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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 t

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 organization and has no obligation to kowtow to the demands of internal activists. Not all companies are like this, but again, you should know what you're signing up for when you join a Musk company. And I'd also be willing to bet cash that all these employees were very low level, likely new hires out of college, and are all of the political activist type. Because for all his bluster, Musk really hasn't done anything THAT objectionable besides openly shit on Democrats. (No, I don't believe the bogus sexual assault allegation from an anonymous friend of a friend, there's no evidence).

szundi 4y ago
If you go to work to a small unknown company, you can feel surprised what you get. Working for Musk - no. You already knew everything.
koheripbal 4y ago
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.
- stn_za 4y ago
  Love this!
- lprd 4y ago
  This should be standard practice. Politics these days are toxic as it is, why would you want to drag that into the workplace? Even if it wasn't toxic, it just seems highly inappropriate. If one wants to be a political activist, perhaps go find a job that's better suited for that type of behavior.
- Spartan22 4y ago
  Wh
  - bufferoverflow 4y ago
    Define slavery and then demonstrate how these workers fall under that definition.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - scollet 4y ago
      If you have to work to live then you are a slave.
      - bufferoverflow 4y ago
        Don't dodge the question. Define slavery.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  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 say that I'm not in the US of A, where political discussions seem to penetrate every aspect of life.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    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.
    - middleclick 4y ago
      Please define wokeism. Is for example, arguing for equality wokeism? Or forming a union?
      - concordDance 4y ago
        Rocking the boat basically. Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? (E.g. pronouns in email signatures or having the company take a public stance on some contempory issue like BLM) And is what you're advocating for considered "lefty"? And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Then it's woke.
        middleclick 4y ago
        > Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? Who is doing that? Please cite something. > And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Where does 20 years ago time frame come from? That's pretty arbitrary and seems more to be based on your feelings than fact.
- cr__ 4y ago
  Is “the boss is acting like a huge turd” something you’re allowed to discuss at your workplace?
  - ralfd 4y ago
    Is it at yours?
    - CBarkleyU 4y ago
      Yep
  - concordDance 4y ago
    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.
  - nerdawson 4y ago
    It'd be a foolish thing to discuss openly.
  - transcoderx 4y ago
    It is allowed, but your boss is also allowed to fire you. Ianal
- maweki 4y ago
  > 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 leadership culture fostering exchangeable employees (and let them feel that), then maybe employees that do have an opinion about the company and its leadership are indeed "toxic".
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    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.
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      Not all. Cooperative companies exist.
- Spartan112 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- pbasista 4y ago
  > 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 autocracies operate. It amplifies the opinion of the leader and unjustly silences everything else. Respectful discussions about the topics of disagreement are in my opinion essential for a company to preserve its defined ethical standards and not deteriorate into a community ruled by herd mentality and groupthink influenced predominantly by a single person.
  - zpeti 4y ago
    Your boss gets accused of something by someone’s friend who told them in confidence, never said anything for years, and then suddenly when your boss does something one side of the political spectrum hates, the other loves, this person goes to the press. Not with proof, just hearsay. This is political.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    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.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    > dangerous to say that an opinion different than the one of the boss is unwelcome at a company That's not what seemed to have happened here. Basically a bunch of employees said they were embarrassed by Musk's behavior. It's like saying the CEO is a clown. If you expect to still have a job after expressing publicly such opinions, well that's very naive.
    - scollet 4y ago
      Employees should be able to remove their leadership, no questions asked.
- middleclick 4y ago
  > 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.
  - dubswithus 4y ago
    Haven’t polls been done that show a majority of people don’t want to talk about politics at work? Seems very believable to me.
    - middleclick 4y ago
- zthrowaway 4y ago
  It used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. But the past 10 years everyone wants to be an activist now. I'd like to see more rules around this in every company. It kills productivity and really distracts from the company goals.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    > It used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. And who benefited from that? Not talking about it is politics. You cannot avoid that. It's literally impossible.
