting this as if it had been representative of a larger portion of the workforce there. I think companies are realizing "activist" workers are a disruption that suck productivity from a company and are taking steps to dial that down, including progressive stalwarts like Netflix.

Hopefully the tech layoffs are from the activist types so the rest of us can just focus on the code and design in peace and quiet. So far everywhere I worked in SV the activists were vocal but unliked by the majority. And they were also the least productive employees by far.

Activists are usually the least productive because they have more than one dish they’re cooking.

But they’re also like a group dedicated to “saving the spotted skylark” once they save the skylark, their mission is complete. Do they disband? Of course not!!! Let’s find a new cause, the threatened fire ant!

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

#735

Post by dlp211 »

runjake wrote: post #632
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…

The SpaceX President claims that the fired employees repeatedly spammed a large number of employees during paid time[1]. > "Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters > and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable." I appreciate their spirit, because I think Elon is being juvenile and distracting, but this seems cut-and-…

> Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails

So a normal day in any business with more than a few hundred folks.

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

#736

Post by anvuong »

etamatem wrote: post #662
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…

> Here's an experiment. 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. This happens often: I'm guessing about once a month, and nothing happens. The difference is that Zuckerberg is not a needy, thin-skinned billionaire,and will directly address employee criticism in Q&As - as well as press leaks like…

No, the difference is Meta is a publicly traded company, SpaceX is not. Meta don't want this kind of negative publicity since it directly affects their stocks price, mishandle these things can lead to lawsuit from investors. For SpaceX, they don't have to care about any of those things.

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

#737

Post by throwaway0a5e »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #609
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.

> His accomplishments are long and impressive What are Elon Musks accomplishments? His ability to get financing? Hiring the right people to push the success of SpaceX and Tesla? His ability to inflate the stock price of his company (above that of a historic bull market). This isn't a cynical comment, I'm honestly trying to understand his actual accomplishments other then the ancillary praise one gets in America just…

>What are Elon Musks accomplishments? His ability to get financing? Hiring the right people to push the success of SpaceX and Tesla? His ability to inflate the stock price of his company (above that of a historic bull market).

The word we use to describe people-managing at this high level is "leadership".

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

#738

Post by mempko »

gonehome wrote: post #665
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…

It also just seems ridiculous to try to separate Musk from the companies he's built. He's clearly a major factor in their success and it'd be stupid to remove him.

Why is it clearly he is a major factor? If anything it seems he brought his companies close to bankruptcy multiple times and the government bailed him out. Tesla with a half billion dollar loan from the DOE. SpaceX with it's multi billion dollar NASA contracts. He could just be incredibly lucky or his major skill is knowing how to milk the public for funds.

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

#739

Post by Abroszka »

Of course they were fired. It's a dictatorship, you do what they tell you and work. There is no point getting this involved with the company, it never pays off. Work as little as possible to maximise your gains, and invest in other aspects of your life.

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

#740

Post by memish »

nr2x wrote: post #712
memish wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, Elon should have his twitter taken away for distracting from the mission. 100% agree.

You could make the argument his twitter use is distracting from the mission and I agree in part. I think it's hard to say whether it's a net negative or positive for SpaceX and Tesla, because a lot of what he posts is about those companies. It might be better if he just stuck to that.
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