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> 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

by bko 4y ago

> 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. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. What should the appropriate response be? You have to work with these people and its incredibly distracting and out of line. These are children that think they can just shout down leadership and suffer no consequences. The rest of us who live in the real world understand that hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily and we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face.

makeitdouble 4y ago
Would you apply the same logic to your leaders drowning the company stock and killing the public image ? What should the appropriate response be ?
- jackmott42 4y ago
- awestroke 4y ago
  Leave the company?
- bko 4y ago
  Your company may make decisions that you don't agree with or are objectively stupid. There is a proper channel to voice your concerns. They may be ignored in which case you can leave if you feel strongly enough about it. This is what adults do.
  - waffleiron 4y ago
    > This is what adults do. I am sure the people who wrote the letter are adults. You don't have to insult people you don't agree with.
    - diob 4y ago
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    > This is what adults do TBF, the behaviors they are complaining about are so far away from "what adults do". Honestly, tma lot of people could be having a better inagine of SpaceX now that their letter is on the open than during the awkward silence phase.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  SpaceX isn't a public company.
  - waffleiron 4y ago
    To have stock (and for it to have value) you don't need to be a public company.
waffleiron 4y ago
> The rest of us who live in the real world understand that hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily and we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face. And someone isn't entitled to spit in your face just because they pay you. Respect for people should go both ways, and the view that just because someone is rich, above you in the ladder, you should just shut up and take it, isn't a good one too. Workers have very little power to fight back, yes there might be consequences but they wouldn't have written this letter if they didn't feel they weren't already living under the consequences of bad leadership.
- bko 4y ago
  > And someone isn't entitled to spit in your face just because they pay you. Respect for people should go both ways, and the view that just because someone is rich, above you in the ladder, you should just shut up and take it, isn't a good one too. How is Musk spitting in their face? By shitposting on twitter? By voting for the wrong candidate? These people need to get over themselves. Not everything is about them. They're free to leave.
  - waffleiron 4y ago
    > These people need to get over themselves. And how do you not apply this to Musk, who fired people after a bit of critique?
    - bko 4y ago
      It's his organization. Why is that so hard to understand? The leader and some person working there are not the same. If I hired a cleaner and she started posting publicly how shitty my interior design, I would fire this person. It's not what you pay her to do. I would argue it was a good move. Like I said, its a distraction and completely out of line. Imagine you were managing someone and they think its okay to arbitrarily go above your head and call you out publicly. This is incredibly toxic and not a person living in the real world.
      - 4y ago
enriquto 4y ago
> 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. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?
- rayiner 4y ago
  > Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Universities are a unique creature where ideas and debate are the whole point, “more so than getting things done.” That’s also part of the “real world” in some sense, but it isn’t the world nearly all of us reside in. I would recommend any organization that wants to be successful outside of that unique context to not emulate the model of universities. That includes non profits and NGOs. Hierarchy exists almost universally in human organizations. That’s not an accident—it’s necessary for groups of humans working together to be effective.
- bko 4y ago
  People have been fired for a lot less at universities. Often time its not even attacking the organization or people, just for saying the wrong thing about a political issue.
- noasaservice 4y ago
  Academia follows some really strange rules, including things like tenure regarding academic freedom and speech. They also hire copious amounts of teacher assistants at poverty wages called "stipends", which also seem to bypass minimum wage laws. Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  > Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.
etamatem 4y ago
> 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 a well-adjusted adult
- anvuong 4y ago
  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.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    I don't really think Zuckerberg cares that much about short term fluctuations in the stock price. He has majority control, the market has effectively zero power if he doesn't like its ideas.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > For SpaceX, they don't have to care about any of those things. They do if they want customers. ULA and Blue Origin would love nothing more than for SpaceX's leadership to piss off NASA and burn some of those juicy government contract opportunities.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    No, the difference is that Zuckerberg, for all his faults, is not a narcissitic sociopath.
  - etamatem 4y ago