    - whatevenisthat 4y ago
      It is not politics to avoid talking about politics and religion. Stop imposing your personal view onto others and leave people alone. Work is work. Most of us work for the check and try to work on cool projects and keep the politics and religion for private discourse with people at home or at the pub.
      - guerrilla 4y ago
        whatevenisthat 4y ago
        Nope. Keep your religion to yourself please and thank you. Define it however you want, but most people see through the bs strong arm tactic to try to force people to engage in this shit, and don’t want it.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        whatevenisthat 4y ago
- vkou 4y ago
  So, firing James Damore was the correct thing to do, after all? Him and his manifesto, and his subsequent behaviour were pretty distracting, political, toxic, critical of his employer, and wasted workplace resources...
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Sounds like a deal might be possible! Maybe Google doesn't fire Damore and Mozilla doesn't fire Eich and Elon doesn't fire ... whoever these people are! We can call this agreement "liberalism"! Or "free speech"! And yet, all I've heard from the left over the past decade is that corporate employees have no free speech because oh it's not covered by the first amendment, as if that gave you the right rather than acknowledging it, and how oh actually it's not a free speech issue, it's a safety issue, or whatever excuse of the week, and anyway the company can do what it wants regardless. (In this one instance only, of course.) So! Fine, normally I'd be against this sort of thing of people being fired for voicing opinions, but in this case there is a big heaping of schadenfreude involved. Leopard fence was good for something after all, was it!
    - vkou 4y ago
      There never was a leopard fence, though. Capricious firings being the norm have been par for the course in this country for as long as it's been one. The solution is, of course, employment protections and unionization, but 'free-speech liberals' aren't actually very liberal, and dogmatically hate both of those things.
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        I think the first solution is we agree that a leopard fence would be a good thing. Then we can agree or disagree about how to actually build it. I'm much more in favor of unionization than you'd think, but I don't think unions are a reliable defense from these kinds of leopards.
    - deanCommie 4y ago
      I think I would respect someone that said Damore, Eich, and these activists shouldn't have been fired. And I would respect someone that said each of them should have been. Most on progressive twitter though were pro Damore being shot into the moon, but are defending these SpaceX activists (by CORRECTLY pointing out that Musk is a hypocrite with his interpretation of 'free speech') And most on HackerNews were defending Damore, yet today think it's absolutely correct to expect to be fired from a private company for the smallest sign of dissent. I don't have proof it's the same people, but the upvotes tell a narrative. Me, personally, I'm in the first group. If you work for Musk you have to understand he's a petulant child who will take every slight way too seriously than what would be expected from The Richest Man In The World. And I'm not even mad that he's a hypocrite. I know he is. Everyone with a braincell knows he is. But it is wild to see how deep Musk's cult goes that he can inverse Eurasia and Eastasia and people just fall in line.
- jackson1442 4y ago
  > politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work if executives were bringing these topics into the company through their outside interactions on twitter, would it be a violation of the policy? > Activist employees are toxic to company culture. I would argue that musk's personal "activism" (or whatever you want to call his twitter account) is far more harmful than this letter is to company culture
  - electriclove 4y ago
    Good thing it is his company
    - scollet 4y ago
      It is not. Nice try.
- Casteil 4y ago
  > Activist employees are toxic to company culture. Does that include Musk himself, with the way he's been acting on Twitter lately?
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  > Activist employees are toxic to company culture. I think ESG is the overarching umbrella that has compelled corporations to normalize activism.
- scollet 4y ago
  How can you see out of that bedsheet?
bhaak 4y ago
That’s what you get if your priorities clash. One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter.
- GameOfFrowns 4y ago
  >One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter. Do we know in which department the sacked employees worked? For all we know, they could have been employed in marketing or HR, not exactly the area that "builds cool shit" but often those that are active on social media and bent on bringing SJW politics into the working place.
  - bhaak 4y ago
    Have you read what's supposed to be in the letter? Sounds like you're victim blaming to me. I didn't see any SJW politics in that letter but concern that Elon's behavior would reflect badly on the company itself. Which is certainly true but if you have a megalomaniac boss I guess you also need to expect to be fired for telling the truth.
- scollet 4y ago
  Building cool shit doesn't require being a bigot.
lkrubner 4y ago
