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 your employer to not like you.
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.
Freedom of speech does not mean being free of consequences. Much like you're free to offend, the other side is free to be offended and employment goes both ways. Firing someone because they fundamentally disagree on how the company should be run is not censorship, it's keeping only people who align with the direction you're headed.
Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, just like in the USA?.
Yes. In the USA you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell "Down with Reagan!", and you will still not be punished.
I think what you are saying can be perceived (and maybe it inherently is) partisan, in the sense that it focuses on one aspect entirely to prove a larger point - I think we are missing out on many of the things that the right restricted - good ol' Fifties' McArthyism of course comes quickly to mind, but I think through much of the history (but not all!), and certainly throughout the global geography, it was the conservative / establishment voices that had the power to restrict progressive speech. If instead, in your post you made a point that going against the cultural zeitgest of the times is always inherently risky and with consequences, you'd have been far more engaging and accepted rather than focusing on one side and attaching a ranty YouTube about "wokeness". It especially doesn't sound non-conspiratorial and non-partisan once you talk about "evil influences" and "this war will be won" - that means we're not having a discussion, you're preaching a specific point of view.
(FWIW, I don't like either side overzealously restricting what's permissible to discuss - I'm in my own world of no mental or verbal taboos and a marketplace of ideas, which is the rarest side of all it turns out -- neutral simply means all sides can gang up on you :D )
I actually appreciate your reply being relatively measured. You're right in that my post would be more accurate if I said "what I said above is neither partisan nor conspiratorial", because later on I do take a very partisan stance.
I also didn't mention things like McCarthyism because:
A) I'm not very familiar with it.
B) From what little I've heard, McCarthyism seems to me like an failure in that it didn't go far enough where it should and went too far where it shouldn't.
C) I don't see it as relevant to today's culture war, which is a consequence of the left having successfully gained cultural ascendancy and become an incredible threat to our country.
Edit 2: I remembered faintly reading about McCarthyism once, and it turns out I'm right: I read chapter six of "Debunking Zinn", titled, "Writing the Red Menace out of history." To quote from the chapter:
"Senator Joesph McCarthy -- always an easy mark for the left -- is presented as representative of all anti-Communists. But it's a fact that Soviet expansion was enabled by Americans' lack of due diligence when it came to weeding out Communist spies."
And, to McCarthy's inffectiveness, the book says:
"Christopher Anddrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, among other anti-communists, claim that 'McCarthy ultimately did more for the Soviet cause than any agent of influence the KBG ever had'."
And later: "[McCarthy] was also not careful in making his charges, and he became more reckless as his drinking, some say, got worse."
Edit: "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" makes brief mention to this 1954 book defending Joe McCarthy: https://www.amazon.com/McCarthy-His-Enemies-William-Buckley/.... I have not read it, but if I were to learn more about McCarthyism I would probably personally start there.
From one book review:
"However, what I love most about this book is the authors challenge the reader to do his or her own thinking about communism in the 50's and what needed to be done during that time. They ask questions and then provide hypothetical answers which returns over and over again the same verdict. That rooting out communism and subversives in government was an extremely tough job, and it required a tough man to do the job, and he would have to play "hardball" to get the facts. To make the job even more difficult is that McCarthy was up against powerful establishments in all aspects of society."
Here's the deciding coin toss: can we both imagine there equally exist books defending current left restrictions on discussions, as there exist books defending mcarthyism? :)
Your comment is partisan. The implication you are making is the right does not participate in the activities you are pointing out. Regardless of how correct you are, you are making a political comment against the left on a site that tries to avoid political arguments. You are also using partisan trigger words.
Hmmmm. PathOfEclipse replied here with a similar quality comment to that I answered, which I replied to with HN guidelines. Now the comment is gone - confusing. This is off-topic, but I need this sentinel. Topic now removed from front page so I presume I am not creating refuse.
> truth, objectivity, and tolerance for opposing viewpoints
I think you are in the right place.
Here’s my opinion: make your own points without regurgitating obvious partisan “positions”; avoid flamebait partisan language such as “woke”; before writing perhaps consider if HN is the right forum for your content and choose the appropriate forum for your points; consider steel-manning your argument rather than right-handed punches to low hanging straw piñatas.
Reading your reply, you are repeating the same mistakes that I was responding to. An inappropriate comment about the “left”. Your response comes across to me as a hidden political dismissal that doesn’t acknowledge or respond to the simple point I made - I think your response is an irrelevant shift of the goalposts.
Meanwhile this thread is off-topic and a tree of responses is not appropriate. Your original comment has triggered divisive and controversial (flaming) responses from others - a strong indication your comment is objective and intolerant. If your comment is worthwhile, other people will defend your comment for you. At least you are checking your threads link.
Edit: meta: I am engaging with you for two reasons: 1) if your near future comments are too divisive then I would expect this thread to be looked at, and 2) I truly wish to read your future high quality, strong, thoughtful and substantive contributions. I try to analyse how good/bad my own comments are: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/
Neat, but juvenile. Now Show me the seminal research paper, or influential book, speech, or editorial from the right denouncing tolerance, objectivity or truth. Because I've already done that for the left, and I've provided references, one of which is from someone who is not overtly conservative (Ryan Chapman).
White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions ... Students will explore how systematic logics that position “the West” and “whiteness” as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race.
It's not a trick. Fascists hate tolerance. The Klu Klux Klan - a very conservative group did not, in any way, want to tolerate black people. Rightists marched a few years ago chanting "Jews will not replace us". In the 1940s there was an effort by right-wing fascists to exterminate an entire race.
And they were not "conservative" in any sense except trying to "conserve" slavery. The elite intellectual "progressive" democrats of the time were also the most racist. They were the ones, for instance, that pushed eugenics for blacks (Planned Parenthood), and racial superiority based on scientific data:
> The elite intellectual democrats of the time were also the most racist.
Then as now, both parties were big tents and this isn't true, but it is true that the elite intellectual racists were more likely to be Democrats; that weakened in the overlapping pair of political realignments starting with the New Deal, especially the second one triggered by LBJ’s support of the Civil Rights Act.
The first schism between the national Democrats and the racists that went to form the “Dixiecrats” (itself triggered by integration policies supported by national Democrats) fell apart because the Dixiecrats weren't viable as a major party on their own, but the the second schism triggered by LBJ became permanent when the Republicans made attracting the disaffected racists a durable political strategy. That group of proud and open racists migrated from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party between the 1960s and the 1990s, which is why the Confederate-flag waving, openly anti-black, slavery-justifying-and-minimizing, etc., crowd is now consistently behind (or in front leading) the GOP.
> Then as now, both parties were big tents and this isn't true, but it is true that the elite intellectual racists were more likely to be Democrats
Forget it, you're arguing against a bad faith argument.
OP said something along the lines of the "KKK was a conservative groups". GP's response was "ackchully the KKK was Democrats, as if "Democrat" was the opposite of "Conservative".
You're right. I falsely equated "progressive" and "democrat". I wasn't very familiar with KKK politics, but reading up, it looks they definitely had some strong conservative aspects.
"During the heyday of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting doctrines of innate, genetic inferiority of not only blacks but also of people from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as compared to people from Western Europe.
Liberals today tend to either glide over the undeniable racism of Progressive President Woodrow Wilson or else treat it as an anomaly of some sort. But racism on the left at that time was not an anomaly, either for Wilson or for numerous other stalwarts of the Progressive movement."
I agree with that, and apologize for taking such an antagonistic view towards your original comment. There are certain lines or prases that make my mind jump directly to cliche. It's easy to go all "to arms" after you've wasted too much time on the internet.
>The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society
This leftist vs non-leftist idea doesn't seem to align with the article. You seem to be saying that if the letter had been more leftist, they wouldn't have been fired from SpaceX. I don't think that's the case.
That's because the left have so far failed to exert their influence on SpaceX like they have other companies. I can cite plenty of other cases where a tiny minority of leftists pulled a similar stunt on or at a different company and succeeded in their objectives.
"An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors."
This article is proof that non-leftists are firing people. If the goal is to stop people being fired for speech, then we shouldn't be focusing purely on leftists, but on all sides.
1930s consertatives in many places in the world were literally the original fascists. The ones in the US might not have been, but they were probably too busy forming the second Ku Klux Klan and trying to whitewash the Confederacy.
1930's German fascists took a lot of ideas from the US South's Jim Crow laws. I didn't realize this until I saw a display about it at the Dokumentationszentrum in Nuremberg.
The Nuremberg racial laws were particularly influenced by the laws implementing American anti-Black racism once the descendants of Africans abducted into enslavement were nominally free.
If you never want to sleep easy again, tour the section exploring how Germany went from fragile democracy into the state that was, within less than a decade, willing and able to systematically murder millions. Germans aren't special.
> the KKK was entirely aligned with democrat party
You might be interested to look a bit more at the history of the parties and how their conservative/progressive tendencies wax and wane over time. Saying the KKK was aligned with Democrats as not helpful without context of time.
Kevin Kruse (https://mobile.twitter.com/KevinMKruse) writes a lot about this, which is how I learned that in days gone by, I would have despised the state of the Democrats and embraced the Republicans - their policies were almost the total opposite of what you'd expect.
It's the Democratic party, there is no such thing as the democrat party.
I take it you're not at all familiar with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, and it's embrace of the Dixiecrats, or actually quite a lot of relevant American political history
I never mentioned any political parties, but ideology. The social order was slavery and racism, and people that wanted to conserve it were conservatives.
Other than your first paragraph, which is reasonable, your name dropping is doing a poor job of hiding your very weak understanding of history, philosophy, and political theory.
Get off the internet and talk to an actual human who knows what they're talking about.
> The culture war is really around the fruits of the labor of leftists who have fought extremely hard to shift our tolerance window as far left as possible. If you say something they don't like, they will work to impose every consequence they can to both silence you and scare others into compliance.
are you talking about people being fired from their jobs for saying/doing things the company didn't like?
> The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated and people are free to express a non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized from society, and when the left starts prioritizing truth and objectivity over winning.
is that why fox news is the #1 most-watched new channel? how about on youtube? how many views do ben shapiro and tucker carlson get vs insert-any-leftist-here?
im not seeing this vast left-wing conspiracy, but maybe you can enlighten me....
An example of suppression and silencing is: twitter! https://lidblog.com/twitter-censors-conservatives/. There are, of course, many other examples. Twitter silenced the hunter biden scandal at election time. The story turned out to be true and could have swung the election. Youtube has been restricting, shadowbanning and explicit banning conservatives for a long time as well:
It's always great when all the falsehoods are attributed to "anonymous sources".
A culture war is fought by winning hearts and minds, one by one, and also taking back influence, institutions, and power.
A non-leftist political opinion would be that the 2020 riots were worse for our country than January 6. an NFL coach recently got fined $100,000 and faced severe backlash for expressing this opinion: https://www.dailywire.com/news/nfl-coach-jack-del-rio-apolog....
Elon takes the “freedom from consequences” interpretation of free speech when it comes to his complaints about twitter and “cancel culture”, then turns around and effectively cancels these employees for speaking their mind.
Twitter is hardly the only platform you can use to broadcast your opinions. Being fired from your job is just as likely to massively reduce your ability to get your message out to others as is being blocked from posting on a single privately owned messaging service, if not more so.
Legally I doubt either could be seen as being in contravention of any free speech laws, but it's fair enough to see Elon's actions as somewhat hypocritical.
"Being fired from your job is just as likely to massively reduce your ability to get your message out to others."
Sorry what ? This is objectively incorrect. If you get banned from social media - twitter, facebook/whatsapp, youtube, your messaging reach is utterly destroyed compared to simply getting fired from a job.
If you're Elon Musk perhaps.
But for most people being banned from a single social media site is hardly a great imposition (there's little they can do to stop you signing up for a new account).
Whereas losing your job (or even the knowledge you're likely to) could very well leave an average person in a situation that they no longer have the resources or wherewithal to continue broadcasting their message to as wide audience (especially if previously that had been their co-workers in a large firm, as was the case in this situation).
Other than all the other social media tools out there, blogging, mailing lists, various online forums (including this one), letters to the editor, building your own networks with their own distribution channels etc., you're obviously right, before Twitter there was no such thing as free speech.
That's not what I meant by "building your own networks" - was referring to the traditional ways of building networks before the internet was even a thing.
Arguing that Twitter has some sort of magical status as the ultimate channel for broadcasting your opinions to the world strikes me as absurd. I barely use it, and when I do it's not to read opinions (I only subscribe to institutions/organisations that use it to broadcast important information). Pretty sure most people I know would say the same.
Twitter has a significantly bigger audience than every other channel combined. It’s like saying who cares if you’re banned from tv, radio and telephones, just send carrier pigeons like the old days
This is classic HN “introverted programmers don’t use it so clearly it’s worthless”. The “normies” aren’t on HN or IRC or browsing your obscure forum - they’re on Twitter and that’s it.
Numbers to back that up? Just googled and Twitter seems to have a pretty modest market share compared to FB. And I don't know how you'd compare it to other channels that aren't classified as social media (including non-digital ones).
Free speech laws protect individuals from government prosecution, full stop. It has nothing to do with private employees and employers. There's a potential labor law (retaliation) issue here, but it's not a free speech issue.
Twitter is a public space, because being a public forum for speech is the essence of what Twitter does. It's privately owned, but like a privately owned mall, it is "open to the public" and therefore at least some free speech protections apply.
“the more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.” (Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 506 (1946).
The Supreme Court has since backtracked on the Marsh opinion somewhat, but some states such as California have ruled that reasonable exercise of speech and of petition rights on privately owned shopping malls are protected activities.
> Where do you click "I agree" when visiting a shopping mall?
There is usually an inconspicuously posted sign that indicates 'no loitering, no spitting, no foul language' etc. or they reserve the right to throw you out.
Twitter isn't a public forum for speech. You need to have an account to use Twitter, for which you agree to abide by Twitter's terms of service, in which Twitter reserves the right to moderate and ban content as they see fit. Marsh v. Alabama applied to physical property and AFAIK hasn't been definitively extended to online "properties" like Twitter.
In Manhattan Community Access v. Halleck[0], however, the Court ruled against the premise in regards to a public access television station, and maintained that the station remained a private actor despite being a "public forum."
Freedom of speech means very specifically being free from consequences/prosecution from the governing body, and makes no claims about speech in the private sector or private houshold.
To focus the scope, it means openly criticizing the governing body is protected and not a punishable offense _by the government_ (people can and have been let go for political posts on social media written from their home, if the employer felt it was damaging to the company's reputation).
And no, literally billions of people in the world do not have that right.
That's not a definition, it just constrains the universe of possible definitions. Hence you can't come to this conclusion because you still haven't defined it well enough to say who in the world has it and who doesn't.
I don't believe Elon ever stated Twitter has no right/freedom to ban (he does say a lot of bizarre things, and I don't follow too closely), but correct me if I'm wrong. Disagreeing with the Twitter policies is not the same as believing Twitter is not free to establish such policies.
Twitter is free to ban Trump or others, regardless of whether Elon Musk owns Twitter. Whether to implement a ban is a decision their management can take, or not take.
I don't know, what they did according to the article is a little bit more than speech. If someone did that at my workplace the silent majority would be thankful that someone removed that kind of nuisance.
People keep misconstruing his opinion on free speech. His opinion on free speech isn't "freedom to say anything anywhere to anyone and have no repercussions". He specifically believes Twitter should be treated as a virtual town square, i.e. you can say what you like without fear from being removed from the town square, but it has zero bearing on what people say about you on that town square.
SpaceX is not a town square and never will be, nor is any private company. I doubt even Twitter employees will be able to say what they like on Twitter without fear of being fired from Twitter. It's only about removing you from the platform.
There's no hypocrisy, it lines up exactly with his past actions and his past words.
This is exactly correct. It absolutely lines up with his stance that everything he does or wants to do is fine and probably good, and that people that are not him should suffer consequences.
Twitter the company isn't supposed to be a town square, you are correct. Twitter the product is, though. Whether that's how you see it or not, is a separate question, but those two positions on Twitter aren't mutually exclusive.
This makes as much sense as saying a United Airlines jet is a public forum, and your rights are being trampled on if you can't take a shit in the aisle.
If you assume that either everything is supposed to be a public forum or nothing is, then yeah. Otherwise, no.
Both are private property, yes. And you are correct that twitter legally has as much right to do whatever they want with their product and restrict it however they want as United Airlines does. That's not the point being made here at all and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
The parent comment I originally replied to was saying "how can twitter even he a public square if it is a private company, that's a contradiction". And I was just saying that there is nothing preventing a private company from having a product that behaves like a public square, hence that isn't a contradiction or an oxymoron.
The government is meant to serve the public good. The workings of the government are oft opaque, and may need to be concealed, in the pursuit of that public good.