    > Meta don't want this kind of negative publicity No, it does not, but it still happens. Most of our internal[1] Q&A discussions leak to the press (especially criticisms of leadership[2]), but Zuckerberg decided it's the cost of internal openness. I'm yet to hear of anyone fired for leaking company discussions, or even witch-hunts to find leakers. Musk is being a baby, I hope they bleed irreplaceable talent. 1. These have remained unchanged post-IPO, have nothing to do with public listing, and Meta would like them to be confidential 2. One of our recently-promoted execs was publicly and vociferously criticized by employees for something they did, and the critics are still employed, because the execs are not petty.
gonehome 4y ago
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.
- mempko 4y ago
  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.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    The loan was paid back early and did exactly what it was supposed to do (incentivize alternative energy company creation). I think they may have even paid an early payment penalty to be done with it? So it wasn't a bailout at all. SpaceX doesn't get those contracts for nothing - they're the first to commercialize reusable rockets in a serious way and have massively reduced costs as a result. All of this stuff was explicitly laid out by Musk (despite massive knee-jerk criticism which continues despite the proved success) and his companies were able to execute on it. It's not luck to do this repeatedly in multiple extremely challenging verticals (at the same time) successfully.
    - mempko 4y ago
      > The loan was paid back early and did exactly what it was supposed to do (incentivize alternative energy company creation). I think they may have even paid an early payment penalty to be done with it? So it wasn't a bailout at all. Do you know why he paid back early? In the contract the DOE would have had some ownership in Tesla after the payoff period. He paid it early so that the Tax Payer wouldn't benefit from the deal. It would have been a better deal for the US Tax Payer for him to have not paid it back early. It should be clear to anyone owning TSLA stock that we, as the public got screwed there. And yes, it was a bailout. The government was trying to create a EV market and Tesla was about to fail. The market for EVs just didn't exist at that point and the DOE LPO had a driving mission to create one. So they bailed Tesla out because they wanted a market (notice private equity didn't believe in Tesla succeeding, otherwise Musk would have raised the cash from the private markets). This is how governments create markets, by paying for technology until the market matures. This is true of Computers and other high technology. If the government didn't care to create an EV market, Tesla would have been dead a long time ago. Is this Musk's genius or the genius of our policy makers? SpaceX is exactly the same story. The government wanted a private space industry and so NASA was given a mission to create one. SpaceX is barely surviving now even with the government help. And of course we have no idea what kind of bribery Musk must have participated in to get the loans and contracts he did from the government. I'm sure time will reveal them. But It's naive to think there wasn't anything.
rgbrenner 4y ago
circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. It didnt say Elon was "all wrong"... it criticized 1 or 2 things. For all we know they agree with the other 99%. This is a common in these responses defending Elon. They take the letter, turn it into something much much worse.. and then say: dont they deserve to be fired? The version of the letter youre describing does not exist.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  "all wrong" in this case was ambiguous. I interpreted it as meaning "all members of leadership are wrong about something" not that "leadership is wrong about all things". But I also disagree with their argument simply because Musk's actions are very public and represent the employees who stand behind him. It would be one thing if these were internal decisions that employees disagreed with, but that's not the situation. Musk is a leader, and the people who choose to stand behind him rely on him to represent them well. If they feel he is not doing his job, they are well within their rights to voice their concerns to him. If he reacts like a baby-man who can't take criticism, then the workers should be ready to take their skills elsewhere.
maybelsyrup 4y ago
> hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily Yes, it does.
Bhilai 4y ago
Do internal survey results and their "anonymous" verbatim count? I have seen plenty of examples of scathing verbatim against leaders at several different companies. Not to mention poor and declining scores on questions like "I trust my leadership blah blah" year after year on internal employee surveys. Were those people fired, no!
Ombudsman 4y ago
> These are children that think they can just shout down leadership and suffer no consequences. Exactly. Although, it's hypocritical of Musk to fire employees who criticize him but criticize Twitter for banning/censoring accounts for spouting opinions that Twitter doesn't align with. If SpaceX has this right, Twitter should too.
brtkdotse 4y ago
> 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. See what happens. What should the appropriate response be? At most places, leadership actually… leads. Musk is a token publicity figure at best at this point, a mascot.
Phlarp 4y ago
Does that boot taste good?
polotics 4y ago
You write: """we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face""" The writer(s) of this letter definitely didn't spit in any Tesla customer's face. Elon is not buying all the Teslas, probably didn't pay for his.