The workers have a right to organize a labor union. They have a right to go on strike and shut the company down. They have a right to critique any process or rule in the company that they might wish to stop. They have a right to weigh in on the consequences of any of the company's processes, goals, or aims. The workers have had these rights recognized in law for most of the last century.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  We are not talking about internal company problems here. We are talking about letter about behaviour of the boss outside of the company which is of no concern of employees.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  Your first two “rights” (form a union, and if they do, to organize a strike) are in fact legally protected behavior in the US. Latter two are just made-up nonsense. No, they in fact do not have those “rights”, you just wish they did.
  - jayd16 4y ago
    They're allowed to organize but they're not allowed to talk about why? Pretty weird take.
  - scollet 4y ago
    See you in the revolution.
remarkEon 4y ago
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.
- dmurray 4y ago
  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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mhoad 4y ago
    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.
- mola 4y ago
  It seems like that because these kind of assholes also wrote the history books (or paid the guys that did)....
  - zpeti 4y ago
    Henry ford wrote a book titled the international Jew. Is that what you mean?
- triceratops 4y ago
  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?
wallaBBB 4y ago
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...
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  That's a fair point. But I'd say that then the issue is decided by the voters and our elected representatives - if we wanted, we could get the government to cancel their contracts if Musk does something really terrible (not saying it would be easy). I'd prefer it be done that way rather than internal activists pushing their own beliefs onto the company unilaterally and disrupting operations - that's one way we can be SURE our tax dollars would be wasted.
- JackFr 4y ago
  > it's not out there competing in the free market... Tell that to Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. They’d love to know. . .
- mgiannopoulos 4y ago
  There is a difference between winning (over other private companies) government contracts to provide a service and being “funded by taxpayers money”
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Not much in niche industries like this. They’re built to serve government. Any extra customers they get is just the icing.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > it's not out there competing in the free market... Um. They are. SpaceX had almost as many commercial launches as gov ones last year.
- kortilla 4y ago
  SpaceX isn’t funded by taxpayers anymore than Amazon is (for JEDI) or the local gas station that sells fuel to federal fleet vehicles. Just because the government is a customer doesn’t put it in the “funded by taxpayers’” camp in the sense that the public has any say in the company.
Laremere 4y ago
On one hand, I agree with you. I've personally seen low level people at a large corporation believe they were unequivocally in the right, and tried to use the weight of their moral conviction to impose their view of things onto everyone else. It's not your job to do this, and it's not my job to care. On the other hand, there has to be some capacity for this type of discussion to occur. Musk owns less than 50% of SpaceX, and I generally think employees should have some manner of input into the operations of the company they work for. History is full of cases where the justified party tried to convey their problems politely, were ignored or quietly silenced, and had to raise the problem loudly to get any traction. I think it's a reasonable desire to want to work for SpaceX, but not want someone's first reaction to hearing that you work at SpaceX to be bringing up whatever stupid thing Elon has done this week. If someone has the answer on how to find this balance, please popularize it. In the meantime, I've left the large corp I was at and joined a small company with 7 others where I don't have to deal with such problems or such activists.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > I think it's a reasonable desire to want to work for SpaceX, but not want someone's first reaction to hearing that you work at SpaceX to be bringing up whatever stupid thing Elon has done this week Like a lot of things, the blame for this falls on the news media.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    The media is now responsible for Musk's unhinged twitter account? Man, people really will blame them for everything...
    - concordDance 4y ago
      No, the media is responsible for people hearing about it. If the mefia ignored him rather than running a story every time he runs his mouth the world would be a better place.
      - 4y ago
ohgodplsno 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- concordDance 4y ago
  Ah, the gish gallop. A classic. Anyway, Musk can show me his dick all he likes if I get 200k per viewing.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > Cool cool cool, tech bros straight up rejecting reports of sexual assaults and publicly calling it a lie Are you calling Gwynne Shotwell a tech bro? That’s her stance.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Sure. Someone who directly depends on Musk not going to jail for their employment to not disappear isn't exactly the best judge of character. She can even be a tech sis if you want, or a 10xer, pick your favorite.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
scollet 4y ago
This is a very popular opinion. Although companies are not top down unless you are a literal Fascist. Also I genuinely think you are an idiot.