Yes that's the entire point of contention here. Twitter is a company, its management can choose to treat it more like a town square or more like a closed network with stricter content mediation rules. Elon wants it to be more like a town square.
Arguing that Twitter ought to moderate itself according to free speech principles isn't denying Twitter's right to free speech. I'm not going to stan Musk specifically, but this is a common misunderstanding (the general formulation being something like: "criticizing someone's free speech violates their free speech!", which is patently untrue).
"Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day" is markedly different from posting something on your personal Twitter.
I read Musk's "free speech absolutism" to mean that on platforms dedicated to speech (Twitter etc.) one shouldn't be censored / banned.
I'm unclear how that means I should be able to say whatever I want at my job and still keep the job. For example, if I work at Tesla and say I think electric cars are stupid and the ICE are superior, I would imagine I would be fired. I don't think that's a free speech violation, but rather that my opinion is in conflict with the goals of the company.
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.
You can be a champion of free speech in public in the sense that you do not have your freedom of speech taken away from you. However SpaceX is not a public forum for your speech. You can't abuse internal email lists to have your speech reach more people than it would normally.
I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products, and instead guarantee an audience for people[0]. They don't. That's not what censorship is.
[0] Now Elon has recently said in that video call to Twitter employees that free speech doesn't mean a right to an audience, but it's hard to square that statement with his previous statements.
> I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products, and instead guarantee an audience for people[0]. They don't. That's not what censorship is.
This is incoherent. Musk can express that he wants Twitter to moderate according to free speech principles--that's not the same thing as asserting that Twitter has a legal responsibility to moderate according to free speech principles.
Moreover, censorship doesn't require the censor to be the State--a private platform can censor content, and they often do.
Per the ACLU:
> Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.
Per Wikipedia:
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions and other controlling bodies.
> I can't believe I have to say this, but the hypocrisy comes from the fact that Elon, and many others, believe (or in Elon's case, purports to believe) that private entities should not moderate their own products
This is untrue. He believes that the Twitter _product_ should be run like a public forum, town square, shopping mall, or whatever you want to call it.
> and instead guarantee an audience for people
Also untrue. Let's use Trump in this example. He doesn't believe everyone should be forced to listen to Trump. He believes everyone should be able to access everything Trump has ever said on the platform (barring illegal things that must be removed).
That's not what freedom of speech is about. You're free to say what you want in any country in the world, once. The first amendment is about protecting you from some of the consequences of that. Not specifically firing, but that's not his issue with Twitter either.
If this was a government censoring, banning journalists, stories and the media or even blocking the whole internet and punishing companies that criticize them or to stop the letter being published, that totally violates free speech.
Generally, It doesn’t apply to ‘privately owned companies’ Just like how these employees are free to criticize their employer it does not mean there are freedom of consequences and employers are just as free to fire their employees.
That is why they stay anonymous and criticize their employer just like what happened with Coinbase.
> 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.
Not that I'm sympathetic to the decision to fire here based on what I know (which is really just this article and what I've read in this thread), but the two issues seem to be somewhat orthogonal, in that I could imagine a consistent moral framework falling either way with different opinions on them. Someone might believe in the importance of minimising consequences for speech on a public forum such as Twitter (whose end purpose is supposedly such speech, and which is one of the main venues in which public political discourse in fact happens), while simultaneously not believing that employees of a company have the right to speak up against the interests of that company (whose purpose is making widgets and money) and be protected from the company terminating the working relationship in return. Conversely, someone might think of unfettered political debate as harmful, and believe in the importance of suppressing certain opinions they find dangerous and harmful from the public sphere, while also believing that letting employees criticise and organise against their employer is important to guarantee the welfare of employees and keep the power of employers in check. In fact, the two combinations seem respectively pretty close to the proclaimed ethos of the US and the Soviet Union respectively a century ago.
Criticism of Musk's action here may come both from those who in fact are in the "free speech absolutist" camp and want both the Twitter deplorables and the corporate gadflies to be protected from retaliation, and from those who are just in the latter position and want the opposite pattern, but I think only the first group can bring a charge of hypocrisy (still incorrect, as it ignores the orthogonality) without it making themselves guilty of higher-order hypocrisy.
This is pure nonsense. Neither Musk or his company owes you a job, and you certainly shouldn't work at his company if you disagree with his vison or politics. Shedding the woke weight has to feel good, for both Musk and for other employees, who no doubt had to endure constant whining.
My question is if this is the best approach. The dissenters may care deeply about the company and they be saying publicly what many others are feeling privately at SpaceX. Would engagement in this setting reap better rewards?
If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company.
If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination, but also abuse of company resources and harassment of employees who just want to do their job and not cater to the worthless feelings of people who have crippling self-esteem issues.
Dumping the woke cry babies is the right decision here. Engagement only serves to embolden work cry bullies who are used to getting their way.
> Dumping the woke cry babies is the right decision here. Engagement only serves to embolden work cry bullies who are used to getting their way.
By reacting emotionally and using terms like "work cry babies" you weaken your own ability to think critically and fairly about this. You are also more likely to derail the conversation and prevent debate with people who may disagree with your views but could be open to them. Save these sorts of insults and grandstanding for reddit and twitter and keep them off of hn.
> If you look at other companies that give the woke cry bullies and their subjective feelings precedent over the mission, you can see that it creates a toxic workplace, hostile environments, further segmentation of workers into cliques, and other unpleasantries that hurt the mission, and ultimately the bottom line for that company.
I am willing to explore your argument that engaging with members of a company that are overly critical of that company hurts the company in the long term. Can you cite some examples?
> If you look at the nuances; they were fired for participating in actions that can not only be considered insubordination
The question I have is not if the company did or did not have a legal right to fire them. I'll leave that to the legal professionals. Rather I wonder if engagement with dissenters in this case would be harmful or productive. I tend to favor the notion that systems which attempt to maintain unity by casting out those who offer dissenting public voices tend to become monocultures and echo chambers. I don't discount the value of monocultures and echo chambers, they can be extremely valuable, but I don't see how SpaceX benefits by building one.
>>>>>>>
....I wonder if engagement with dissenters in this case would be harmful or productive. I tend to favor the notion that systems which attempt to maintain unity by casting out those who offer dissenting public voices tend to become monocultures and echo chambers. I don't discount the value of monocultures and echo chambers, they can be extremely valuable, but I don't see how SpaceX benefits by building one.
Harmful.
First, Any dissent around company product choices is acceptable but comes with a risk depending on the level of expression. Smart companies learn to cultivate this kind of dissent and provided it doesn't detract from the mission itself, its probably the right decision.
Second, the company should fire on the spot any dissent that is not directly work related. It detracts from the mission.
The petition in question violated both precepts of allowable dissent.
For #1 let's say for the sake of argument that the dissent was honest, and strictly trained at the company's tactics in marketing (i fundamentally disagree, see #2) . If the marketing tactics are a failure, that is the board's prerogative to change CEO. However, the petition is violating the allowable levels of expression by usurping power from the Board itself. That is a level of expression many levels above the petitioner's role or level in the org, extremely noisy (affects all employees), and public. The petition literally violated all norms around tolerable dissent, and should be fireable on the spot.
For #2, the petition asked silence CEO speech which is not 100% product related. The hint of this is that the petition is loaded with complaints about "public behavior" and "embarrassment" which are clues into the intent is for this to be a political decision to intervene, not a product one. Words like embarrassment when targeting an individuals are meant to discuss individuals, not products. More importantly, when the petition targets speech which includes a number of opinions that are personal, and not product, this becomes political.
Let's take examples of each:
For #1, would people would get fired on the spot if employees circulated a petition saying they wanted the CPO to be "reined in" for refusing to carry Elise chassis in models subsequent to the Roadster ? The answer is yes.
For #2 This used to be very rare in the past, so it was never tested until recently.. I believe the most high-profile firing has been the firing of the Red Bull - US CEO and US Head of HR by the German board. They were engaged in activism not work related, and both got the boot.
> First, Any dissent around company product choices is acceptable but comes with a risk depending on the level of expression. Smart companies learn to cultivate this kind of dissent and provided it doesn't detract from the mission itself, its probably the right decision.
A long time ago when I was a young engineer I worked at a few hundred person startup. Many of the employees of this startup were from cultures spoke bluntly and embraced cynicism and pessimism. Every two weeks the CEO would have an all hands meeting. For any hour he would answer any question from any employee. Many of these questions were, to my American ears, as disrespectful. The question might assume the CEO took a particular action for some sinister reason such as having stolen company funds and getting ready to fire everyone. Or just blunt say to the CEO "I think all the executives are incompetent and should be fired". The hardest questions were questions about "if market changes and we are fucked, here are indicator the market is changed and we are fucked."
The CEO would listen to the question and then respond. The responses were never defensive, never rude but honest and straight forward. As far as I could tell everyone felt better after those meetings and respected the CEO more for openly facing and addressing as best he could the fears that everyone at the company had.
> Second, the company should fire on the spot any dissent that is not directly work related. It detracts from the mission.
I do consider this dissent at SpaceX to be work related. Musk does significant harm the SpaceX's mission with his public actions. If he was an employee he would probably be fired, but the issue is that SpaceX can't really fire Musk. There is no good action the company can take. I assume they have privately asked Musk to take actions which harm the company less and I assume that worked as well as when the SEC had Musk agree to pass all tweets through is legal dept. before posting. How to you foster dissent when the major goal that dissent is something which is not actually achievable and would derail the company. I hope this serves as a wakeup call to Musk and he looks at the problems he is causing by his behavior and decides that making life multi-planetary is more important than say calling a rescue diver a pedo or smoking weed on the Joe Rogan show.
Blizzard came to mind from your description, and to my eyes their current workplace is toxic, and getting rid of their CEO is the first step to let them focus on their mission and improve the bottom line of the company.
At its core we are discussing are situations that are dire enough that a decent fraction of the company feels their leadership is fucking around and hurting the company. Whatever angle we look at it, the company will already be segmented and toxic: it couldn’t stop its leadership from fucking up for whatever length of time, leadership doesn’t give a shit about employees reaction, and managers can’t properly gauge nor progressively address the internal repercussions.
“Focusing on the mission” is already compromised at that point, and you’ll need to chose between the leader that doesn’t give enough shit, or the employees that stepped up too prominently.
What about this open letter makes these people "woke cry babies?" The thesis of it is that his behavior online is embarrassing and bringing down the reputation of the company. That seems like pretty valid criticism to me. This guy is supposed to bring our species to another planet, but he spends his free time fighting a losing twitter battle with a satirical video game website? It's not a great look.
Why shouldn't you? Employment is about trading labor for monetary compensation. There isn't a particular need to be aligned with owners and directors unless you are also in a leadership position.
> you certainly shouldn't work at his company if you disagree with his vison or politics.
Vision maybe. Politics are irrelevant to work. It is impossible to achieve 100% alignment in an organization of more than one person. And even then I'm not sure it is possible.
That's the Musk Myth.. in reality SpaceX was built by Mike Griffin who (1) funded him through In-Q-Tel and DARPA (2) crafted the commercial crew program for him while he was NASA administrator.
He even went with him to Russia before SpaceX was founded,
> he kinda built it with his blood sweat and tears.
Irrelevant to being hired or kept on as the president of the company by the owners, of which Musk is only 17% (AFAICT). If more owners of the company do not want him as an employee (president, whatever), then they can fire him.
Whether that would be a good idea or not is something else. (Apple 'fired' Jobs in the 1980s.)
According to wiki, he has 47.4% equity and 78.3% voting control according to a 2020-dated filing. I would be surprised if either number has changed significantly since.
Free speech doesn't entail an obligation to subsidize people attacking you or your company. Trying to get people employed by other companies fired would be a problem, but firing your own employees for acting against your interests is completely reasonable.
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.
> It is pretty hypocritical though for Mr. Free Speech to fire people who have concerns rather than address those concerns in a civil dialogue
No, not really, since this has very little to do with free speech. Free speech does not mean that you can communicate with your superiors, or in fact any other person you're in some relationship with (spouse, family member, etc.), in arbitrary ways with no consequences.
who knows what it means for Musk. he said (paraphrasing) that whatever is legal should be allowed on Twitter. this doesn't really mean anything with regards to his speech at work views.
if we want to somehow generalize the ethos of whatever is legal should be allowed (so basically he thinks Twitter is too strict) then we might conclude that he favors more "open dialogue" and this does feel contrary to firing employees for criticism. (though I haven't seen the letter, it's possible the authors/signers explicitly said something that simply make it clear that they won't continue to work in this or that way, and the company decided that okay, the company won't change so they have to go anyway - see the Gebru ultimatum)
Twitter is specifically a medium providing its users (the public) the ability to communicate with each other. It's literally their business. Musk's view that as a public communication medium, Twitter should be permissive, has nothing to do with internal processes at any of Musk's companies. Hell, it has nothing to do with internal processes even at a hypothetical Twitter with a more permissive user ToS since the behavior of Twitter's employees is guided by their employment contracts and guidelines, not by Twitter's user-facing ToS. This would be true even if Musk weren't to ever become a majory shareholder of Twitter.
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 unionized at my employer, it is great to know we have each other's back.
Insubordination? What order did they violate when voicing criticism of the CEO?
I do think Musk was within his legal rights to fire these people, but that does not mean it was the right thing to do or that he should be immune from criticism. Especially after he's made such a big fuss about free speech being so important.
Insubordination is refusal to obey a direct order, and is grounds for instant dismissal (at least where I live - the UK). What direct order did these guys disobey?
I think in the USA insubordination is neither here nor there, because US employers can dismiss people just because they don't like them.
They were likely told to stop participating in discussions around the letter and then they didn’t. The verge article mentioned there were huge internal discussion threads.
I am surprised that rejection of an order could be grounds for instant dismissal in the UK. In Germany that would involve a lengthy process of legal letters to an employee. Something like 3 strikes. Also you can't just order anything from an employee. It's not the military, right?
The work culture in Germany is also quite different I imagine. My impression is Germans take their work very seriously. There is simply no room for the crybaby BS that has become all too commonplace in the American workplace where people have deluded themselves into thinking they are there for activism first and work second.
This indeed - the professionalism displayed by my German colleagues is incomparable to that of my erstwhile American colleagues. Much higher maturity levels even for people of the same age group. Not surprising that worker councils are also treated seriously by higher management.
The direct order has to be something important that is part of your job.
Less-serious insubordination should be dealt with by means of formal warnings, and processes to help the employee improve. But if, for example, I'm ordered to attend a customer meeting at 10:00am, and I refuse on the grounds that I'm planning to stay in bed until 11:00am, I can be fired summmarily. The employer would be well-advised to document everything scrupulously.
Ultimately an employer can fire anyone they want; HR processes and procedures can be rigged. In a legal dispute between an employer and a worker, the employer has the upper hand. If a worker wins an employment dispute, they might keep their job; but they now have a hostile employer.
And all the people getting cancelled said and did x bad thing, but Musk's sycophants and defenders, who tend to be free speech absolutists, act like people should be immune from the consequences of their actions.
There is no equivalency between getting fired because you insulted your boss and getting fired because 20000 hyperonline strangers didn't like your opinion about politics stated outside of work.
I don't think this is a good comparison. First of all, many (most?) of the people who got canceled didn't do anything offensive or objectionable. Off the top of my head.:
* The guy who got fired for cracking his knuckles in a way that looked vaguely like an "OK sign" which is offensive to some extreme left-wing people
* The data scientist who got fired for citing research on the efficacy of nonviolent protest
* The journalist who was pressured to leave his workplace for interviewing a black man whose views didn't match a certain narrative about what black people believe
* The professor who was suspended for saying a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English slur
Moreover, cancellation is "pressuring someone's employer to fire them". This is different than an employer taking offense to an employee's speech and firing them as a consequence.
If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.
You have merely cherry-picked some examples of cancel culture where people were fired for merely trivial things.
> If Musk has said something like "employers shouldn't fire employees on the basis of their speech" (and he may have done, I really don't know), then he's probably being hypocritical, but not on the basis of cancel culture.
My comment was necessarily about Musk himself, but also about his defenders. Thus, it doesn't matter much whether Musk himself is a hypocrite based on any of his own statements, but rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.
> You have merely cherry-picked some examples of cancel culture where people were fired for merely trivial things.
I was explicitly noting that many cases of cancellation are unjust. Giving examples is appropriate.
> rather whether his supporters (for lack of a better term) are hypocrites based on positions they have previously staked out.
I’m sure some are. Any person with a large following will have many people who are hypocrites. A huge swath of the general population is hypocritical, so I would expect some hypocrites among Musk’s followers.
I don’t know how you could credibly argue that his supporters in general are hypocritical in a way which is independent from whether or not he is.
