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Thanks for sharing your point of view and I appreciate you doing so in a respectful manner and taking my own feelings on the subject into account. I'm still no

by Inconel 10y ago

Thanks for sharing your point of view and I appreciate you doing so in a respectful manner and taking my own feelings on the subject into account. I'm still not sure what the best solution to this problem would be. While I certainly believe that everyone, including and perhaps especially Americans, should be more cognizant of how our actions are viewed by others, I don't in general like the idea of constantly being fearful that some action, no matter how innocuous you may think it is, will cause offense to someone else and thus needs to be avoided. I think it's fair to assume that some of the things you or I may do or believe will be offensive or alienating to someone somewhere. I hope you can find my attempt at understanding your point of view sincere and that I don't mean to be dismissive of your concerns. I also don't know what could be done to address the issue internally without upsetting many people here. Even I would find a banning of the chants to be heavy handed on the part of management. As I said previously, perhaps the best course of action would be to simply stop broadcasting from within the Hawthorne facility. The launch and recovery feeds are far more interesting than the employee celebrations anyway.

jamesknelson 10y ago
Reading this thread has been an interesting opportunity for introspection. A number of people on both sides have made very valid points. In particular, your description of the atmosphere on the inside makes the whole thing quite a lot easier to accept, and even get behind. With this said, I think I've also come to understand more about why instinctively I feel a little uncomfortable. It is because as a foreigner who would love to work for SpaceX, I don't feel I can - because it is nigh impossible in this day and age to become American without some decent amount of wealth. If it wasn't for ITAR, I think the chant would be less uncomfortable, because it would be less exclusionary. That said, I don't think you or other Americans should give a rats about what randoms on HN think. We're just jealous of your opportunity to be part of history. Don't feel guilty about having an opportunity, but instead do your best with it. And if that means chanting USA, then do it without any second thoughts!
- Inconel 10y ago
  Thanks for the kind words and believe me when I say how disappointed I feel knowing that there are many people like you who would like to work at SpaceX that aren’t afforded the opportunity simply because of where you happened to be born. I can definitely understand how under your circumstances you may feel that the USA chants are exclusionary and I certainly harbor no ill will if that is how you feel. I would probably feel the same way if I were in your shoes. Speaking of introspection, your comment highlights for me just how lucky I am to be able to work here. I say this as an immigrant who, while growing up in the US from an early age, wasn’t granted US citizenship until adulthood, so I have some first hand experience with the overly complex US immigration process. ITAR is a tricky issue seeing as a Falcon 9 isn’t all that different from an ICBM aside from payload but I do generally feel that the US tends to over classify programs. And while I believe the US should make the process of immigration much less burdensome, I am nonetheless inspired by how many foreign born employees I meet at SpaceX. I wonder if the percentage of non EU born workers at Arianespace approaches the number of non US born workers here. I would be genuinely pleased if they were better in this regard than we are. I could be wrong but I doubt that Roscosmos, JAXA, ISRO or CNSA employ very many foreign born citizens. Having said that, I don’t mean to dismiss the very real concerns you have expressed with the difficulty of immigrating to the US, particularly if you don’t have a great deal of wealth. Again, I’m very sympathetic to the feelings that others have expressed with regards to the USA chants being exclusionary, even if I myself don’t believe this to be their intent. My main problem with some comments in this thread have centered around equating the chants with a Nazi rally or describing those who engage in them as classless or devoid of dignity. I find those statements a tad extreme and the fact that some of those statements went unchallenged suggests to me that there may be many people here who hold similar views, which I find surprising. Thanks again for sharing your perspective with me.

by Inconel 10y ago

jamesknelson 10y ago

Reading this thread has been an interesting opportunity for introspection. A number of people on both sides have made very valid points. In particular, your description of the atmosphere on the inside makes the whole thing quite a lot easier to accept, and even get behind. With this said, I think I've also come to understand more about why instinctively I feel a little uncomfortable. It is because as a foreigner who would love to work for SpaceX, I don't feel I can - because it is nigh impossible in this day and age to become American without some decent amount of wealth. If it wasn't for ITAR, I think the chant would be less uncomfortable, because it would be less exclusionary. That said, I don't think you or other Americans should give a rats about what randoms on HN think. We're just jealous of your opportunity to be part of history. Don't feel guilty about having an opportunity, but instead do your best with it. And if that means chanting USA, then do it without any second thoughts!

Inconel 10y ago
Thanks for the kind words and believe me when I say how disappointed I feel knowing that there are many people like you who would like to work at SpaceX that aren’t afforded the opportunity simply because of where you happened to be born. I can definitely understand how under your circumstances you may feel that the USA chants are exclusionary and I certainly harbor no ill will if that is how you feel. I would probably feel the same way if I were in your shoes. Speaking of introspection, your comment highlights for me just how lucky I am to be able to work here. I say this as an immigrant who, while growing up in the US from an early age, wasn’t granted US citizenship until adulthood, so I have some first hand experience with the overly complex US immigration process. ITAR is a tricky issue seeing as a Falcon 9 isn’t all that different from an ICBM aside from payload but I do generally feel that the US tends to over classify programs. And while I believe the US should make the process of immigration much less burdensome, I am nonetheless inspired by how many foreign born employees I meet at SpaceX. I wonder if the percentage of non EU born workers at Arianespace approaches the number of non US born workers here. I would be genuinely pleased if they were better in this regard than we are. I could be wrong but I doubt that Roscosmos, JAXA, ISRO or CNSA employ very many foreign born citizens. Having said that, I don’t mean to dismiss the very real concerns you have expressed with the difficulty of immigrating to the US, particularly if you don’t have a great deal of wealth. Again, I’m very sympathetic to the feelings that others have expressed with regards to the USA chants being exclusionary, even if I myself don’t believe this to be their intent. My main problem with some comments in this thread have centered around equating the chants with a Nazi rally or describing those who engage in them as classless or devoid of dignity. I find those statements a tad extreme and the fact that some of those statements went unchallenged suggests to me that there may be many people here who hold similar views, which I find surprising. Thanks again for sharing your perspective with me.