by bko 4y ago

makeitdouble 4y ago

Would you apply the same logic to your leaders drowning the company stock and killing the public image ? What should the appropriate response be ?

jackmott42 4y ago
awestroke 4y ago
Leave the company?
bko 4y ago
Your company may make decisions that you don't agree with or are objectively stupid. There is a proper channel to voice your concerns. They may be ignored in which case you can leave if you feel strongly enough about it. This is what adults do.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  > This is what adults do. I am sure the people who wrote the letter are adults. You don't have to insult people you don't agree with.
  - diob 4y ago
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > This is what adults do TBF, the behaviors they are complaining about are so far away from "what adults do". Honestly, tma lot of people could be having a better inagine of SpaceX now that their letter is on the open than during the awkward silence phase.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
SpaceX isn't a public company.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  To have stock (and for it to have value) you don't need to be a public company.

waffleiron 4y ago

> The rest of us who live in the real world understand that hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily and we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face. And someone isn't entitled to spit in your face just because they pay you. Respect for people should go both ways, and the view that just because someone is rich, above you in the ladder, you should just shut up and take it, isn't a good one too. Workers have very little power to fight back, yes there might be consequences but they wouldn't have written this letter if they didn't feel they weren't already living under the consequences of bad leadership.

bko 4y ago
> And someone isn't entitled to spit in your face just because they pay you. Respect for people should go both ways, and the view that just because someone is rich, above you in the ladder, you should just shut up and take it, isn't a good one too. How is Musk spitting in their face? By shitposting on twitter? By voting for the wrong candidate? These people need to get over themselves. Not everything is about them. They're free to leave.
- waffleiron 4y ago
  > These people need to get over themselves. And how do you not apply this to Musk, who fired people after a bit of critique?
  - bko 4y ago
    It's his organization. Why is that so hard to understand? The leader and some person working there are not the same. If I hired a cleaner and she started posting publicly how shitty my interior design, I would fire this person. It's not what you pay her to do. I would argue it was a good move. Like I said, its a distraction and completely out of line. Imagine you were managing someone and they think its okay to arbitrarily go above your head and call you out publicly. This is incredibly toxic and not a person living in the real world.
    - 4y ago

enriquto 4y ago

> 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. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

rayiner 4y ago
> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Universities are a unique creature where ideas and debate are the whole point, “more so than getting things done.” That’s also part of the “real world” in some sense, but it isn’t the world nearly all of us reside in. I would recommend any organization that wants to be successful outside of that unique context to not emulate the model of universities. That includes non profits and NGOs. Hierarchy exists almost universally in human organizations. That’s not an accident—it’s necessary for groups of humans working together to be effective.
bko 4y ago
People have been fired for a lot less at universities. Often time its not even attacking the organization or people, just for saying the wrong thing about a political issue.
noasaservice 4y ago
Academia follows some really strange rules, including things like tenure regarding academic freedom and speech. They also hire copious amounts of teacher assistants at poverty wages called "stipends", which also seem to bypass minimum wage laws. Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.

etamatem 4y ago

> 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 a well-adjusted adult

anvuong 4y ago
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.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  I don't really think Zuckerberg cares that much about short term fluctuations in the stock price. He has majority control, the market has effectively zero power if he doesn't like its ideas.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > For SpaceX, they don't have to care about any of those things. They do if they want customers. ULA and Blue Origin would love nothing more than for SpaceX's leadership to piss off NASA and burn some of those juicy government contract opportunities.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  No, the difference is that Zuckerberg, for all his faults, is not a narcissitic sociopath.
- etamatem 4y ago
  > Meta don't want this kind of negative publicity No, it does not, but it still happens. Most of our internal[1] Q&A discussions leak to the press (especially criticisms of leadership[2]), but Zuckerberg decided it's the cost of internal openness. I'm yet to hear of anyone fired for leaking company discussions, or even witch-hunts to find leakers. Musk is being a baby, I hope they bleed irreplaceable talent. 1. These have remained unchanged post-IPO, have nothing to do with public listing, and Meta would like them to be confidential 2. One of our recently-promoted execs was publicly and vociferously criticized by employees for something they did, and the critics are still employed, because the execs are not petty.