No it isn't. Shareholders have power over the board, not directly over the officers. It's a shareholder's duty to oversee the board's actions and it's the board's duty to oversee the CEO.
Since this is a closely held company there are different rules as well.
Or maybe they unthinkingly and blindly accept anything negative they hear, regurgitating it with confidence that they could not possibly be mistaken because it confirms their biases and validates their life choices.
Those too, but I find myself at a loss as to whom to compare them to in the context of elementary school. Maybe the kids that still believe in Santa by graduation?
There should probably be a citation here. Even if it's true, I don't know how this is relevant--I was bullied by a lot of people when we were children, but I don't imagine that they are still bullies today because people often mature in adolescence and early adulthood.
That's funny, because you may very well be wrong on your main point then! I guess the problem starts when you use terms like "protected class" that don't remotely apply; it gives off an ignorant vibe. Meanwhile, employees acting in concert to complain about working conditions are of course protected by the law; Shotwell, Musks little minion, doesn't help the case when she calls it activism.
Everything I read about the letter was addressing Musk's behavior and was not related to the formation of a union. Again, my point is merely whether or not law was violated in their firings.
The bit about Musk's behavior gets quoted because it fits with various agendas. But the letter itself is mostly a plea for making SpaceX a more inclusive workplace for people of different races, genders, and so on. To establish clear HR policies rather than current vague rules like "no assholes".
That's pretty far into the protected category of talking about improving workplace conditions.
I had a similar interpretation. I read it very much as being about working conditions (in which case the letter would be protected by labor law), and was surprised to see the twitter behavior as the primary action item, citing working conditions as action items 2 and 3.
Not a lawyer, but the primary action point being about the twitter behavior seems to significantly cast doubt upon what would've otherwise seemingly been a slam dunk labor law/retaliation violation case.
Elon is toxic and is hurting the business and their personal incomes, they have every right to criticize the merging of Elons political ambition with the space mission. Elon is the main thing holding back Tesla and Space-X.
I think you have it the wrong way around. Elon's space mission is a political mission. He wants to be the first to colonize Mars. Heck it's even a personal mission of his. SpaceX is nothing without him - I'd go so far as to say Elon Musk is SpaceX.
Activists calling for more inclusion are not the protected class here regardless, even if the people they want to be hired or promoted may be (under certain circumstances).
I have the feeling that people like musk or that crypto CEO yesterday are just chomping at the bit for the opportunity to appeal to the supreme court.
Someone will get to have their name attached to the decision declaring any government interference in how a business is run unconstitutional.
Unions, 40 hour work week, desegregation, certainly employment discrimination, OSHA, the ADA? I worry people like Musk know they have the money to take it that far and that the supreme court would love to completely deregulate businesses.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
The actual grant to regulate commerce goes as follows.
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
There is a long road of interpretation from there to telling a manager of a restaurant that he has to hire black waiters. And the important bits of it all came in the last century. It is certain that the Founders never INTENDED for Congress to have its current authority.
It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court wants to create the chaos of overturning all of that to go back to the original definition. But it is within their official authority to do so.
I'm definitely not saying that the supreme court will be correct or reasonable, but I also look at the decisions they've been making lately and am not so sure they care. We need to abandon the idea that they are neutral at this point, pretending they are will result in wasted time and focus on courts for resolving disputes that could be going to directly supporting the individuals impacted.
We need to be wary because I, for one, totally believe they would make any regulations illegal given a case that gave them the chance.
Preventing chaos is clearly not something they feel responsibility for, they're making extremely high impact decisions against hard fought civil rights in favor of just about any other interested party.
> That's pretty far into the protected category of talking about improving workplace conditions.
You can't use "talking about improving workplace conditions" as an excuse for creating a hostile work environment by harassing your coworkers (BTW, sending unsolicited emails can very much be harassment). The NLRB has specifically ruled about this as part of the Google-James Damore case.
The NLRB's ruling in that case was, and I'm quoting the NLBR general counsel (as quoted in the reporting by The Verge),
> while some parts of Damore’s memo were legally protected by workplace regulations, “the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.”
They didn't rule he was creating a hostile work environment by "sending unsolicited emails"; they ruled that the memo contained statements that were "discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment." This just doesn't apply here -- Damore's strongest argument was that he was discussing working conditions, but the arguments in his actual memo about "women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution" were the problem.
In this SpaceX case, they were very clearly discussing working conditions in a substantial part of the memo, and it's quite possible that is in fact protected speech. What muddies it up is adding the parts about also needing to tell Elon to stop being an ass on Twitter; that's probably not protected.
You're of course right that James Damore never sent mass unsolicited emails. However, this doesn't change the fact that unsolicited email is commonly acknowledged as a possible form of harassment and/or cyberbullying. It should go without saying that this might also create a hostile work environment.
This is bizarre; are you just reciting random terms you picked up somewhere? Of course none of this reaches any level of "harassment" or "cyberbullying".
A New York Times article on the matter https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/technology/spacex-employe... seems to imply otherwise: "The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views".
>In this SpaceX case, they were very clearly discussing working conditions in a substantial part of the memo, and it's quite possible that is in fact protected speech. What muddies it up is adding the parts about also needing to tell Elon to stop being an ass on Twitter; that's probably not protected.
Completely agreed - this reads very much like a protected letter about working conditions, up until the authors made a terrible error by citing the primary action item as addressing Elon's twitter behavior, and putting working conditions as the secondary and tertiary demands. IANAL, but it seems like that will give a lot of ammo to SpaceX's lawyers in what would've otherwise been an open and shut retaliation case.
You can't be fired for wanting to make your workplace better. You can be fired for making it worse for others. Often the same behavior can be seen as either or both. And courts exist to adjudicate these disagreements.
That said, I hate the example. However discussing that would be a derail, so I won't.
quoting: "A few examples of protected concerted activities are:
Two or more employees addressing their employer about improving their pay.
Two or more employees discussing work-related issues beyond pay, such as safety concerns, with each other.
An employee speaking to an employer on behalf of one or more co-workers about improving workplace conditions."
Would that letter fall under that? I think there is at least a somewhat credible claim it could (and also a credible opposing counterclaim that the form of speech was meant to be defamatory/disparaging, and not a protected activity), but I am not a lawyer.
What he says on his personal Twitter account (unless it's on behalf of the employer) is not a "workplace" concern. There's no right for workers to not have an off-the-job embarrassment as a CEO. Perhaps there is for investors, but that's another concern with different remediations.
Your boss's conduct is absolutely part of your workplace conditions. Public figures do not have the luxury of maintaining a strict separation between their working and private lives.
We're not slaves anymore. You as a human being are allowed to express your thoughts and opinions. Would we know how awful it was at Activision/Blizzard if those employees had not said something? Elon and C-Suite execs own and control everything, no need to bootlick.
Any employee can change jobs at anytime... why are you comparing at will employment to slavery? Elon controls everything because he own's a majority of the shares of the company. His money, his decisions, his voice.
>> Both employment and slavery are by degrees. I think they can be compared, but "employment = slavery" is obviously wrong.
> That's like comparing rocket motors to lettuce.
No, they're clearly not that different. Both involve laboring for others (usually members of the ownership class), under some degree of compulsion. Though the nature of that compulsion can be different (e.g. using the threat of the whip vs. using the threat of starvation).
The benefit of "being able to change jobs" is often significantly overstated and highly contextual. It's not like anyone can just pick any job they like: they have to pick what they're offered. For some people, that can be highly restricted, to the point of being serf-like.
Tens of millions people are in literal slavery today, whether sex slaves, child labor or other forced labor. Reading about what they endure, it seems disingenuous at best to claim slavery and employment are "clearly not that different" by reducing it to the nature of the compulsion behind it. It's like claiming a bullet and a tennis ball clearly aren't that different; they both involve projectile motion through the air under some degree of momentum, though the nature of that momentum can be different.
For things to be "not that different" implies they are interchangeable to an extent. I'd certainly be interested to know the result if you surveyed a random sample of 100 employed people and asked if they'd be willing to forego work to enter slavery.
Your entire comment is based on a misunderstanding. In this context "not that different" means not as different as "rocket motors" and "lettuce." I even explicitly quoted that context, so it was pretty hard to miss.
Your entire comment is based on semantics and avoiding the actual topic at hand - everyone's explicitly calling you out for this, it's pretty hard to miss.
If you want to bite the hand that feeds you, then you need to be cognizant of the potential consequences.
Some leaders, and following that some cultures are receptive of open criticism and disagreement. Others are absolutely not. It's up to each person to read the room.
I think it's important to note the top demand of the letter (in italics):
"As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand."
I don't know why anyone would think that that would go over well.
We will see. It is not uncommon to see ex-employees of a company go on to create a competing company. Maybe the ex-employees will have a competitive advantage since Musk isn't an good leader of SpaceX according to them.
If this worked, Boeing would have dangled millions in front of SpaceX employees and taken the lead.
SpaceX’s success is at least in part due to a culture of actually doing stuff. It’s difficult to create that culture, and the work to maintain it is done at the top.
Perhaps wokeness is incompatible with a culture of solving hard technical problems to the exclusion of all other concerns?
This take is so common and so bizarre. SpaceX employees are there because Musk pays them to be there. If they weren't there, Musk would pay someone else. The employees aren't irreplaceable or in a position of power over Musk and trying to spin it like they are is absurd.
And if nobody else wanted to work for Musk, he would have no company. There is no SpaceX without labor. It exists and has succeeded because of the hard work of ordinary people, not because of Musk.
If SpaceX weren't there, they'd be working for someone else or themselves - he needs them more than they need him.
Yes if somehow Musk couldn't find anyone to accept his money I guess most of those people would go back to making widgets and SpaceX would cease to be.
That's not the reality of the situation though. SpaceX's current staff isn't the last cohort of people who are willing to work for musk, and therefore are hugely responsible for the company and it's output. They're but cogs amongst the machine that Musk has built. Cogs are replaceable. Cogs don't function properly if not properly utilized by the engineer.
Musk is the engineer. He's the only person at SpaceX, or Tesla, who is actually irreplaceable. I know people rant and rave about "people aren't replaceable cogs" but they truly are, and that's good. If this wasn't the case for 99.9% of the world, society wouldn't function that well. I'm a cog, and I know that. It isn't shameful and shouldn't be viewed as such.
I am aware that many people today would work at SpaceX, but that's not my point.
Elon Musk is not a god and his billion dollar ideas would be worthless were it not for thousands of people who have worked tirelessly because they believe in a common goal. SpaceX is nothing without the labor of others - they are the hand that feeds him, not the other way around.
I don't think people who are doing literal rocket science at SpaceX would "go back to designing widgets" if SpaceX folded tomorrow. This implies that they would somehow not be doing meaningful work without Musk's money?
Okay but at the highest level, who directs that work? Who decides what needs doing and how to allocate that human capital? Who's mind is directly responsible for the creation and orchestration of SpaceX?
Labor means nothing if not done for an intelligent purpose. For S0aceX employees, Elon Musk is the source of that intelligent purpose. Of course labor beyond what one man can supply will be necessary for any worthwhile pursuit. What matters is not the labor, but the source of the intelligent purpose that gives the labor a common goal and guides it towards it.
It goes beyond that. It's fair to say most SpaceX employees worship the guy as well as being super-motivated. They work there because they want to be there. The arrogance displayed in this thread is astounding. It would be like threatening 2007-era Steve Jobs with "f--k you, I'll just go to BlackBerry instead". Half a page down and already references to Karl Marx and slavery. I suspect lots of self-employed web developers here waxing poetic when they have never worked in a place led by a cult of personality. They have no frame of reference.
You're mixing up SpaceX the company with Elon Musk the CEO. They are not the same thing, and just because someone wants to work on space travel doesn't mean they worship a billionaire. TFA is about the very employees who you claim "worship" Musk who are claiming that his behavior is harming the company.
It's not arrogance to want to work on something you're passionate about without a petulant billionaire figurehead actively devaluing your work.
> just because someone wants to work on space travel doesn't mean they worship a billionaire
Then they are free to seek gainful employment at any number of other spaceship companies.
You seem to assume that if you just show up at SpaceX's door with a briefcase and say "I want to work on space travel" that you are somehow entitled to a job there. No.
> without a petulant billionaire
Just admit you hate the guy for personal reasons. That's OK; you're allowed to have an opinion. Most people wouldn't purposely go work at a place that's run by a guy they despise then try to undermine said business. A better grasp of the employer-employee relationship would be helpful.
> You seem to assume that if you just show up at SpaceX's door with a briefcase and say "I want to work on space travel" that you are somehow entitled to a job there.
I never said anything like this. I said it's not arrogant to want to work on something you're passionate about without worrying about that work being devalued.
Yes, I dislike Elon Musk's behavior. Because I take personal issue with his actions does not preclude my ability to discuss SpaceX - in the same way that I discuss politicians whose views I don't agree with.
The letter in question is an exhortation from employees who are concerned that his behavior is undermining the business. Somehow, you've managed to twist this completely around into employees wanting to harm the business.
I seriously doubt any of the people let go are remotely near the critical path for the Mars mission.
In fact, certain kinds of persons are prone to stir up these kinds of issues to distract from their own poor performance in their actual job. Which evidently isn’t internal “activism.”
The level of entitlement it takes to expect to be paid to undermine the organization that’s paying one ought to be shocking, but it evidently isn’t.
This is a lot of baseless conjecture tied up with a nice insult at the end.
> The level of entitlement it takes to expect to be paid to undermine the organization that’s paying one ought to be shocking, but it evidently isn’t.
The employees literally wrote a letter saying an individual's actions were undermining the organization. The letter is an exhortation to protect SpaceX (in terms of finance and reputation) from Musk's behavior.
To add to the “protecc SpaceX” line of thought, I think there is some level of disconnect as well — Elon, while a champion for SpaceX’s cause and its public figurehead, and still involved in the decisions the company makes, isn’t the main showrunner. Gywnne Shotwell is. So as much as Elon is publicly the King of SpaceX, Gywnne runs the kingdom and some subjects wanted some reform.
Also, SpaceX definitely has spun itself up as a “this is for the good of all humanity” type company and attracts employees who really are bought-in on the whole Grand Vision. To the writers of this letters, that Grand Vision > Elon the Person.
Yeah that's not the point. The point is that your billion dollar idea is worthless without someone to implement it. Without 9,400 people working for SpaceX, SpaceX doesn't exist. It relies on labor, same as any company.
Going back to Marx at the latest, it's long been understood that wage-laborers _as a class_ are revolutionary, in the sense that they have collectively enough power to overturn the existing world order, let alone an individual capitalist enterprise.
As a class. Individually they're absolutely powerless and class solidarity is very difficult to achieve, perhaps impossible. There's a reason labor movements tend to involve elements that physically coerce other members of the class (i.e., 'scabs') from crossing picket lines. Capitalists don't need very many specific members of the proletariat, they just need enough. Musk can fire his critics at will for a very long time without any real threat to his business unless his employees and any potential employees were to coalesce and oppose him en masse.
I doubt that they will do this. If I were in Musk's position I'd fire these people and I'd fire similar critics at twitter. Capitalist led enterprises are essentially monarchical. I don't like this but it is reality and it's best if everyone understands it. I prefer mask off to the alternative.
Maybe if Marxists stopped obsessing over their personality cult and congratulating themselves on the scientific nature of dialectical materialism they'd have time to catch up on 150 years worth of knowledge on organizational and collective action problems. An awful lot of leftists prefer historical LARPing in intellectual costumes to operating under existing conditions.
Genuinely asking - any reading on the (scientific) understanding of organisations / collective action? (actually writing a book on software literacy and this is cropping up)
Here's a paper and a thesis, both fairly recent, that I found useful and relevant. There's a whole rich field of network and statistical theory as applied to human social behavior if you want to explore quantitative methods, but that tends to have a very top-down perspective and involve a lot of abstraction. Hope this is helpful.
Yeah, the 'left' is an ideological mess. I don't see a lot there of more modern voices that hold sway and seem ideologically coherent to me. The irony is in their time at least up to 1917 the marxists examined and tried to update their theory to match their current conditions. It's like amongst some, everything has been frozen in amber from a certain point and among others, marxism has come to mean redefining class struggle as identitarian struggle. I imagine the historical adherents are really just objecting to the more modern more 'woke' invariants in a clumsy way.
There's never been much agreement on what marxism means. I believe Marx himself disliked the term and claimed to not be a marxist.
The closest I've seen to having a modern take (in both theory and practice) are 'communalists'/'democratic federalists' into Murray Bookchin's ideas. There's also Kevin Carson, an anarchist theorist big on horizontalism and network economics, but I haven't read his work at length yet.
It saves a lot of stress to ask fired-up people what it is they're for (methodologically speaking) and not bothering to argue if they don't have a coherent or actionable answer.