szundi 4y ago

If you go to work to a small unknown company, you can feel surprised what you get. Working for Musk - no. You already knew everything.

koheripbal 4y ago

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.

stn_za 4y ago
Love this!
lprd 4y ago
This should be standard practice. Politics these days are toxic as it is, why would you want to drag that into the workplace? Even if it wasn't toxic, it just seems highly inappropriate. If one wants to be a political activist, perhaps go find a job that's better suited for that type of behavior.
Spartan22 4y ago
Wh
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  Define slavery and then demonstrate how these workers fall under that definition.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - scollet 4y ago
    If you have to work to live then you are a slave.
    - bufferoverflow 4y ago
      Don't dodge the question. Define slavery.
boeingUH60 4y ago
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 say that I'm not in the US of A, where political discussions seem to penetrate every aspect of life.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  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.
  - middleclick 4y ago
    Please define wokeism. Is for example, arguing for equality wokeism? Or forming a union?
    - concordDance 4y ago
      Rocking the boat basically. Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? (E.g. pronouns in email signatures or having the company take a public stance on some contempory issue like BLM) And is what you're advocating for considered "lefty"? And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Then it's woke.
      - middleclick 4y ago
        > Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? Who is doing that? Please cite something. > And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Where does 20 years ago time frame come from? That's pretty arbitrary and seems more to be based on your feelings than fact.
cr__ 4y ago
Is “the boss is acting like a huge turd” something you’re allowed to discuss at your workplace?
- ralfd 4y ago
  Is it at yours?
  - CBarkleyU 4y ago
    Yep
- concordDance 4y ago
  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.
- nerdawson 4y ago
  It'd be a foolish thing to discuss openly.
- transcoderx 4y ago
  It is allowed, but your boss is also allowed to fire you. Ianal
maweki 4y ago
> 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 leadership culture fostering exchangeable employees (and let them feel that), then maybe employees that do have an opinion about the company and its leadership are indeed "toxic".
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  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.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Not all. Cooperative companies exist.
Spartan112 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pbasista 4y ago
> 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 autocracies operate. It amplifies the opinion of the leader and unjustly silences everything else. Respectful discussions about the topics of disagreement are in my opinion essential for a company to preserve its defined ethical standards and not deteriorate into a community ruled by herd mentality and groupthink influenced predominantly by a single person.
- zpeti 4y ago
  Your boss gets accused of something by someone’s friend who told them in confidence, never said anything for years, and then suddenly when your boss does something one side of the political spectrum hates, the other loves, this person goes to the press. Not with proof, just hearsay. This is political.
- concordDance 4y ago
  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.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > dangerous to say that an opinion different than the one of the boss is unwelcome at a company That's not what seemed to have happened here. Basically a bunch of employees said they were embarrassed by Musk's behavior. It's like saying the CEO is a clown. If you expect to still have a job after expressing publicly such opinions, well that's very naive.
  - scollet 4y ago
    Employees should be able to remove their leadership, no questions asked.
middleclick 4y ago
> 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.
- dubswithus 4y ago
  Haven’t polls been done that show a majority of people don’t want to talk about politics at work? Seems very believable to me.
  - middleclick 4y ago
zthrowaway 4y ago
It used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. But the past 10 years everyone wants to be an activist now. I'd like to see more rules around this in every company. It kills productivity and really distracts from the company goals.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > It used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. And who benefited from that? Not talking about it is politics. You cannot avoid that. It's literally impossible.
