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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

#81

Post by nathanaldensr »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #39
koheripbal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, this is the way to go. Discussing politics or religion opens a can of worms because people can never agree on these things. I don't care about the political or religious beliefs (if any) of people I work with, and they shouldn't care about mine. If I really cared, then we could have off-work discussions...which I've done a few times (and they were respectful and productive). I also think it's important to s…

Believe me, as an American citizen, a huuuge contingent of us wish they didn't penetrate every aspect of life. However, I'd argue most times it's the corporate executives themselves who are pushing politics at work (read: wokeism) and not employees. It seems like nearly everyone's in on it.

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

#82

Post by mhoad »

dmurray wrote: post #57
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.

For most of civilization we've been able to overlook the fact that our leaders and heroes are gigantic assholes, and judge them by their great deeds rather than minutiae of their private interactions.

I think the particular argument is that this exact lack of accountability was a mistake and allowed a lot of bad outcomes for a lot of people and only worked for those who already had the power to begin with.

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

#83

Post by nathanaldensr »

maweki wrote: post #47
koheripbal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Activist employees are toxic to company culture. Like leading an effort to unionize? I know that's socialism talking, but democracy in the workplace is as important as it is outside of it. And the free sharing of ideas (up to a point) is paramount for that process. A company could well benefit from active and engaged employees that make a company and its goals their own. Of course, if your company has a top-down le…

I think the idea here is that all companies are top-down by nature. We can argue about whether they ideally should be, but none of us alive today set up these realities.

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

#84

Post by middleclick »

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.

> 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.

Yeah sounds totally believable.

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

#85

Post by aaomidi »

mgiannopoulos wrote: post #80
wallaBBB wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally OK, but I'm not sure if we should have different perspective for SpaceX considering it's funded by taxpayers' money, it's not out there competing in the free market...

There is a difference between winning (over other private companies) government contracts to provide a service and being “funded by taxpayers money”

Not much in niche industries like this.

They’re built to serve government. Any extra customers they get is just the icing.

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

#86

Post by me_me_me »

lprd wrote: post #24

Good. The organizers are free to leave the company if they aren't comfortable with the leadership, or disagree with the company's direction. I'm not sure why this is getting so much coverage in the first place. Employees have been fired for less at places like Google. The amount of much coverage Musk is getting these days is crazy. His stance on free speech and the advent of his Twitter purchase seemed to amplify dis…

> The organizers are free to leave the company if they aren't comfortable with the leadership

This is weird stance.

'If you don't like it you can leave.'

That's what parents say to discipline misbehaving kids.

The organizers wrote the letter because they care about their work and workplace, and are concerned with Musk's behavior that jeopardize their effort (as in spaceX as company whole).

The people that actually know whats going on in the company are its employees not CEOs.

And that is especially true to musk who is doing 1000 things, and those seems to most be: keeping up appearances that he is doing work + creating new PR disaster via twitter.

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

#87

Post by aaomidi »

kumarvvr wrote: post #51
andy_ppp wrote: post #29

Sounds like SpaceX employees should get a Union to protect all staff if they want to stand up to the boss.

Yeah, unions are not about standing up to the boss . Unions are there to protect worker rights and none of those rights involve questioning the business decisions or administrative decisions of the management. Frankly, worker unions have abused the serious power they hold and have diluted it by protecting slackers. And they have earned their reputations. The job of a worker is to be honest, sincere and be dedicated t…

Unions have abused the power they have?

Which union in particular? There is only one in the US that you could reasonably say that about and it’s the police union.

These companies are nothing without their workers. Remember that.

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

#88

Post by concordDance »

pbasista wrote: post #68
koheripbal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Activist employees This is a broad term that different people might understand differently. Please define it first, then use it. > politics and religion This is off-topic. The mentioned discussions and disagreements at SpaceX were unrelated to these matters. In general, it is in my opinion dangerous to say that an opinion different than the one of the boss is unwelcome at a company. This is how cults and autocracie…

Agitating fellow employees to push for condemning the company's owner and CEO's public statements in another forum is not in the same category as pushing for a different material to be used for landing struts. I think SpaceX will be fine.

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

#89

Post by pkt_nspktr »

blitzar wrote: post #79
ReptileMan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no contradiction. Twitter (outward facing) has some of the attributes of public fora. His speech comments were always about public discourse. Not private organizational. In Twitter feed we are all equal. In Twitter internal there is hierarchy.

So what you are saying is that they should have posted this on twitter - then it would have been protected free speech...

Not GP, but since you need a bit more context: if someone posted something critical of one's employer on Twitter, Facebook, or used public comment time at city hall, one should expect to no longer be employed. Whatever critical was posted is protected free speech in that the government (local, state, or national) could not punish the speaker. However, the speaker should expect that future employers would be hesitant to hire someone who airs a company's dirty laundry in public.

On the other hand, if someone posted something critical of a government policy (pick your poison), that is also protected free speech, in the United States. In this case, retribution from an employer, the (public) platform where it was posted, and the government should all be prohibited. The speaker should expect that future employers not care about policy preferences, only that the speaker can perform the job for which they are hired.

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

#90

Post by concordDance »

cr__ wrote: post #40
koheripbal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is “the boss is acting like a huge turd” something you’re allowed to discuss at your workplace?

One thing that might make a difference here is how subjective "the boss is acting like a huge turd" can be.

If almost everyone would agree on the turdishness given a couple of facts on the case (none of this "heard from a friend of a friend" bullshit) then discussing and raising might be possible (though I'd probably still just leave).

But if people's assessment of the truth of that statement will depend hugely on that network of beliefs and values called "worldview" as well as exposure to different facts on the subject... then it's going to be hard.

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