I'm not sure about the obsession to go to Mars. What is the rational behind it?
The next right step in technology (that would allow real progress in space exploration while having good environmental impact) is fusion energy. Developing chemical rockets to send a human to Mars seems like a misguided endeavor.
Without focuswe may run out of runway to develop and deploy clean energy technology - https://xkcd.com/1732/
What is the rational behind it? Sagan said it best:
“For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.
Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…”
Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds— promising untold opportunities—beckon.
Going to Mars is easy compared to Fusion, just requires, say, $100 billion. It's been possible but too expensive for decades, the idea of Starship is to make it cheaper.
Then it's just a logistics problem.
Plus whoever founds the successful human civilisation on Mars gets into the history books, fusion is a massive team effort that won't have one specific person remembered.
Going to Mars is easy. We've even done it twice in the last 5 years.
Making a self-sustaining city on Mars is impossible. And even if not impossible, certainly costs many tens of trillions of dollars, which is as good as.
Impossible is pretty strong. Who knows, maybe there's material that can be used for construction buried 100 feet under the surface. Or we figure out how to build stuff with Mars dirt. Humans are the most resourceful and adaptable beings in the universe (that we know of) and life, uh, always finds a way.
You are absolutely not allowed to express your thoughts and opinions free of consequence.
I think Elon's a tool, and this is a bad move, but to think someone should be protected from consequence of what they express is absurd.
It's his company, he makes the decisions. The market should respond if that's a big enough deal, and I'm 100% sure that's starting to happen (though it's exceedingly slow in the space domain).
I think you're arguing tangentially to the point being made, which is that: no insubordination happened. They were simply critical of how Musk represented them.
I have to assume they knew when they penned the letter that they would find out whether their leader could take criticism and help them make a better company and product together, or react immaturely and let them know that their time would be better spent elsewhere. Seems they got their answer.
In any case, yeah, Musk owns the company and has the right to fire people for criticizing his business decisions. Bold strategy, we'll see how it turns out for him.
I think you can reasonably argue that the company Musk leads are largely supported (at least historically) by his showmanship and personality cult. That may be shifting, but it's absolutely fair that diminishing the reputation of companies whose stock valuations are largely based on seemingly irrational faith in dear-leader is in fact weakening the company.
I think there's also this game that gets played now where internal dissent tries to whip up external dissenters to get their way within companies. Leaders need to decide if this is happening or not and act accordingly.
> find out whether their leader could take criticism and help them make a better company and product together
This is cringe worthy. They knew exactly what would happen and expected to rally support online. I can't say with certainty what the ultimate goal was.
For most people, their job is their primary (or only) source of income. Being fired decreases (or entirely removes) their ability to afford food and shelter--things which are both necessities.
A company of any significant size, on the other hand, will be able to handle the loss of a single employee just fine.
There is a power imbalance between the two parties here and I don't think you can construct a solid argument while ignoring it.
There's a reason that SpaceX and other companies pay far more than minimum wage. It's because otherwise the employees won't take the job.
I.e. the idea that employees is powerless is not true by inspection.
People also can always start their own companies, being an employee is hardly the only option. (People who start their own companies also quickly realize that their imagined power over other people is entirely nonexistent.)
It's all different people upthread - it's a conversation rather than an argument. Also, most jurisdictions have a safety net for those who lose their jobs, so people often get to maintain similar income until they find their next job.
(Most welfare systems have plenty of woeful traps, though, and I fall on the side of 'People should not lose their jobs over a disrespectful letter', but I haven't read it.)
Keep in mind just how limited those protections are in a ton of states. FL might as well not have an unemployment program for how much that has been gutted and made almost impossible to access.
Within the bounds of legality while also taking into account of "we'd rather just pay the fine" and get the unwanted employee out.
In the UK recently the CEO of a ferry firm sacked all its workers in contravention of the law (they were required to give a 90 day consultation before any job losses, required to offer them other roles in the organisation). The CEO was summoned to parliament to explain what happen and said that "we didn't think the employees would go along with it, so we just fired them".
The government and employment tribunals are looking into collecting evidence in order to convict the CEO (criminal vs the usual civil penalty).
You can be certain that when someone implies that you are a "bootlicker" for holding an opposing viewpoint, that the accuser has reached the last line of their intellectual sub-routines and can no longer store any further instructions.
Even then, you can't use company time, company resources, and company emails to support that disagreement:
> In her email to staff, Ms. Shotwell wrote, “Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable.”
It's better to have each employee write a separate e-mail to HR or his/her manager. Letters like this are generally designed to be seen by a public audience.
That will just subject each employee to individual and separate retaliation. Collective action is the backbone of worker power. HR isn't there to help employees, that division exists to protect the company's interests.
> It’s not known which SpaceX employees wrote the letter; the employees who posted the letter in the internal chat system have not responded to requests for comment.
It says it was in contact with people who saw the letter, but nowhere implies it's the authors.
> The letter generated more than a hundred comments in the Teams channel, with many employees agreeing to the spirit of the missive, according to screenshots of the chat shared by two sources who spoke with The Verge and asked to remain anonymous.
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.
It might be. It's hard to say, probably even by legal experts (and I'm definitely not one).
I think a sticking point might be that the letter talked about bad behavior by Elon Musk in public, and a problem with the "no assholes" policy being vague and inconsistently applied -- but there weren't any concrete examples.
Possibly some things Musk has tweeted might reasonably be interpreted as creating a hostile work environment or something like that. But maybe he just shared an opinion the authors of the letter don't agree with. Or they're annoyed at him for smoking weed in his Joe Rogan interview. It's hard to know for sure. (Maybe SpaceX employees already know what all the elephants in the room are and it wasn't necessary to enumerate them, but as an outside observer it's hard to know the full context.)
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.
So free speech absolutist means you tolerate incoherent yelling in all places at all times? While you're trying to focus and get work done? While you're trying to sleep? At your wedding? At a funeral?
I'd love to hear Mr. Musk define what he means by the term. I'm not the one claiming to be a free speech absolutist, he is.
I for instance am not a free speech absolutist. I think it's okay to deplatform people who are spreading misinformation about a global pandemic, or an election. But Mr. Musk apparently thinks that's bad.
So, we get to find out where he draws the line that he claims he doesn't have.
In the context of the current debate, I think a good faith reading of someone claiming to be a 'free speech absolutist' would be to interpret the internet as a public forum that is protected by speech guarantees enshrined by the first amendment despite the fact that they're hosted by private corporations. It probably doesn't mean child porn is okay. It probably doesn't mean direct exhortations of violence against specific individuals is okay. It's fair to say he can be more explicit in his definition, but it's easier for us to have a conversation if we try to interpret one another charitably.
The real test for whether or not Musk is being a hypocrite is whether or not he censors critics of him on Twitter. That is an apples to apples comparison. I think it's fair to say that continuing to pay people who criticize you is a different matter.
Being the richest man on earth does not absolve you of being called out for being a hypocritical douche?
I never understand this defense.
There are lessons one can take from successful people, but they not demigods. They're just people and people are often good and bad at the same time. Why do people defend them? If I make a controversial statement in a public forum, I should expect some uncomfortable criticism and they aren't entitled to any better treatment just because they can throw a wad of cash around.
Nice straw man you've got there. These employees weren't "incoherently yelling in all places at all times". They distributed a memo which criticized Elon. This should be very acceptable behaviour to a free speech absolutist like Musk.
> Shotwell's email to staff also said, "Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable."
Unsolicited blasting of the email, letter, and surveys to thousands of employees is the digital equivalent to "incoherently yelling in all places at all times."
I would expect nothing less from the woke-cancer employees. The productive members of the team must be relieved that the woke weight was shed.
It's telling that Musk's defenders have to stand up a hyperbolic caricature of the employee letter ("incoherent yelling at a wedding" in this case), rather than engage with what actually happened. This shows me that it's clear, even to his defenders, that firing employees for a letter criticizing Elon is an obvious contradiction to the spirit of his free speech moralizing, despite him being within his rights to fire them.
1. not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.
hmm I wonder what 'free speech absolutist' means. maybe that one's freedom to speak is not qualified or diminished in any way? their freedom to speak is total?
Isn't this just "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences"? No one is restricting their ability to speak, they are just restricting their ability to work at SpaceX.
What's the alternative? Does a free speech absolutist need to never make judgements on what he hears from someone's free speech? If I hear a person say he wants to murder me and my family, do I still need to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner? Aren't I exerting some form of control of over him if I say you can't come into my home?
I think your view of the term "free speech absolutist" may make sense when analyzing the individual word meanings, but doesn't make sense as a phrase, and doesn't align with how self described free speech absolutists view themselves.
The point is that there’s no fundamental difference between “you are free to say what you want, but you might get fired from SpaceX” and “you are free to say what you want, but you might get banned from Twitter”. But people — including Elon! — act as if the former is normal and rational, while the latter is some sort of affront to a free society.
Abstractly, in the sense that "freedom from speech is not freedom from consequences", I don't think they're fundamentally different. If you're a free speech absolutist, then the nature of the relationship shouldn't matter. They're both just private organizations making choices about how they voluntarily associate with others.
Most people aren't free speech absolutists, though, and I agree that they'd think there's a fundamental difference between employer-employee relationships and user-provider relationships as a whole. But it should be significantly harder for an employer to fire an employee than for a service provider to ban a user.
Not disagreeing with you, but elaborating on this 'you can say what you want, but you have to live with the consequences' idea.
It's a situation of monopoly. If consequences to speech prohibit one from an entire category of human need (one's life, ability to earn a living, ability to find housing, etc), then those consequences are in fact limiting speech. A 'cancellation' that makes someone unemployable is much more a prohibition on speech than being fired from a single job without affecting one's general ability to get hired. If Musk were to now work to get the signatories of the letter blacklisted from broader employment this becomes an issue.
The problem is that platforms on the internet benefit from network effects and become quasi-monopolistic. If there were platforms with similar reach as Twitter that allowed the speech that Twitter does not allow, whether or not Twitter censors would be kind of a moot point.
Everyone already has what you are describing by default, anyone anywhere can say anything at all, the issue is whatever consequences come from that, be it jail time like in Russia for speaking about the war, or losing your job at SpaceX.
Being a free speech absolutist is meaningless if you are going to fire people the moment they say something you don't like.
I don't think anyone would claim that a place where you have free speech, but you might just get murdered by your government for your free speech, is a place where free speech exists
> Free speech implies a certain amount of freedom from consequences of that speech.
Yes. Like not getting banned from the public square for giving your speech, or not getting arrested by the government for your free speech. No one has ever argued that truly free speech means no one can judge you on what you are saying.
> If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.
It would mean either that, or that you are using the phrase in a different manner than other people who use the phrase.
I find this whole exercise silly. I view it as
1) I don't like someone
2) Someone says he is X
3) To me, X means Y
4) Someone is not a Y
5) Therefore, someone is a hypocrite and (1) is justified.
>It would mean either that, or that you are using the phrase in a different manner than other people who use the phrase.
Words have meaning, if they didn't then there would be no such thing as hypocrisy because everyone could just have their own little definition for a term or title they want to adopt but not be burdened to live by.
To Elon rules apply to thee and not me, these firings are text book hypocrisy.
1) The meaning of a phrase is the same as the meaning of stringing together the individual word definitions of the phrase.
2) There is a universally accepted, obvious definition of a phrase
I think you could reasonably call yourself a free speech absolutist, because you will never kick someone out of the public square for saying their peace, but you are still be allowed to not invite that person to your house for dinner.
>I think you could reasonably call yourself a free speech absolutist, because you will never kick someone out of the public square for saying their peace, but you are still be allowed to not invite that person to your house for dinner.
What you describe is just regular ole free speech.
Then whatever Twitter is/was does not align with "regular ole free speech", based on the people they've banned from their public square (and yes, public squares can be on private property).
There is no comparison between public debate within the letter of the law and what a private company does with insubordinate employees that are disrupting the business.
You don't employ your plumber full time, perennially. Your episodes of petty tyranny probably do not threaten your plumber's livelihood and/or career. Furthermore if your plumber gives you indications on how to avoid damaging your plumbing, it may not be directly related to "fixing the toilet", but he is nonetheless doing his job.
No but if I am paying him $300/hr and what he is doing is not related to fixing the toilet and is in fact causing me more problems or distracting the electrician who is also costing me $300/hr. Getting rid of him is not petty tyranny.
Also I am not threatening his career, he is, he is choosing to take a principled stand and should understand the likely consequences and be willing to accept them.
It was a mistake to participate in this absurd analogy to begin with. You can just stretch it until it becomes convenient again. There is simply no comparing the power dynamic between you and an independent contractor to that of an aerospace company and its highly specialized workforce.
It's a simple fact that SpaceX chose its CEO's public image over its mission statement and reputation. I hope future prospects realize that there is no stability or long-term personal growth to be found there unless they can keep their heads down and kiss ass.
I think the workforce being highly specialized is where this gets tricky. In principle I think firing someone for causing internal strife in someone's judgement as a manager is in accordance to how our economy is structured and is to be expected. We may disagree with the judgement, but it isn't a free speech issue if that person can just go get another job. The 'consequences' to their speech are inconsequential enough that their ability to express themselves is not prohibited even if inconvenient.
But if they can't work anymore because they got fired from the one employer of their skill the consequences are quite severe. They have to learn a new field! Ideally I'd say people with this specialized skill set form a guild or union. The same thing that makes them vulnerable makes their employer vulnerable--the workers of that industry are highly concentrated, with high investment in skill development. Absent that, it's a tricky issue and I think it would be fair to say that at least a warning would have been in order before dismissal.
I don't know if the people Musk fired are in this category or not. If it were an office manager, for example, seems fine. if it is an engineer on some space ship esoterica, ouch.
In theory, if politics starts making SpaceX ineffective, the free market will provide an opening for a competitor with a more effective culture to eat their lunch.
> No but if I am paying him $300/hr and what he is doing is not related to fixing the toilet and is in fact causing me more problems or distracting the electrician who is also costing me $300/hr. Getting rid of him is not petty tyranny.
Perhaps this isn't a good analogy, but if you yelling insults at the the neighbors makes it harder for him to fix the toilet, and he asks you to stop, would you still fire him for it?
Because you could argue, although with difficulty, that Musk tweeting stupid things makes it more difficult for SpaceX employees to do their work.
In practice, I've found it generally easier and wiser to leave a company with a stupid boss rather than ask the stupid boss to change, but I see why someone could try the latter.
It's a funny point. If I were having some argument with the neighbor and the plumber gave me shit about it...to be honest, I'd be super-annoyed and while I wouldn't fire the plumber (it's difficult to get plumbers on site!), I probably wouldn't have him back.
Your point is a good one though, to continue the analogy, the plumber shouldn't want to come back. Erratic and volatile bosses are best avoided. I prefer it when they do this stuff loudly and in public so I can know to avoid them.
There are no indications at all of incompetence (I assume that is what you meant) or laziness in this at all. All indications are that this is an group of employees who came together to complain internally, the complaint was leaked (no indication that it was them), and they were fired.
100% of my company likes me but that's besides the point. Work isn't a popularity contest and you don't need to be liked all the time by everyone. The only people who care about such things are those with devastatingly low self-esteem.
Well, if work isn't a popularity contest, then who gives a damn what you imagine people at SpaceX think of "woke pests"? All it does it make you sound angry.
About 1/6 of the pay comes from his pocket, since he owns about that much of the company.
> He may be founder & CEO. But he is an employee as much as those five.
His main relationship to Tesla is as it's controlling owner, not an employee, though, yes, he's also an employee. That's pretty different from every other employee.
Sorry, pls explain me this business logic. 1/6th is his ownership which is mostly tied to stocks. The pay comes from liquidity(arising from sales, selling bonds & any additional stock dilution from the organization) Unless I am completely misinformed about how business accounting works. Ownership doesnt pay unless they sell their stocks to pay(which he did through raising funding through stock hypothication in the past)
Right. Now that most of us in public know how he thinks & acts, we still believe that the president of the company took action on her own. Since "union" is being supported by the socialists, employers are crushing any organization attempts, thats all.
Being a free speech absolutist has nothing to do with consequences from invoking your free speech. Everyone wanting free speech despite what type of speech that they legally allow is the price we pay to have it. Invoking it and using ignorant, racist or hatefull language doesn't mean you won't pay a social price for it. It just means we won't throw you in jail using the state for it. But you may just lose your jobs. Thems' the breaks.
Exactly, it means we won't throw you in jail using the state. But Musk argues otherwise, that Twitter must let people use their platform to say whatever they want. And at the same time, people working for him cannot say whatever they want about his company.