gonehome 4y ago

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.

mempko 4y ago
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.
- gonehome 4y ago
  The loan was paid back early and did exactly what it was supposed to do (incentivize alternative energy company creation). I think they may have even paid an early payment penalty to be done with it? So it wasn't a bailout at all. SpaceX doesn't get those contracts for nothing - they're the first to commercialize reusable rockets in a serious way and have massively reduced costs as a result. All of this stuff was explicitly laid out by Musk (despite massive knee-jerk criticism which continues despite the proved success) and his companies were able to execute on it. It's not luck to do this repeatedly in multiple extremely challenging verticals (at the same time) successfully.
  - mempko 4y ago
    > The loan was paid back early and did exactly what it was supposed to do (incentivize alternative energy company creation). I think they may have even paid an early payment penalty to be done with it? So it wasn't a bailout at all. Do you know why he paid back early? In the contract the DOE would have had some ownership in Tesla after the payoff period. He paid it early so that the Tax Payer wouldn't benefit from the deal. It would have been a better deal for the US Tax Payer for him to have not paid it back early. It should be clear to anyone owning TSLA stock that we, as the public got screwed there. And yes, it was a bailout. The government was trying to create a EV market and Tesla was about to fail. The market for EVs just didn't exist at that point and the DOE LPO had a driving mission to create one. So they bailed Tesla out because they wanted a market (notice private equity didn't believe in Tesla succeeding, otherwise Musk would have raised the cash from the private markets). This is how governments create markets, by paying for technology until the market matures. This is true of Computers and other high technology. If the government didn't care to create an EV market, Tesla would have been dead a long time ago. Is this Musk's genius or the genius of our policy makers? SpaceX is exactly the same story. The government wanted a private space industry and so NASA was given a mission to create one. SpaceX is barely surviving now even with the government help. And of course we have no idea what kind of bribery Musk must have participated in to get the loans and contracts he did from the government. I'm sure time will reveal them. But It's naive to think there wasn't anything.

rgbrenner 4y ago

circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. It didnt say Elon was "all wrong"... it criticized 1 or 2 things. For all we know they agree with the other 99%. This is a common in these responses defending Elon. They take the letter, turn it into something much much worse.. and then say: dont they deserve to be fired? The version of the letter youre describing does not exist.

teawrecks 4y ago
"all wrong" in this case was ambiguous. I interpreted it as meaning "all members of leadership are wrong about something" not that "leadership is wrong about all things". But I also disagree with their argument simply because Musk's actions are very public and represent the employees who stand behind him. It would be one thing if these were internal decisions that employees disagreed with, but that's not the situation. Musk is a leader, and the people who choose to stand behind him rely on him to represent them well. If they feel he is not doing his job, they are well within their rights to voice their concerns to him. If he reacts like a baby-man who can't take criticism, then the workers should be ready to take their skills elsewhere.

maybelsyrup 4y ago

> hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily Yes, it does.

Bhilai 4y ago

Do internal survey results and their "anonymous" verbatim count? I have seen plenty of examples of scathing verbatim against leaders at several different companies. Not to mention poor and declining scores on questions like "I trust my leadership blah blah" year after year on internal employee surveys. Were those people fired, no!

Ombudsman 4y ago

> These are children that think they can just shout down leadership and suffer no consequences. Exactly. Although, it's hypocritical of Musk to fire employees who criticize him but criticize Twitter for banning/censoring accounts for spouting opinions that Twitter doesn't align with. If SpaceX has this right, Twitter should too.

brtkdotse 4y ago

> 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. See what happens. What should the appropriate response be? At most places, leadership actually… leads. Musk is a token publicity figure at best at this point, a mascot.

Phlarp 4y ago

Does that boot taste good?

polotics 4y ago

You write: """we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face""" The writer(s) of this letter definitely didn't spit in any Tesla customer's face. Elon is not buying all the Teslas, probably didn't pay for his.