  - whatevenisthat 4y ago
    It is not politics to avoid talking about politics and religion. Stop imposing your personal view onto others and leave people alone. Work is work. Most of us work for the check and try to work on cool projects and keep the politics and religion for private discourse with people at home or at the pub.
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      - whatevenisthat 4y ago
        Nope. Keep your religion to yourself please and thank you. Define it however you want, but most people see through the bs strong arm tactic to try to force people to engage in this shit, and don’t want it.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        whatevenisthat 4y ago
vkou 4y ago
So, firing James Damore was the correct thing to do, after all? Him and his manifesto, and his subsequent behaviour were pretty distracting, political, toxic, critical of his employer, and wasted workplace resources...
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  Sounds like a deal might be possible! Maybe Google doesn't fire Damore and Mozilla doesn't fire Eich and Elon doesn't fire ... whoever these people are! We can call this agreement "liberalism"! Or "free speech"! And yet, all I've heard from the left over the past decade is that corporate employees have no free speech because oh it's not covered by the first amendment, as if that gave you the right rather than acknowledging it, and how oh actually it's not a free speech issue, it's a safety issue, or whatever excuse of the week, and anyway the company can do what it wants regardless. (In this one instance only, of course.) So! Fine, normally I'd be against this sort of thing of people being fired for voicing opinions, but in this case there is a big heaping of schadenfreude involved. Leopard fence was good for something after all, was it!
  - vkou 4y ago
    There never was a leopard fence, though. Capricious firings being the norm have been par for the course in this country for as long as it's been one. The solution is, of course, employment protections and unionization, but 'free-speech liberals' aren't actually very liberal, and dogmatically hate both of those things.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      I think the first solution is we agree that a leopard fence would be a good thing. Then we can agree or disagree about how to actually build it. I'm much more in favor of unionization than you'd think, but I don't think unions are a reliable defense from these kinds of leopards.
  - deanCommie 4y ago
    I think I would respect someone that said Damore, Eich, and these activists shouldn't have been fired. And I would respect someone that said each of them should have been. Most on progressive twitter though were pro Damore being shot into the moon, but are defending these SpaceX activists (by CORRECTLY pointing out that Musk is a hypocrite with his interpretation of 'free speech') And most on HackerNews were defending Damore, yet today think it's absolutely correct to expect to be fired from a private company for the smallest sign of dissent. I don't have proof it's the same people, but the upvotes tell a narrative. Me, personally, I'm in the first group. If you work for Musk you have to understand he's a petulant child who will take every slight way too seriously than what would be expected from The Richest Man In The World. And I'm not even mad that he's a hypocrite. I know he is. Everyone with a braincell knows he is. But it is wild to see how deep Musk's cult goes that he can inverse Eurasia and Eastasia and people just fall in line.
jackson1442 4y ago
> politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work if executives were bringing these topics into the company through their outside interactions on twitter, would it be a violation of the policy? > Activist employees are toxic to company culture. I would argue that musk's personal "activism" (or whatever you want to call his twitter account) is far more harmful than this letter is to company culture
- electriclove 4y ago
  Good thing it is his company
  - scollet 4y ago
    It is not. Nice try.
Casteil 4y ago
> Activist employees are toxic to company culture. Does that include Musk himself, with the way he's been acting on Twitter lately?
systemvoltage 4y ago
> Activist employees are toxic to company culture. I think ESG is the overarching umbrella that has compelled corporations to normalize activism.
scollet 4y ago
How can you see out of that bedsheet?