You're twisting things a bit. He views Twitter as a virtual extension of the real life town square. Namely that the government/Twitter can't remove you from that real/virtual town square for what you say.
SpaceX isn't, nor will it ever be, a town square so the rules don't extend there. (Nor do they extend to Twitter the corporation itself.)
This is highly deceptive. Musk is on record saying that for a town square, you should be able to say whatever you want so long as it is within the letter of the law. Which means, gone will be the days of getting perma-banned for offending some woke crybaby.
Musk's companies are not town squares. They are private entities and employees can be fired for insubordination, harassment, or abuse of company resources.
"It just means we won't throw you in jail using the state for it. But you may just lose your jobs. Thems' the breaks."
This is a misrepresentation of the current "debate" taking place regarding free speech, a debate we have frequently on Hacker News. Nobody is threatened with jail for saying anything in the US, so if that was the primary bone of contention, the debate wouldn't exist. It's more about cancel culture, etc.
Deciding not to associate with you or provide you with a platform for saying what you want has nothing to do with your ability to say it. Enjoy Substack.
I think you say that with some amount of snark, but both sides of the argument agree with this. It isn't controversial to say twitter isn't legally or socially obligated to give you a platform to practice free speech.
The fact Musk wants to turn it into a platform for free speech doesn't imply that he believes twitter has that burden of responsibility, only that he thinks it would be a good thing if they took on that responsibility.
It's also not hypocritical for Musk to say twitter would be a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech while also saying workplace communication is not a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech.
Now whether you or I agree with his stance on either of these points is another subject entirely, but it is not hypocrisy as other comments seem to be suggesting.
If the employees had posted on twitter instead, he totally still would have fired them. Musk just wants to be able to speak without consequences, while he’s perfectly happy to impose consequences on speech by his employees
and it still wouldn't be hyprocritical - free speech has nothing to do with being able to say anything somewhere and avoid consequences. It only has to do with protecting your ability to say those things.
If you call your friend mean things on twitter and your friend decides to stop talking to you, freedom of speech has not been violated.
“Consequences for thee, not for me” feels pretty hypocritical. In this case Musk wants the consequences for speech be limited to things (like being fired) that he doesn’t have to worry about because he is rich.
If you're an employee at spacex and Musk uses internal communications to say something you don't like, you can leave spacex, which would be a consequence for musk's actions. So your point doesn't hold. He is not immune from the consequences of his speech in the exact same scenario.
A job is little more than a business relationship where a person agrees to do labor in exchange for money. Either side of that relationship has the ability to terminate that relationship as a consequence of speech they might not like.
The better approach is to form a union, in order to address the colossal power imbalance between SpaceX's executive committee and the people who do the actual work. It's likely you'll get fired for that as well, but it's better than leaving in "protest". Elon Musk probably spends 50x more time thinking about his hair plugs than he does about engineers departing his companies.
Either way, to act like this "business relationship" is perfectly reciprocal is either naive or malintentioned.
I agree, unionization at face value seems to be a great tool to empower workers. As for reciprocity I don't think anyone is suggesting it's perfectly balanced. If you're using that phrasing as a device to suggest it's extremely unbalanced then I would wonder what data you're using to come to that conclusion. It is, after all an entirely voluntary relationship being formed in a country with no shortage of jobs.
Nobody has argued that Twitter cannot ban people from their platform at will because of what they say. The argument has always been that it's a bad idea for them to do so for a whole variety of reasons:
1. The inevitable inconsistency in application creates hypocrisy, which makes people upset.
2. It attracts political attention if/when the enforcement is politically biased.
3. It costs large sums of money that could be spent on other things.
4. It isn't actually necessary.
5. Public forums in which ideas can duke it out are essential for a healthy democratic society. Someone needs to run them, so if you decide to create an explicitly public forum open to everyone then you have a moral duty to protect and implement free speech policies
etc etc. Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a subset of the arguments that can be mounted.
But note that none of these apply to the case of employees criticizing their employer.
It actually does, if you own the single dominant platform in the space where the conversations are happening.
Speech isn't just about the act of saying, but also being able to be heard. Anyone can whisper to themselves in bed, but that is not speech in the political sense. Being able to speak where nobody hears is doesn't mean you have free speech.
Lots of people can hear you on Substack, Gab, etc. Accept that other people will practice their right not to associate with you. If so many of you aren't going to admit someone else's right not to be fired for trivialities then I do not want to hear about this right to be heard crap either.
To be fair though, Elon is in no way a "free speech absolutist", he just plays one on Twitter because he wants to freely manipulate the market to line his pockets, but still won't tolerate people critical of him.
"Free speech absolutist" doesn't mean "freedom from consequences outside the town square (either literal or virtual)". It just means you won't be forcibly removed from the town square. Just like you can go walk in your Nazi parades in the US, it doesn't mean you won't get fired from your job if people see you in that parade, but you can still keep doing your parades.
What are your actual principles there? Does it also apply to freedom to be openly gay? Walk in your pride parades but get fired from your job as a consequence? I don't think you're using any general principles, just picking argument salad to fit your belief.
He never claimed SpaceX is a town square. You're conflating this with his description of Twitter as a de-facto town square where speech shouldn't be policed as harshly and silently as it is now.
Being fired was a consequence of their free speech.
Musk has only ever said he believes people should have absolute freedom of speech; he hasn't said people shouldn't face consequences for what they say.
So he's in favor of "cancel culture"? It's hard to keep up.
Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?
Musk is using the definition of free speech where people you agree with face no consequences for speech, and people you disagree with suffer arbitrarily. That is always the definition powerful people use when they say “free speech.”
Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?
Being banned from Twitter is a consequence of your speech, but it's also restricting your freedom to speak. I imagine Musk feels that not restricting people's freedom of speech is more important than the consequence of banning them.
That doesn't mean he thinks there should be no consequences for speaking. Just that the consequences shouldn't limit your freedom to speak.
In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.
> In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.
The people banned from Twitter are still free to speak about whatever as well. Frankly I think SpaceX's actions limit speech more than a Twitter ban. Ex-Twitter users just have to find a new platform, at their convenience. Fired employees have just had there livelihood taken away and have to drop everything and find something new before their savings run out.
To be clear I think SpaceX was well within it's rights to fire these people, but as consequences go I see firing as far more consequential than a Twitter ban.
Their speech is less likely to be publicised/reported on though, so they have arguably lost some potential audience. In the same way that being banned from Twitter does not restrict your freedom to speak (e.g. you can go to another website, setup your own or stand on a street corner irl), but it does reduce your potential audience
This makes no sense. People who are banned from Twitter are still able to speak, just not on Twitter. (Or at least, not on Twitter using that particular account)
People who are fired from SpaceX have absolutely no access to the SpaceX communication channels they were fired for exercising the wrong kind of speech on.
Cancel culture is not strictly being cancel for your actions. It is unjustly cancelling somebody. If you hired a baby sitter who said they wanted to kill your child (even if it was a joke) it wouldn't be unjust to fire that person. Nobody would argue that was cancel culture.
Obviously, I am not saying what these employees are saying is equivalent, but cancelling somebody for what they say is not always cancel culture.
That's non sense, or then everyone has absolute freedom of speech, you just have to open your mouth or type a text.
What limits freedom of speech _are_ the "consequences". It either is "absolute" in which case there are no consequences, or limited, in which case there are consequences (but then by definition it isn't absolute anymore)
If you fire someone for their opinion about their employer, or jail them for their opinion about the president, you can't be for "absolute" freedom of speech.
It's like saying "you're free to murder people, but if you do you'll go to jail".
I think you can make a difference between types of consequences.
In a strictly legal sense, you can be allowed to call your neighbor ugly. There will be no legal consequences, because of a law/constitutional amendment protecting free speech.
On a personal level, however, your neighbor might not like being called ugly, and retaliate by avoiding you or insulting you back. This is a consequence, but not a legal one.
I think, Musk view is that expression on Twitter should play a "legal guardian" type role in moderating content on the site, as opposed to say blocking negative content (and you could argue that as a site that makes money selling ads, blocking negative content could be the smart play, similar to the NYT not hiring idiots to write for them), but that the SpaceX employees, when fired by their employer, are facing consequences not on a legal but a personal level.
Of course, there's a very good chance this is just backwards rationalizing the erratic, irrational behavior of a emotionally unstable person.
The goal of the employees was to silence his free speech. Disrupting those censorious efforts by firing them is his dealing with Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. He realized that to preserve a tolerant workplace, intolerance of their rising tide of intolerance was necessary.
>Disrupting those censorious efforts by firing them is Popper’s Paradox in action.
No, it isn't. Popper's paradox only applies to the speech of parties which use force, rather than speech, to suppress the free speech of others. It was written in the context of Nazi Germany, and warning about the consequences of what is now called "free speech absolutism," when that freedom is co-opted by authoritarians who don't respect it (in other words, people like Elon Musk.)
Trying to suppress speech with more speech is simply how free speech is supposed to work.
It is quite a stretch to say that the letter was about working conditions.
Working conditions is things like working hours, your physical environment, your responsibilities [1]. The SpaceX letter was basically "Musk is uncouth, and we don't like that". A fair criticism, but nothing about working conditions.
The text of the letter can be found at [2], if anyone wants to judge for themselves.
The following passage is one of many about workplace behavior, which therefore is part of working conditions:
Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. SpaceX must establish safe avenues for reporting and uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.
This really does not fall into working conditions, in the legal sense of the word. "Musk is an asshole because of how he tweets" says nothing about the working conditions of SpaceX.
If the letter alleges that Musk directly harassed employees, that would be entirely different. But it doesn't; it merely says that Musks behavior in the public sphere is unpleasant (again, that's fair).
Working Conditions means the conditions under which the work of an employee is performed, including physical or psychological factors.
The things that that letter discusses affects the psychological factors of the work. Committing to making people feel included, defining what toxic behavior will not be accepted, and so on.
Your linked definition includes in working conditions, "...all existing circumstances affecting labor in the workplace." This fits with the definition that I gave - the behaviors that you have to put up with from coworkers affects labor in the workplace.
The argument you're advancing here, though it may be popular with some kinds of lawyers, is tantamount to arguing that any discussion at all could be considered about working conditions. Once you start trying to classify the personal tweets of the CEO as "working conditions" you're starting a fast track to eventually having working conditions be stripped of its legal weight, as it'll turn into just another rule being exploited by woke culture warriors in ways it was never meant to be used.
> Once you start trying to classify the personal tweets of the CEO as "working conditions"
This is way too reductionist. These aren't just "Musks tweets", they are directives about employee policies that are publicly stated, but not private enforced (because, to the author's criticism, they have no strict definitions). Furthermore they have clear (or at least implied clearly) repercussions: "don't behave they way we want to or you're fired".
> all could be considered about working conditions.
Actually, I think what the author is asking for is clarity about working conditions, not necessarily the working conditions are good/bad - they're just ambiguous.
Is there anyone asking for anything in a workplace that you wouldn't call a "woke culture warrior"? Using that kind of language marks you as pretty disingenuous to the argument.
You are attempting a reductio ad absurdum by saying that since the potential consequences of the rule you outline leads to a result that you don't like, said rule cannot actually exist.
This is backwards. There are lots of rules out there which I'm sure you dislike. Therefore your dislike of this one is irrelevant.
And I say that despite agreeing with you about how it might be abused. And despite wondering whether the people calling for more diversity and exclusion in this letter may be the kind of people to abuse it that way. Rules are rules, and we should try to apply them fairly, especially when applied to people we dislike.
The SEC does, because at least Tesla states that they are an "official corporate communication channel". Though Tesla was pressured (by who?) to do so because shareholders were complaining about how they should interpret his tweets.
Forcing a trucker to drive 20 hours straight is working conditions. Refusing to install proper lighting in a warehouse is working conditions.
Having a policy saying "don't be an asshole", and then enforcing it in a way that is perceived as unfair, is not working conditions.
If the letter had directly alleged that Musk or other leadership was abusive towards the employees, they would have a case. But just saying "we thing Musk is an asshole, and we have a no-asshole policy" is not protected speech.
I don't know what to tell you, every legal training I've ever had has said that capricious application of workplace policies and playing favorites is a good way to land oneself into an NLRB discussion. And that the NLRB, juries, and courts tend to bias towards workers.
The NLRB only has jurisdiction when the matter concerns labor organizing. This has a specific definition and does not automatically cover any collective action by employees like open letters or petitions.
Many employment laws just create causes of action for civil litigation. I.e. they define types of harm for which the employee can seek compensation in the courts.
Very specifically for this case, they protect the right of employees to talk to an employer about improving workplace conditions. With or without a union, and with or without any interest in unionization.
If retention and recruitment are impacted, then working hours become longer. If company values are enforced internally but publicly the CEO is acting against those values, then it becomes harder to understand what someone might be disciplined for. The connections are, imo, there.
> If retention and recruitment are impacted, then working hours become longer.
This statement is false in the general case. If the contract says 40 hours, I'm leaving after 40 hours, and if you want me to stay longer I better have a large share of the company. Your inefficiencies as a manager are not my problem as an employee, unless I'm also a shareholder.
I don't think anyone is defending the culture, just saying that this letter is not about workplace conditions and is not protected, no matter how much you wish it was.
His tweets are official company communications. They are every bit as relevant to workplace conditions as would be owning a cat or dog inside your office.
They have said that official company communications can come from his Twitter account. They have not made the claim that all communications from his Twitter account constitute official company communications.
You, a stranger and not an employee of SpaceX or Tesla, come across Elon Musk on the street while walking to get a chili dog. He looks at you and goes "That is the most hideous shirt I have ever seen" and walks off.
Is that workplace conditions?
Also, oddly enough, "official company communications" is not workplace conditions. You do not have a legal right to discuss company communications!
I think many here are getting sick of workplace activism and the self-involved crowd pushing it. I didn't become an engineer to deal with their bullshit. I just wanna work on interesting problems. If I'm unhappy I'll switch teams or get another job.
There is an increasingly troublesome number of people entering the industry who simply don't enjoy working hard. I think every company would do better to fire them.
Honestly, I think you have a point. It would go back to what the reason was for termination. SpaceX has indicated that the terminated employee's actions went beyond simply writing the letter.
I do not take company statements like that at face value, as they have their own interests to protect. However, it does leave the possibility that termination was not related to statements about working conditions.
> This is a very predictable consequence of criticizing your employer via a public letter.
The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is "So what?"
Yes, it's predictable. I don't believe people who wrote the letter haven't thought of this potential consequence and haven't felt any trepidation whatsoever.
So what if it's "predictable"? So what if it's legal? The point is not whether it's currently legal and whether it's predictable. The point is whether it's right.
How does stating that "it's predictable" address the very real and ugly problems in this whole situation?
It might be perceived as right and acceptable to some folks because of their definition of morality and behavior, and it might be a common enough understanding of those morals in 2022. It’s PC. However, its not a good precedent for a company to tolerate because moral attitudes change.
If a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees wrote a letter saying that their CEOs behavior and values did not line up with their Christian values and behavior expectations, and for the company’s success, the leadership needed to condemn publicly the CEO’s actions? Would that be ok? What if they started actively proselytizing their morality to the other employees? Attempting to stir up dissent to the point where it was detrimental to company productivity?
This latest type of activism is PC, so that is the only reason its even discussed. Other activism like the above example is perhaps not as PC and most folks would not even care…or would be on the other side of the issue.
Did you read the actual letter? I ask becasue it's not included in the NYT article, so I'm not sure whether your complaints about political correctness and your comparison with Christian values stem from not knowing the contents of the letter or something else.
There are basically three problems the open letter highlights and asks the leadership to address. They're wrapped in polite, corporate-appropriate language, but I'll express them here in plain, blunt, non-PC words:
- SpaceX is supposed to be bigger than just Elon Musk. Elon's shitposting on social media is harming the whole company, and the employees will end up suffering because Elon keeps putting his ego before the company.
- The so-called leadership, as it happens all too often, keeps talking the talk, but they don't walk the walk. They say they care about making SpaceX a great place to work, but that's just bullshit as long as they turn a blind eye to the toxic fuckery at SpaceX.
- The company policies are bullshit. Using words like "asshole" to sound cool and non-PC does not replace having an actual policy. "Zero tolerance" means fuck-all if you selectively tolerate stuff, and "no-asshole policy" is either too vague or isn't enforced.
Basically, it boils down to being sick of the toxic corporate LARPing you see in a certain kind of techbro companies, where suits pretend to be cool and down with the techies by using words like "asshole" to show how they value "straight talk" and therefore you can totally trust them not to fuck you over.
I hope that was non-PC enough to help explain what the letter says, for anyone who hasn't actually read it.
