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SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

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

#871

The amount of Elon charity in this comment section is kind of insane: > In an email, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.” It's literally the same thing wokescolds do when somebody says anything they disagree with, only this time it's SpaceX and Elon Musk. There's not really any good argument for somebody who claims to care about f…

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

#872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

An internal letter sent to thousands of employees.

Which makes this protected concerted action between employees trying to improve their working conditions[1]. They would get smacked down for these firings if the NLRB wasn't so toothless.

[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/our-enforc...

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

#873
Anecdotally companies run by obvious assholes (eg Ellison and Oracle) or that engage in obviously bad behaviour (eg Big Tobacco) don’t have these problems. I guess their reputations filter out the type of employee who would do what was done at SpaceX.

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

#874

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…

SpaceX was founded after Blue Origin owned by Jeff Bezos and today, they are ahead of them in terms both technology and volume of launches they handle.

Fisker Automotive and Better Place are two electric car startups that were founded after Tesla that you've probably not heard of, even though between them, they raised close to a billion dollars.

The reason why he gets so much praise is because he tends to do quite well—better than other smart folks that are similarly resourced (i.e. access to VC capital)—in industries notorious for high rates of failure or where it is hard to break even.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Automotive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)

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

#876
post #110

This 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…

Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them. It just throws cold water on all his grandstanding about being a "free speech absolutist". EDIT: Everyone telling me that company employees are different from Twitter are missing the point. We know that. But he clearly doesn't care about free speech "absolutely" when he throws a fit that his employees are criticizing him.

> Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them.

No, I don't know that. This is explicit retaliation for what appears to be organizing around working conditions. That's protected.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172915/elon-musk-spacex...

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

#877
post #110

This 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…

It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue. Musk likes to whinge about “censorship” amounting to banning a Twitter account but seems perfectly okay firing someone and removing their livelihood for speaking critically of him. Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.

This kind of dialogue could be had internally. Making it a public matter is just looking for a pink slip. Maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe they're just ignorant. Either way the consequences are predictable, regardless of the company.

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

#878
post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue. Musk likes to whinge about “censorship” amounting to banning a Twitter account but seems perfectly okay firing someone and removing their livelihood for speaking critically of him. Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.

This is the crux of the matter right here. I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you. Yeah, guys, it might be legal (maybe not) but it IS hypocritical. If you want to champion free speech you can't do this shit. Stop with the debate team bullshit and exercise some common sense.

> I hate that people are doing all these weird gymnastics to reconcile being a champion of free speech and firing people that criticize you.

You're just seeing the psychic ripples of all the Elon fanboys and pseudo-libertarian technofascists wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of their savior turning out to be a pretty vanilla corporate capitalist.

After all the chest-thumping and general toxicity I find their discomfort endlessly amusing.

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

#879

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.

Or, maybe, and hear me out; you just don't like what he has to say, which in the real world, means absolutely nothing to 99.999% of the planet.

> you just don't like what he has to say, which in the real world, means absolutely nothing to 99.999% of the planet.

Yes, but could mean a lot to the talent pool discussed in the open letter, in the face of growing competition to SpaceX and Tesla, which ultimately will impact the product, revenues and value. Seems shortsighted or almost as if he’s done working on hard problems.

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