bhaak 4y ago

That’s what you get if your priorities clash. One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter.

GameOfFrowns 4y ago
>One side wants to build cool shit and the other side wants to shit post on Twitter. Do we know in which department the sacked employees worked? For all we know, they could have been employed in marketing or HR, not exactly the area that "builds cool shit" but often those that are active on social media and bent on bringing SJW politics into the working place.
- bhaak 4y ago
  Have you read what's supposed to be in the letter? Sounds like you're victim blaming to me. I didn't see any SJW politics in that letter but concern that Elon's behavior would reflect badly on the company itself. Which is certainly true but if you have a megalomaniac boss I guess you also need to expect to be fired for telling the truth.
scollet 4y ago
Building cool shit doesn't require being a bigot.

lkrubner 4y ago

The workers have a right to organize a labor union. They have a right to go on strike and shut the company down. They have a right to critique any process or rule in the company that they might wish to stop. They have a right to weigh in on the consequences of any of the company's processes, goals, or aims. The workers have had these rights recognized in law for most of the last century.

ReptileMan 4y ago
We are not talking about internal company problems here. We are talking about letter about behaviour of the boss outside of the company which is of no concern of employees.
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
Your first two “rights” (form a union, and if they do, to organize a strike) are in fact legally protected behavior in the US. Latter two are just made-up nonsense. No, they in fact do not have those “rights”, you just wish they did.
- jayd16 4y ago
  They're allowed to organize but they're not allowed to talk about why? Pretty weird take.
- scollet 4y ago
  See you in the revolution.

remarkEon 4y ago

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.

dmurray 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mhoad 4y ago
  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.
mola 4y ago
It seems like that because these kind of assholes also wrote the history books (or paid the guys that did)....
- zpeti 4y ago
  Henry ford wrote a book titled the international Jew. Is that what you mean?
triceratops 4y ago
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?

wallaBBB 4y ago

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...

uejfiweun 4y ago
That's a fair point. But I'd say that then the issue is decided by the voters and our elected representatives - if we wanted, we could get the government to cancel their contracts if Musk does something really terrible (not saying it would be easy). I'd prefer it be done that way rather than internal activists pushing their own beliefs onto the company unilaterally and disrupting operations - that's one way we can be SURE our tax dollars would be wasted.
JackFr 4y ago
> it's not out there competing in the free market... Tell that to Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. They’d love to know. . .
mgiannopoulos 4y ago
There is a difference between winning (over other private companies) government contracts to provide a service and being “funded by taxpayers money”
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Not much in niche industries like this. They’re built to serve government. Any extra customers they get is just the icing.
concordDance 4y ago
> it's not out there competing in the free market... Um. They are. SpaceX had almost as many commercial launches as gov ones last year.
kortilla 4y ago
SpaceX isn’t funded by taxpayers anymore than Amazon is (for JEDI) or the local gas station that sells fuel to federal fleet vehicles. Just because the government is a customer doesn’t put it in the “funded by taxpayers’” camp in the sense that the public has any say in the company.

Laremere 4y ago

On one hand, I agree with you. I've personally seen low level people at a large corporation believe they were unequivocally in the right, and tried to use the weight of their moral conviction to impose their view of things onto everyone else. It's not your job to do this, and it's not my job to care. On the other hand, there has to be some capacity for this type of discussion to occur. Musk owns less than 50% of SpaceX, and I generally think employees should have some manner of input into the operations of the company they work for. History is full of cases where the justified party tried to convey their problems politely, were ignored or quietly silenced, and had to raise the problem loudly to get any traction. I think it's a reasonable desire to want to work for SpaceX, but not want someone's first reaction to hearing that you work at SpaceX to be bringing up whatever stupid thing Elon has done this week. If someone has the answer on how to find this balance, please popularize it. In the meantime, I've left the large corp I was at and joined a small company with 7 others where I don't have to deal with such problems or such activists.

concordDance 4y ago
> I think it's a reasonable desire to want to work for SpaceX, but not want someone's first reaction to hearing that you work at SpaceX to be bringing up whatever stupid thing Elon has done this week Like a lot of things, the blame for this falls on the news media.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  The media is now responsible for Musk's unhinged twitter account? Man, people really will blame them for everything...
  - concordDance 4y ago
    No, the media is responsible for people hearing about it. If the mefia ignored him rather than running a story every time he runs his mouth the world would be a better place.
    - 4y ago

ohgodplsno 4y ago

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concordDance 4y ago
Ah, the gish gallop. A classic. Anyway, Musk can show me his dick all he likes if I get 200k per viewing.
kortilla 4y ago
> Cool cool cool, tech bros straight up rejecting reports of sexual assaults and publicly calling it a lie Are you calling Gwynne Shotwell a tech bro? That’s her stance.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Sure. Someone who directly depends on Musk not going to jail for their employment to not disappear isn't exactly the best judge of character. She can even be a tech sis if you want, or a 10xer, pick your favorite.

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scollet 4y ago

This is a very popular opinion. Although companies are not top down unless you are a literal Fascist. Also I genuinely think you are an idiot.