On the off chance that you did read the letter and you really decided that it's no different from "a bunch of hyper fundamentalist evangelical Christian SpaceX employees" demanding that their CEO behave according to their values, then I would like to point out two details you might have overlooked:
1. That would be perfectly understandable if the company itself claimed to hold and represent those values. If the employees of the hypothetical Every-Zygote-Is-Sacred LLC wrote a letter complaining about how their CEO kept tweeting about how much they loved and supported Planned Parenthood, then they would have a point, regardless of whether you or I were pro- or anti-abortion.
2. Regardless of what company policies say about the company values, many companies have a policies about social media, along the lines of "don't tweet anything that would negatively affect the company, not even on your personal account". People can, and do, get fired for breaking that policy. Complaining about how the CEO of the company keeps blatantly breaking that policy and actively harming the company in the process might be naive, but it's certainly understandable.
In conclusion: yeah, I think it's right and acceptable for SpaceX employees to complain about the unprecedented level of toxicity from their CEO.
EDIT: I accidentally a word in the last paragraph.
And I think that a small group of employees attempting to impose their own chosen morality whatever that morality may be and proselytizing their morality to the point where it was disruptive to productivity and harmful to company morale and culture (and this is what got them fired BTW, not the opinion of Musk’s behavior itself) is wrong. An organization will not survive if it kowtows to every special interest employee group that throws a tantrum.
If you don’t like what Musk who owns the controlling interest in your company is doing, buy him out. If you can’t buy him out, move on and work someplace else. Acting in a disruptive manner because you are butthurt about your CEO/company owner is just ridiculous.
It's not okay for a small group of employees to try to impose their chosen morality, but it's okay for one person to impose his own morality on the whole company, because he owns the controlling interest in it.
More importantly, that same person who owns the controlling interest has no responsibilities or obligations towards the company as a whole.
Did I get that right?
And while we're on the topic of what each of us finds ridiculous, how about the fact that whenever someone suggests that a publicly traded company should do something slightly idealistic, people always bring up fiduciary duty towards the shareholders, but it gets overlooked when we're talking about one billionaire's "right" to drive his company's value into the ground by shitposting on social media, because "he's the owner, he can do what he wants".
Regardless of all that, one point that keeps being overlooked -- and at this stage of discussion, where it has been pointed out repeatedly, it's pretty obvious that it's being overlooked on purpose -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality. They're asking for two things: 1) hold Musk accountable for harming the company, 2) define what "no-asshole" and "zero tolerance" policies actually mean and enforce them.
That's not morality. That's common sense and consistency.
EDIT: Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?
Yes. Like it or not there is a difference between “the person who signs the paychecks” and the person receiving the signed paycheck. C-level employees and folks who own controlling interests don’t always have to play by the same rules, even the rules they themselves set for the other employees.
> one point that keeps being overlooked -- …(shortened for brevity)… -- is that they're not trying to impose any morality.
But they are, though. They are being disruptive to the business because of their morality. If you are unhappy with the bosses behavior outside the organization because of your moral code, but I, a fellow employee, am fine with or frankly don’t care what the boss does outside the organization—and then you spam me on company communication platforms trying to organize dissent based on your moral code you are in essence demanding conformity to your beliefs in a way that is disruptive.
> Also, what's more likely to bring the company morale go down: seeing its owner sabotage it because of his ego, or an internal letter criticizing him for doing that?
In my opinion a small group of employees being intentionally disruptive and causing public drama would be more likely to cause morale issues for me.
It’s not like Musk’s personality and tweeting was unknown. His political leanings shift and all of a sudden he and his behavior is intolerable? Please.
> It’s not like Musk’s personality and tweeting was unknown. His political leanings shift and all of a sudden he and his behavior is intolerable? Please.
Well, at least you're finally willing to address my points about their letter not being about the morality, instead of hoping those points would go away ;)
When his political leanings "shifted", that's when his behavior started going against the company's own rules and actively damaging the company. Now, you might believe that the former is okay, because he signs their paychecks -- which is just another way of saying "might makes right" -- but I don't know how you justify the latter to yourself. That's another point you keep dodging: Musk's behavior is actively damaging the company.
You can shift the blame to "cancel culture", if you want, but the fact remains that certain behaviors can, and do, affect any company not just in terms of morale, but in terms of its ability to do business. This has been well known for ages and has, in fact, been exploited by one extreme of the political spectrum. It only got labeled "cancel culture" when it got turned against that extreme.
And that's the political aspect of this whole conversation that I was trying to avoid, because discussing politics with strangers is about as pleasant as a root canal, but since you can't let it go, then let's go: yes, regardless of whether the letter itself was about the employees' morality or not, certain "political leanings" are, in fact, intolerable.
When you say "all lives matter", for example, that's where you cross the line into outright racism. It's not like "all lives matter" is a new thing someone invented yesterday and that's why people are being fooled into taking it at face value. It's been around for quite a while, and it's extremely easy to understand that it's only ever brought up as a response to "black lives matter" and why that response is racist.
Racism should be intolerable.
And that's just one of the things Musk did on Twitter. So yes, regardless of whether or not this letter is about morality, his shift in political leaning should be considered intolerable. If you really think that "racism is not okay" is something that is being forced on everyone in SpaceX against their wishes, then you're basically saying the majority of SpaceX employees are racists.
> So yes, regardless of whether or not this letter is about morality, his shift in political leaning should be considered intolerable.
And that is the crux of the controversy. Finally you admit what this is really behind this. Musk’s political leanings are intolerable to you and to these employees and you don’t want to tolerate his behavior. They are creating disruption because of their intolerance by spamming other employees to try and “convert” them.
The lovely thing about “at will” employment is that you don’t have to work at a place that doesn’t fit your values and a company doesn’t have to employ you if you don’t fit their values.
He might have built the company, but he isn't the company. Building the company doesn't give him the moral right to run it into the ground or make it toxic. He might have that legal right, but I explicitly said that I'm not talking about that.
How does one create a thing and then lose the moral right to destroy said thing? That's not something I think you'll be able to justify to me. Just because it's destruction may hinder other people doesn't mean that it isn't the creators right to do so.
When other people's livelihoods depend on the thing you created, you lose the moral right to wantonly destroy it. When what you built stops being wholly yours, you lose the moral right to wantonly destroy it.
I agree once over 50% ownership has transferred you lose the moral right to destroy it. I should have clarified and said the one creates and owns, or even just owns really.
I disagree with the other assertion that you lose the moral right to destroy it. Does he have the moral right to fire his employees? I hope you'd agree with me that he does. And in this case he'd just be firing all of them.
It's not about math. It's about responsibility, both in the case of ownership and in the case of people depending on you.
You asserted that he has a moral right to destroy the company because he built it. He might have built it, but it doesn't matter if he now owns 54% or 90% or 10% of it, it stopped being just his. He can't just say "screw it, I'm bored, let's just burn it down to the ground".
That responsibility is even greater when it comes to the people who depend on you, who put their livelihood in their hands because they believe in your company. Not necessarily in you, but certainly in what you created.
Let me put it this way: if you knew that the person in charge of company X is a volatile, irresponsible person incapable of putting the good of the company before their own ego, someone who doesn't care enough for the company, would you go work for that company?
Musk's behavior is damaging the company. His employees are objecting to that, among other things. They are right to do so.
As for whether he has the moral right to fire his employees indiscriminately solely by virtue of having created the company? No, he doesn't, for the same reasons I described above.
Does he have the right to fire his employees for the right reasons? Of course, but that's not the case here. That's what I was pointing out when you asserted that he certainly has the right to fire them just because he built the company.
Looks like we're at an impasse as we just fundamentally disagree. Indiscriminate should be federally legal and fortunately is in many states. I believe he every bit has the moral right to fire indiscriminately and burn his company to the ground if he wants while he retains majority ownership.
They critized Musk, factually. Musk is not their employer, SpaceX is, but you just proved their point since you believe Musk and SpaceX are one and the same.
sounds like running towards the dictator trap with open arms. If I wanted to get to Mars then I would suggest its poor company behaviour to suppress criticism like this as I doubt that doing so to protect personal twitter behaviour is helpful to the org's mission statement.
Arguably it depends somewhat of the skill of those hired but if that's arbitrary (i.e. their skill isn't related to the firing) one can easily argue that SpaceX's management practices are extremely questionable right now. So from an 3rd party employee's perspective today you have to tell the boss he's fucking shit up if you _really_ want to get to Mars.
SpaceX are quite literally the only company on the planet capable of what they're doing. Elon is the sole reason Mars is even a possibility, as the rest of the world had given up on it. Same goes for EV's.
Musk is the CEO, he has the right to fire any employees that damage the company's reputation. You could argue that Musk is doing it himself and that the employee was simply stating facts, but it doesn't change the fact that the board decide to place him in-charge. Any other CEO would have done the same.
It is the board that should be holding him accountable, but they aren't. Most boards today are lame ducks to collect a paycheck. No one is challenging him because he is delivering results (although I would argue it's actually Gwynne Shotwell keeping the shipping sailing). So there's that.
He does not have the universal right to fire people who talk about working conditions. Workers enjoy protections that allow them to speak about their work, even if that would be embarrassing for their employer.
The letter was about how rooms
Elon's tweets impacted working conditions.
Eg
Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more.
There is so much nonsense in this thread. The letter has nothing to do with working conditions.
I take that back:
The letter was spammed to all employees using company resources, which means its authors and supporters were creating a hostile work environment. Firing the dead-weight woke cry bullies was the proper move.
I’m not saying Musk should have fired them, but I’m pretty skeptical that the CEO’s abrasive behavior in public statements unrelated to SpaceX is properly considered an aspect of working conditions. (It seems clear to me that their vague discussion of other issues is a pretext to support their eventual lawsuit, but YMMV.)
If the CEO makes it harder to land contracts or recruit talent, that's a direct impact to working conditions. I loved SpaceX and would consider working there if not for Musk, for instance.
No, that's a very indirect impact to any one individual's working conditions.
FWIW, I think firing the organizers is an overreaction and that it would be in SpaceX's best interest to muzzle Elon, but it's hard to conjure up a legal argument that they can't do it. And you'll notice that the company's statement said nothing about the content of the letter, only that it's inappropriate to organize it with company resources and on company time.
Considering how simple-minded and toxic work-cancer employees are, and how harmful and corrupt a union can be; it is no surprise that Musk is 3 steps ahead of them.
What wouldn’t count as working conditions under such a broad standard? Could I circulate an open letter demanding that I get a tech lead position instead of my rival because I don’t think people will enjoy working on their team? Could a salesperson circulate an open letter demanding that you should be punished because your bad engineering cost the company a big contract?
What I'm saying is that I think the open letter's attack on Musk was also a simple personal grievance. The signatories don't like Musk, they're distracted and embarrassed by his Tweets, so they demand that the company denounce him. (The letter said more than that, but if broader systemic reforms were their primary goal, why include an inflammatory attack on one specific executive?)
The courts have covered this. Generally, individual grievances are not protected. Whistleblowing may not be protected. Egregious or offensive language or coerced speech is not protected. Language that is disparaging without being an attempt to improve conditions is not protected.
Wouldn’t a counter point be that the CEO’s behavior filtering out employees that care about Tweets deeply be positive?
Knowing that people like you with your reasons for not working there are not present and harassing people towards your view point could be a recruitment draw no?
Inconsistent enforcement of the company's rules, which is the core of the letter is very much working conditions, and his behavior very clearly shows that he is not bound by those rules.
That's not even close to being considered protected activity.
Given you've spammed this misinformation all over this thread, despite being corrected on this point repeatedly, I'm not sure you're acting in good faith.
I've been corrected by folks going, "nuh uh". A discussion about retention, recruitment, enforcement of workplace policies, and airing of collective grievances is within bounds for protected. Provided it isn't deliberately offensive, an individual grievance, or knowingly false.
He has the universal right to fire people for whatever he wants as long as it's not for a reason protected by US labor law. There are very few instances of "protected speech" with regard to employment.
Turns out discussing working conditions is one. And a very reasonable argument could be made that this letter is explicitly discussing working conditions.
Protected concerted activity is the legal term, and broadly encompasses protections for workers who collectively discuss and attempt to improve, among other things, the conditions in their workplace.
I'm not redefining anything, the courts have broadly held that workers, when acting as a group and not just airing individual grievances, have protections for their speech. Things like corporate values, retention, recruiting, public sentiment, workplace diversity, etc are all potentially workplace conditions.
Workplace Conditions has a legal definition, but it is interpreted by the courts and those courts have the ability to adjust those definitions or interpret them as appropriate.
Do you have any example of where a state labor dept. or court applied your logic to a closely matching situation in a sustainable/unambiguous way (meaning it wasn’t overturned on appeal or settled)?
I ask because in your many comments all you’re doing is stating a hypothetical complaint that sounds plausible but I, as well as many others evidently, think would not have legs, ultimately. I can think of several examples in my career where employees have been fired for disruptive behavior or being a negative influence on morale - well within an employer’s rights. Those examples seem to line up more closely with this example at SpaceX than actual workplace conditions complaints I’ve seen.
I mean, props to you for going to the mat on this, but it’s past time you provide some evidence of your logic carrying the day in a real world example. Otherwise you’re just proposing wishful thinking as reasoning.
In theory, the board can still hold him accountable. There are laws that protect minority shareholders. But those board members will unlikely be around the next year.
Free speech is about opposing restrictions in the public sphere though. If the employees had made a public letter to the internet (not an internal mailing list), using their own resources (not company's resources), it would be a different situation.
If a guest in your house started screaming at you, it wouldn't be a paradox of free speech to tell them to get out.
The (controversial) argument is that Twitter has produced a public sphere. It's not legally a public sphere, but a de facto one, which is why people like Musk want to treat it as such.
And why doesn't Twitter have the same rights that you outlined in another comment: the right to not have to tolerate a private citizen, the right to prevent someone from saying whatever they want on your private property.
Basically, why doesn't Twitter have the same association and private property rights as Musk?
>And why doesn't Twitter have the same rights that you outlined
They do have those rights, which is why they can ban people. The argument is that they've produced a de facto public square, not a legal one, because it's where a massive amount of "public" discourse takes place. Musk is trying to buy them to make their product more consistent with a legal public square.
Personally I think it can't be done without the government getting involved at some point.
Due to the way the internet evolved, it is now the case that the majority of discourse flows through a handful of private companies.
If you are a private company absolutist, I guess you could argue that these companies have the same rights to prevent people from saying whatever they want on private property.
Others believe that these platforms are large and powerful enough to warrant a different set of views and regulatory scrutiny.
This[0] appears to be a good explanation of what a "free speech absolutist" is, and it isn't "you have to allow free speech in all settings by everyone"
In fairness, that explanation also agrees that Musk's extension of "free speech absolutist" extends to apolitical speech and an rights to be heard on social media no matter what corporations might think is inconsistent with his longstanding policy of punishing and trying to silence internal and sometimes external critics of his company...
I don't think there is a phrase for it, but I can see why it would be a common misunderstanding to think that that is "free speech absolutism." As far as I know, there is no concept that requires a private citizen (A) tolerate another private citizen (B) saying whatever they want on A's property. Maybe some form of anarchy.
Thanks for bouncing the idea around. Sounds like naming such an idea would be a powerful shortcut to reach the root of many free speech discussions. Since I'm not above coining neologisms, "speech anarchy" will be the term I will use going forward.
Why isn't telling someone to shut up protected free speech? There is no requirement to comply. He could have just as easily responded: "No" and continued to tweet as he wanted.
The employee/employer relationship is what’s different, along with the context (workplace activity) of where the communication is taking place. Unclear on why this is being disregarded. When did we start presuming that freedom of speech included the ability to, without consequence to your performance evaluation, talk shit about your employer or boss? The employer/employee relationship is all about your performance in relation to your compensation. Talking shit in a consequential way (in view of employer) reflects poorly on your performance for many and various reasons. When threshold of nuisance is exceeded, gtfo. Your contribution is eclipsed by your distraction.
>> Why isn't telling someone to shut up protected free speech?
You know the first amendment doesn't apply to people right? It's a restriction on what the government can or can not do. The government can't restrict your free speech. Your employer can. Twitter can too, and that's what Elon is against.
I agree that he could have just ignored them, but he chose to ignore them completely by getting them out of his company. That's his choice.
I assume that everyone who signed on to this letter understood the likely consequences and accepted them — because they understood their firing would massively amplify any workplace concerns by turning it into national news and making SpaceX employees mistrustful of management. This is the problem with being predictably retributive: once everyone understands how you work, your behavior can be exploited.
Yep. We would do well to more often remind ourselves that employment is an exercise in voluntary association.
These folks were unhappy with their working conditions. They're now free to find employ somewhere else that suits them better while others who want to be at SpaceX will replace them.
> Unless you're a woman, then he'll deem you intellectually inferior a priori.
Do people still really believe that is what he said? I'm all for calling out hypocrisy, but what he said was empirically true; their are professions that are male dominated, just are there are some that are female denominated--and the latter tends to have less scrutiny.
Male nurses are the exception and it is one of the most highly paid professions in the professional World, and yet NO ONE and I mean NO ONE has been calling for discriminatory hiring practices in the Medical Industry over that. And especially right now when they are having to under go horrible shift requirements due to a lack of staff and applicants.
This is one of the many ugly truths of about these narratives: they actually DO want preferential prejudices, but only in a way that favors those who tend to make the loudest (and often misguided and misinformed) noise with their narratives.
I did most of my undergrad with nurses and dated several, I don't envy their profession and the money while on the surface seems appealing is hardly going to make up for the seemingly hell they go through every week, especially during COVID. I respect them for what they do, and just accept that that level of triage and care-taking tends to be a female dominated domain.
Tech is a cushy, albeit tedious and often brain numbing monotonous career choice by contrast and I have no doubt that anyone who could work doubles during COVID in an ER could master writing basic scripts and using SO like everyone else does if they wanted. But they don't and they'd rather strike in order to reform their profession instead.
> Do people still really believe that is what he said?
Why would time change people's opinions?
Anyone who wanted to read it for themselves had plenty of opportunity almost immediately. Anyone who didn't but instead had sources they trust, knew what those sources' opinions were almost immediately. Anyone who wanted to specifically seek out opinions that didn't match their own, could have done so more easily while it was all still fresh and it would have taken what maybe a couple hours.
It's not like this is an area of ongoing archaeological research where people keep discovering and translating new fragments that change how the fragments we already have seem to fit together.
It's not common, but it does sometimes. My initial opinion was formed on what the media said. Then a couple years later that I read it for myself and saw that it did not align with the narrative.
Because it was pretty clear that after he made his points clear it didn't line up with what the media hitmen who were seeking to create: click bait rage-material.
After his rounds on several podcasts, Rogan being the most prominent, I looked into what was being said and it was absurd that they had derived this conclusion because of what I had listed above. The woke mob is to blame, sure, but it was the deliberate framing and inaction of the tech community as a whole who I think should bear some responsibility. I think the Bay Area 'dating scene' (or the lack thereof) is a direct reflection of the adverse effects of having a a heavy male bias within the tech Industry.
> My initial opinion was formed on what the media said. Then a couple years later that I read it for myself and saw that it did not align with the narrative.
I'd like to believe this retrospective view is a lot more common than it is, so I'm glad you honestly detailed your experience with the matter which I think is more common for those who'd bother to step out of their own echo chambers. But since people seldom these days, it's a total outlier.
Basically we claim to live in democratic societies where free speech is a founding value, then proceed to spend the majority of our waking life in highly undemocratic environments, where expressing the wrong opinion can cause loos of your livelyhood, where you have no voice when it's time to take decisions that will affect your future life.
You can vote for a new government but in the end what happens in your workplace will have more consequences on your life.
what should feelings have to do with anything in a market? In a libertarian paradise all that matters is value; if you're generating value then your employer continues employing you.
criticism should be seen as an indication of engagement. When your employees don't criticize and don't care then you have a problem...when people start phoning it in and not giving their best at work because apathy has set in.
Yeah this is true. But also the employer publicly firing those who sent the letter without some form of discussion also looks really really bad. People have an expectation of a CEO to have a really "mature" and controlled temperament.
This reminds me of those tiktok videos that have a spouse complaining about their significant other. They complain in public about whatever behavior, typically insignificant things, I think you can search like cleaning strike and see some of them. Even if it was 100% true, the people come of as petty, rude and disrespectful for publicly a private matter that makes then the bigger asshole. That is between spouses and has caused divorces and between coworkers or a boss employee relationship I would expect nothing less than the employee to be fired.
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).
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 say that I'm not in the US of A, where political discussions seem to penetrate every aspect of life.
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.
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.
I see you’re being facetious, but in all honesty, my mega large media conglomerate forced us to attend an equity presentation where we were told precisely: if you’re not actively working to quell this particular initiative that we right now find important, you’re then working against it and 100% part of the problem.
Were they talking about green peace? Climate change? Save the whales? Homelessness? Air pollution? Food preservatives? Obesity? Genocide? Under-representation of Jews in the NBA? No.
No apparently you can not be actively working to better those situations and you’re just fine and definitely not part of the problem. Oh but this one cause? Yeah we declare you’re part of the problem.
Sorry but there are a lot of causes in the world. You simply cannot pick and try to guilt me into actively supporting it in leau of all the other causes I might be personally connected with.
I'm not sure what's up with these people who go around commenting asking people to "define X" or "define Y" or "cite Z", but IMO it seems they generally have nothing interesting to say and aren't worth responding to. Just my 2c.
Certainly sometimes it's good to debate a word but this crossed the line into incessant requests for people to do work to come up with ever more definitions and citations.
My issue is with your style of debate, because it takes work to come up with these definitions and citations that you will inevitably disagree with. It's a waste of time. To imply that this means I am against civil rights, women's suffrage, and free speech... all I can say is go fuck yourself.
Flamewar comments like this are obviously completely unacceptable and will get you banned here. I'm not going to ban you right now, because you haven't been using HN primarily for this. Please don't do it again.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily (exclusively?) for flamewar and ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of ideology, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
I get the feeling you've misunderstood my comment.
From my perspective you asked "What does woke mean?" and I drew from my personal experience to answer how I have seen it used. The examples I choose of pronouns in signatures and having a BLM position were very common ones that also occurred at my current company.
Does that make sense now? I'm not actually sure what you want a citation on... that people push for pronouns in email signatures? That this does not have a direct and obvious link to workplace performance? That pushing for such was unheard of in 2001? That this is how people use the word "woke"?
Wokeism (ˈwəʊkɪzəm), noun: 1) a type of progressive activism whose adherents like to play word games about whether or not they exist.
Humor aside, when there's even dictionary and Wikipedia entries about wokeism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke) that outlines common themes of woke progressivism, that sort of rhetorical trickery just comes off as disingenuous.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
While your point around tacit acceptance is a good one I don't know if it follows that it's productive/appropriate to inject this debate into all of these situations. For one, the exact issues you care about could be very different from someone else's and having all these discussions is pretty distracting.
The method in this case, writing an open letter, seems like a way to weaponize network effect and have an outsized influence over say simply talking to your manager or using an internal feedback system. I think SpaceX is right to say this causes social pressure internally to sign on and not be on the wrong side of the "if you're not with us you're against us" attitudes of politics today.
No, internal channels can accomplish these things as well. Or political initiatives and lawsuits. Saying that the only choices are a larger open letter type airing, or else an exploitation of minorities, that's a false dichotomy and the tired exaggeration.
Not talking about cars is talking about having no car, and walking everywhere. You cannot avoid that.
Well, no. Not talking about something, is nothingness, silence, an absence of speech. I can demand that void of speech be filled with literally anything.
At some point common sense kicks in and you realize that talking to your wife about the colour of her favourite mug, is not politics. You realize, deciding what bread to eat for breakfast hasn't been calculated on how many votes Ron Paul got in the last primary, or whatever.
Making politics everything and making everything about politics, turns it into a religion. It isn't one, it's not a cosmology, and it'll never satisfy as a 'theory of everything'. Politics is one category out of many.
It's just a method of wrangling everybody's desires together for the purpose of governance. That's it. It's got nothing to do with coding up a widget for some factory and it's economic aim to serve the entire population with quality mugs at a cheaper price.
this is literalist, black and white thinking that is one of the foundations of fascism
if there is a social conflict (and boy are there social conflicts), not talking about those social problems is tacit support for the dominant position. pretending that one's work life can be neatly compartmentalized and has no bearing on the rest of the world is a fantasy of those who value their own comfort over the well being of others
I can disagree with the current policy and not say anything about it. Most of the time actions speak louder than words. A lot of people mentally tune out political 'hot air'. Focusing on making a better company and getting better paid can generate more effective political outcomes for you than dying on every single hill. You can't win every debate.
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.
This is coercion and it does the exact opposite of convincing others. Making people understand one's politics is surefire way to get the opposite result.
Also, if someone does that to me, the first thing that comes to mind is "Fuck off". Unapologetically.
Not talking about politics specifically at work (which is the scope they were addressing of which is pretty concretely indicated two sentences later with "work is work") does not mean they never talk about politics at other times in their life.
Also not talking about politics doesn't mean not engaging with politics at all. One could still be listening, thinking and voting which means not simply embracing the status quo despite not talking about it readily.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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...
The context was different. He responded to internal politics-discussion-board, and that was leaked many months later. The email in the OP is (from what we can see) creating the discussion.
Also, in the end Damore's continued employment became political thing, so it was probably inevitable he had to go. But the form - especially the crazy doublespeak - of his firing was the problem.
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!
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.
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.
> 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".
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Or, Musk could behave like a decent, mature human being.
The man is the richest person on the planet. The media is going to report on what he says because, you know, he's the richest person on the planet.
I heard the exact same arguments about how the media shouldn't cover Trump spouting off, and it's absurd for the exact same reasons.
These people hold incredibly sway over industry, politics, public policy, etc. Hell, Musk's behaviour has led to the Texas AJ investigating Twitter! Not shining a light on their behaviour would be journalistic malpractice.
The very idea that journalists should just ignore these people when they behave badly betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of journalism in an open and democratic society, while also failing to appreciate how much sway these people have over the way our world works.
Exposing the rich and powerful is a way to protect existing and future victims. It removes the perpetrators sense of invincibility and empowers victims to speak up.
But let's face it, you don't actually care about any of this. It's clear from the comments you're shilling for Elon. The thing I don't understand is why.
> It removes the perpetrators sense of invincibility and empowers victims to speak up.
That wasn't an angle I'd thought of (making the rich and powerful in general seem like they are accusable) and it makes things a lot of people have said in the last make more sense, so I thank you for suggesting it and have an upvote.
That said, the pattern of what the media publishes about celebrities in general, and Musk in particular doesn't fit. I am also skeptical it actually accomplishes this goal or that the benefits outweigh the costs.
> It's clear from the comments you're shilling for Elon. The thing I don't understand is why.
Taking this in the most charitable light of "what is motivating you to make all these somewhat pro-Elon posts over the last day?" I did some introspection.
Unfortunately, the answer is very long and complex and I couldn't figure out any way to condense it without being misleading and giving you the wrong impression (seriously, I tried! Unless you have a similar memeplex every shortening pattern matches to something I don't believe!).
I can say a bit about what the reasons aren't: I gain nothing tangible for this (I hold no stock in any Musk companies and am not employed in anything relevant). I have no person connection to Elon and he may indeed be an arsehole, I don't know. Colonizing mars is a fools dream. TSLA is overvalued by at least 2x.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
My understanding is the same and I believe it's pretty obvious why they always seem to be that way. It takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence to push through "the system" in any meaningful way and that often comes off as assholish. It also causes them to behave the same in every aspect of their life. They don't compartmentalize being an asshole in business, but they're a Mr. Rogers for everything else.
That kind of confidence is pervasive in every aspect of their being. They don't have room for doubt.
Reading about wartime generals solidified the thought in me. Many generals like Patton weren't even very gifted strategically, but they were confident and authoritative in their decisions. Oftentimes, that's enough to pull off a victory.
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?
That's a really excellent historical example to bring up, and, "no".
Edison and Tesla were definitely NOT equally capable. Tesla was an absolutely genius inventor and scientist, and Edison was a genius businessperson and good inventor. (Or something like that, TBH it wasn't Edison's biographies I poured over in highschool!)
Tesla received life-long backing and support from Westinghouse, major investment from JP Morgan, and more.
Edison tried, and for a chunk of time, did succeed at pushing Tesla out of the way, but I'd strongly argue that the things that sunk Tesla were not ways that Edison pushed him out of the way, nor would I argue that Edison ever really succeeded at pushing him out of the way.
Thanks for the correction. I think the overall point still stands though. Maybe the reason we think that mostly only assholes are game changers is because they pushed aside, or wrote out of history, equally capable non-assholes. It's definitely the kind of thing an asshole would do.
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.
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...
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.
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.
false, spacex is a contractor with bounding contracts, who cares which organization spend the money. The contract matter, if you want to argue, there is starliner to criticize
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.
Twitter is the worst thing to happen to Musk. The social media addiction knows no class/age/wealth/religious/creed boundary. It’s like social cancer that slowly destroys your relationship to society.
Musk has done great things but these days I think he’s at his lowest point.
/I’ve said this about three times now in threads like these.
Worst thing? His influencing is central to his success.
Unfortunately for civil discourse, it’s more effective to create controversial messaging that resonates with your followers, than sanitized messaging that is generally inoffensive. Controversial messaging makes your supporters increasingly loyal and attentive, as the noise from vocal ‘haters’ just keeps feeding your base. It’s perverse, it’s toxic, it’s exhausting but it works.
Look at the price earnings ratio of Tesla. What else is it but the world’s largest meme stock? His messaging vibes very strongly with Wall Street Journal readers and the Reddit trading community.
Where did OP say this was the only path to success? Warren Buffett took the more traditional one of just being related to influential and powerful people.
Buffett has worked the media/pr angles magically. He interviews just frequently enough. He has his homespun wisdom persona. His letters to shareholders are marketing gold.
His followers show up to the annual meeting like a pack of cult members.
None of this is to say he's a bad guy, he seems like a good guy. But he's a marketing genius too. No vitriol spewing required.
Yes, he could even be described as beloved. He is quoted constantly, and his quotes have a homey every person kind of vernacular that makes them relatable.
That's a false dichotomy. In reality, there are more options than just "be boring" or "be sensational." Those other options just aren't in fashion right now.
> Unfortunately for civil discourse, it’s more effective to create controversial messaging that resonates with your followers, than sanitized messaging that is generally inoffensive.
Those aren't the options. You can - and many do, as a matter of course - create effective, powerful messaging that is not 'sanitized' or offensive. You can see it all the time on HN.
> Worst thing? His influencing is central to his success.
Musk has been more unhinged in his online activities than ever in the past six months or so, coinciding with a 45% slide in TSLA share price. Hypothesizing that his social media addiction is central to his 'success' would be pretty easy to test by simply comparing TSLA's performance to another auto manufacturer, e.g. Ford or GM. Doing that, TSLA is not showing any advantage - all three have suffered about the same amount of share price decrease.
So just looking at the numbers, it's clear Musk could just focus entirely on productive work, skip the 'influencing' and wanton reputational damage to the businesses he manages, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. TSLA and the others would arguably be in the same place if the average person had no idea who Elon Musk was.
Not according to BusinessInsider [1] that notes that he lashes out in the media to cover particularly bad moments for Tesla. We saw this tactic being used over and over again during the previous Presidency. It works so well because there is only so much room ‘above the fold’. So as long as you fill it with a sensational nothingburger, then damage is controlled.
You make a good case that his real contribution is merely writing checks to smart people. I would argue, however, that this doesn't need to come along with his baggage in terms of his distracting social media activities. It's pure self indulgence on his part, and likely making a lot of smart people not interested in his money regardless of how big the checks are.
A company that brooks no criticism is no different from a Regime that does the same. It had better be involved in basic extractive activity, because more complicated ventures tend not to work if the become brittle like this.
This is such an astute and concise description of one of the reasons we're currently living in this bizarro world. It can be applied across American culture, to both sides of the political divide, and even brands are beginning to do this.
He’s the same old Elon, the pedo guy tweet and taking Tesla private at $420 are just as embarrassing if not more so , he’s just on the other side of the culture war divide now (I.e the Republican side) so he’s now considered shameful in many parts.
About his recent republican coming out: he knew a paper about his flight attendant story was about to come out. The journalists contacted him for comments before publishing. He didn’t comment but did this coming out PR stunt just before the article was published, so that he could pretend it was all made up to punish him joining republicans.
The journalists decided to publish the article anyway.
He’s lying and turning his fan base into hating the democrats who have nothing to do with the article.
That’s who he is, that’s what he does.
He’s lying and turning his fan base into hating the democrats who have nothing to do with the article.
Fair he's always been polarizing, but the size of the naysayers (and fanboys) seems to have grown quite a bit recently and I think it comes down to politics.
He’s also become the richest man in the world over the last few years (at least publicly known wealth). That tends to bring you a lot of attention. His politics isn’t the only thing that changed
> he’s just on the other side of the culture war divide now (I.e the Republican side) so he’s now considered shameful in many parts.
That's a defensive projection from both Musk and Republicans to incite his "new side" to arms and protect him implicitly from any criticism whether it's about labour rights or sexual harassment.
Maybe it's 4D chess to get the Cybertruck to be popular with the right wing.
But for most of us who are progressive and environmental, we have been pushing back against his ego and authoritarianism for years - worried that he is sabotaging his stated cause more than he is helping it.
For me the last straw was The Boring Company. I was still All In on Musk as a real-life Tony Stark who would make humanity interplanetary and solve the computer-brain barrier all the way up to Neuralink. Even Hyperloop seemed compelling if he could execute on it and seemed like it might be a clever hack to work around American resistance to high-speed rail.
The Boring Company revealed to me the self-aggrandizing fraud that he is.
Lots of civilizations have struggled with drug problems in the past. The Americas, China, India all had lots of problems with opium addictions during colonial times, IIRC. And of course the USA post-WWII has dealt with a slew of drug problems, from cocaine heroin to meth. How have past civilizations broken free from the yoke of drug addiction? Maybe we can take some cues from the past.
Seeing how smoking cigarettes went from being popular to being rare in a lots of places I would say:
1 - make it uncool (no more james bond smoking in cinemas, packaging that reminds of diseases)
2 - make it expensive (tax the hell out of it)
3 - make it a hassle (no smoking in closed spaces, airplanes, universities etc)
The thing is, both weed and social networks became popular right about when smoking stopped being popular. So maybe there is an extra step, a perverse one:
that's the thing, they don't break free without some exogenous factor that forces a total reckoning. e.g. China with opium, getting humiliated by western powers in the opium wars. this sort of thing always marks the end of a declining empire. even after the opium wars, it took a century before resurgence. stuff like trafficking drugs in China now are punishable by death, they've learned their lesson for sure.
> 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.
He's a hard boss for sure. That's why he is successful. He doesn't take your shit and pushes you to do your job at its maximum potential. Of course, you don't need to work there, McDonalds' is always hiring and I hear they will be nice to you.
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 for getting rich(er).
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.
> Hiring the right people to push the success of SpaceX and Tesla?
Probably this. Its not easy to do.
I think there is also something to be said about the singularity of vision Musk brought to these companies. Its easy to dismiss (and I haven't been a fan of him much since the whole Thailand incident) but its one of those annoying aspects that eludes the desire of developers' (i.e. the average reader of this site) desire to quantify everything.
It makes me think of the story of Steve Jobs after his return to Apple, where he called a meeting of team leads, made a quadrant on a white board with the edges labeled "desktop" and "portable" on the vertical, "consumer" and "professional" on the horizontal, and demanded the company only produce 1 product to fill each of the four squares, eliminating the rest.
> Hiring the right people to push the success of SpaceX and Tesla?
I'm obviously not a fan but I agree he likely deserves a lot of credit for this. But at the same time, don't a lot of people participate in hiring decisions throughout a company? The board? Other executives?
It irks me that Musk should get all the credit of what is undeniably a team effort.
If you read the book I think you'll agree, desperate is the correct word in the title of that book and Elon did plenty.
I still can't believe they're landing rockets backwards. When I took control systems it was the canonical example of an unstable system. Guess those books need updating. :)
Yeah - its important to set aside space where we can both recognize Elon has done some impressive things, but also rightfully point out he has consistently been a massive bellend.
Regarding the landing rockets issue, I've found BPS Space's youtube series on trying to land a model rocket in a similar matter very enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMT44LFUjs
>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).
The word we use to describe people-managing at this high level is "leadership".
lol - no he is not. Howard Hughes was mentally ill, didnt leave his house or shower (was a germaphobe), was super secretive (didnt meet people in person for years), never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane) and inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams.
Not his entire career, his later decline became famous due to the scope of wealth and influence that allowed him to indulge in some truly eccentric behavior, but he didn't build said wealth & influence peeing in jars.
> never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane)
Never built anything? How about Las Vegas? Or the several companies he founded and ran successfully across wildly divergent fields? The man designed, built and flew an aircraft that broke world speed records at the time.
> inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams
Seriously? Do you not know Musk's family background?
Actually the more I think about it the more I think mint2's comparison was apt, Musk really is a Hughes-like figure, quite brilliant in ways, but with a powerful thirst for publicity and corresponding need to control his image. I could see his paranoid tendencies tending to dominate in the years to come, especially if his halo fully disintegrates
A couple thousand when he left South Africa for Canada as a teenager. And then about $20,000 (10% of a $200,000 seed round) when starting Zip2. That's the extent of money given to him by his parents that wasn't spent for him during when he was being reared as a child.
> Seriously? Do you not know Musk's family background?
Musk hasn't inherited hardly any money at all (a couple thousand when he left SA and a bit more later when he started his first company). I think you're the one who doesn't know Musk's background.
Shocking lack of research on your part. His mother was a supermodel and his father was/is a fairly sketchy businessman. Despite knowing his father had a dark side, he still chose to be with him after their parents divorce, signaling where his true emotions lay:
"After Maye and Errol divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna."[0]
Musk tweets accuses random people of being pedophiles on Twitter and is legally not supposed to tweet anymore about certain topics without getting prior approval. He also exhibits paranoia and often a lack of being grounded in reality.
I didn’t say he is Howard 2.0 Hugh’s, I said he’s teetering on the edge of it. If in a few years he goes full Hughes would anyone actually be surprised?
Citation please. I've seen no actual concrete evidence that Elon inherited any significant sum of money from an "emerald mine." This seems to be one of those internet myths which lives on in forums despite no credible evidence.
What a lazy argument... Elon's father is a fairly sketchy individual, and his wealth had an obvious boost to Elon's life and upbringing.
"After Maye and Errol divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna"[0]
"Errol returned to South Africa with a half-share in a Zambian emerald mine, which would help to fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers." [2]
Nobody denies that Musk family was wealth. They were wealthy because his father was a successful engineer.
And at one point his father made a small investment in a mine. And even that is grounded on shaky evidence.
This mine investment might have been profitable (we dont know) but the idea that his family had some waste emrald mines is nonsense and that investment certainly didnt make the family rich.
And given their bad relationship, Elon lost support from his father when he came to US/Canada.
So your source is businessinsider? Elon himself says the story is bogus and when he came to the US, he came with nothing and ended up with 100k in student loan debt. And from where he lived and what he did, Elon was certainly not living some "rich man" lifestyle before the Zip2 and PayPal days, and no one who knew him in those days has shown any proof that Elon arrived in the US with any sort of wealth.
He's at his lowest point in the eyes of the media (which is how most of us see the world) but hes actually at the highest point in his career and achievements.
Tesla is about to explode in production with their "biggest building in the world factory" in texas, berlin and china.
SpaceX is about to achieve the holy grail of the space industry (an affordable and reusable rocket) not to mention Starlink.
Tesla has always been "about to explode" in one way or another. When will people realize that manufacturing businesses, when they are limited by property and equipment, are slow-burning?
Also, "reusable" doesn't matter as much as "affordable" for rockets. I am waiting for one of the smaller companies with a dirt cheap rocket to eat SpaceX's lunch.
That's actually not true. For example, the Russian Soyuz is expected to still have lower cost per kg to LEO than the Falcon rockets from SpaceX. Fuel is the vast majority of the cost of a rocket launch.
That's completely wrong. Fuel is a tiny fraction of a rocket launch. At best, SpaceX's Falcon 9 costs $15 million to refurbish and re-launch (according to Musk). About $200,000 of that is fuel. That works out to 1.3% of costs which is far from "the vast majority."
$200,000 is the cost of the atoms in the fuel. Most of the rest of the $15 million is the cost to get those atoms to the right temperature and pressure when they are stored at a different temperature and pressure, transport those atoms, and put them in the shell. Not to mention the cost of cleaning and coating the fuel tanks to make sure that they are inert and won't react to the fuel (this has to be done on non-reusable rockets too).
This is the typical sleight-of-hand that comes at Musk companies. The atoms in the fuel are cheap, but the process of turning those atoms into usable fuel is very expensive. This is the case for almost all rockets.
The Soyuz is partly cheap to launch because it doesn't need a lot of special fuel handling.
err, are you forgetting the cost to literally build a rocket? Or are you arguing somehow that fuel costs more than building the first stage of a rocket?
The idea somehow that Soyuz is cheaper than Falcon-9 is laughable.
You can buy the atoms from Sigma Aldrich or any other chemical supplier. You have to buy a lot of atoms, and you have to buy them by the liter.
If you want rocket fuel from those chemicals, you are going to have to pressurize them and cool them or warm them, and you need a lot of energy and equipment to do it. That is the expensive part. Often, rocket fuels are heavily pressurized orsupercooled, and supercooling a gas is expensive. That allows you to store more energy in a given volume.
Rather than digging in after your initial mistake, it'd be better to google it. This is a no-stakes random internet argument, so you've gotten the lesson cheap; but if you repeat the same mistake elsewhere you could do yourself a lot of harm.
And this is what i fail to understand. He has kept his nose clean, apart from some minor incidents ("pedo" tweet comes to mind). How does he have the time and why does he bother to spend his time making noise on Twitter. He should focus on the final push to get both of his major companies to the next level. It's almost as if he's gotten bored and wants to move on, but has to keep up the appearance of being involved in day-to-day managment of these companies
Tesla cars are garbage, speaking as a Tesla owner. They demo nicely, but they are put together poorly. The minute there's any meaningful competition they'll crumble.
Combined with the risks from their autopilot system and their mistreatment of workers and their CEO being a right wing edgelord? There's plenty of reasons to think Tesla might not be on a good path.
They've also been topping the lists of unreliability.
Many people like the things Tesla does well enough to not be bothered by the things it does poorly so are satisfied.
Tesla seems to have the best EV drivetrain in the business (I'm counting the battery as part of the drivetrain) and the best charging network, but seem to be worse in most other aspects.
My guess is that the other car companies will catch up on EV drivetrains faster than Tesla can catch up on the rest of a car.
They did top the lists, but they've dropped off as owners deal with the reality of owning them.
An electric car, competently built, will wow most folks. Remember that the satisfaction numbers are comparing apples to oranges, given the limited competition Tesla has at the moment.
This depends a lot on the factory / year of production. E.g. the 2021/2022 from Giga Shanghai have great quality. Of course, consistency is the key, Tesla has to achieve it across all of the factories.
And I have no idea what 'risks' are you talking about regarding autopilot.
On the contrary, I think Musks use of interviews and twitter has only helped him and his companies every step of the way. If you have been following him you have seen that he recently announced that he would be voting republican for the first time ever due to the change in the party stances of democrats and to expect backlash from announcing so. It funny that we are seeing exactly that backlash. Not two weeks ago people were also complaining that Musk wanted to reduce the work force by 10 % and have people work from the office, although those may have been separate things, I believe the 10% reduction was a leaked e-mail. The backlash there also seemed unusual, and I only attribute it to his political stance, as his company has lost around 50% of its value on the stock market, along with most of the other tech related stocks and it was almost as if he correctly predicted the further decline of the market in general we have seen lately. His responses to that seemed incredibly reasonable, a reduction in workforce and costs and measure to improve productivity. And yet as I said the response was not well taken in the media or online, it seems in my opinion to have started once people were made aware of his political stance. A stance which he says has always been consistent whether voting democrat or republican, it’s just that the parties have shifted in certain ideologies a I think we can all remember when democrats were the free speech party and now that opposite appears to be true.
Meh. Any group has their wacky extremist. Their existence is nothing new.
I just listened to a Vox Conversation where the guest said fat phobia wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for black people or slavery. It was insane and I felt like I lost IQ listening to it; but it would be naive to think the other ends of the political spectrum isn’t also crazy. That’d be like saying Alex Jones represents the Republican Party.
Elon describes himself as a moderate, the closer to the center you are the easier it is to go back and forth over the party line. Don’t read too much into it.
>The letter asked SpaceX management to publicly separate the company from Mr. Musk’s personal brand, and to take steps to address what it said was a gap between SpaceX’s stated values and its current systems and company culture.
>“Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable,”
So it was a mass internal email chain, using company resources? And it sounds like they were asking Musk to be gone, with plausibly deniability. Is it honestly any surprise that they got fired? Hijacking internal systems for a publicity stunt like this will always put a target on your back.
Surprised? No. There's no large company in the world where attacking top management won't lead to major consequences.
Of course, SpaceX (and Google, along with a stack of other "tech" companies) wasn't supposed to be just another large company; they wanted to disrupt things, and wanted fanatical buy-in from their employees, customers, and fans. (Corporate fans? Really?)
It'll take a while, because religions don't die easily, but eventually it will become clear to anyone except the die-hard that it's just another company.
Say you work for General Motors. You can gripe about management all you want, but there's no expectation that you are going to be able to send out a company-wide memo saying the board should boot the CEO.
Now say you work for Tesla, or one of the other companies that is desperately trying to hang on to their "startup culture" as they get bigger. For that, it's vital that you buy into the mission, believe that you personally are changing the world.
The other half of that intellectual and emotional investment is the feeling that you have control and input. If the company makes a business deal that you don't agree with, you threaten to organize a walk-out; if the CEO is behaving like an idiot (and not like your own lovable idiot), you feel like you can get everyone together to tell the board to boot him. After all, you, personally, are changing the world.
But that's not how it works in a company that won't fit entirely into a single conference room. You as an employee may have dedicated your life to the company, and you may think the company should be responsive to you. But that's not how it works (see example 1 above), you just haven't realized it yet.
He's saying SpaceX is just another company. They demand full loyalty (fealty?) from their employees, effectively creating a religion. They shouldn't be surprised when their employees actually expect the company to be different. Now the whole world can see SpaceX is just like Every. Single. Other. Company.
So much for "changing the world." You're not changing the corporate world, that's for sure!
You missed the point. They're not changing the world and they have a cult. The old way also benefits from cults. They are the old way. No change. All they did was make things (in their microenvironment) worse by adding the cult aspect.
So If it's a shared belief / mission and it's not your perspective it's a cult? Are you saying people should just work for the money and not the company? That doesn't seem to make sense. If your goal, is more capital, you want the firm you're a part of to succeed to take part in that.
The reality of it is there are a lot of extremely well paid people across the US that wear the emotions on their sleeves and take everything as a slight these days. This is the course correction, you're going to see it more and more.
Just as extremists have been saying about social media if you don't like it, go build your own.
I think you may be surprised at how many regular everyday people would vote "no" if asked the question "are SpaceX employees members of a literal cult?" Either we're all in on the cult, or you're using hyperbole.
I think you may be surprised at how many regular everyday people believe in astrology. Yeah, people are morons and can't apply definitions or see blatant horseshit for what it is, moving on. Truth isn't a fucking democracy.
Yeah, populism is quite a constant throughout history. People love having a savior and a hero, as demagogue as they might be.
I find it interesting how this populism takes shape in the tech industry. It manifests as companies pretending to be all about mission, community, changing the world, billionaires pretending to be pro-freedom, capitalists pretending to be anti-establishment...
> There's no large company in the world where attacking top management won't lead to major consequences.
What's interesting to me is that capitalists and usually conservatives and libertarians who worship capitalism are all too vocal when it comes to socialist and communist economic policies supposedly leading to fascism, although they don't, but yet, they are fully behind corporations literally acting as fascist dictatorships. And by interesting, I mean it boggles my mind and frustrates me. It shows these peoples' true colors: greed at all costs.
My politics are probably more aligned with yours than theirs, but if you're open to being unboggled:
It's easy to draw a categorical divide between authorities who are (ostensibly) submitted to voluntarily or transactionally; and authorities whose power is asserted by sovereign monopoly of force.
Many social organizations from families, to churches, to corporations are essentially authoritarian, but (conceptually if not always practically) you're able to remove yourself from them straightforwardly.
Perhaps too harsh? If you have a more eloquent way or a different angle, I would love to hear it. (Seriously. Comments like these can come off catty or sarcastic in text only, but I'm genuinely asking. Haha.)
I don't think anyone actually believes that a "free speech absolutist" would tolerate, say, an employee shouting racial slurs in the office through a megaphone. I guess this is supposed to be a "gotcha" about free speech absolutism, but if you're attacking a definition of the term that no one would actually endorse, then maybe it's not a good "gotcha"...
I had to look up what a free speech absolutist was[0]. As far as the definition goes, which is about opposing any speech restrictions from the state, I don't see how the internal communications of a private company falls under that.
The point I assume GP was trying to make is that Musk only applies that difference when it suits him. That attitude shows hypocrisy and is evidence that he’s using it to further personal power instead of actually caring about the moral philosophy of the matter.
He seems to treat his own speech as if it is completely unfettered by any restraint, regardless of consequences for self or company (see the sheer number of times he’s upset the SEC via tweet compared to any other C-level in the world), while restraining the shit out of his subordinates’.
The SEC is a federal organization (government), so Musk thumbing his nose at them in the public sphere is not the same as Musk's employees thumbing their nose at him in a private setting using company resources. The former is clearly in the realm of free speech (gov vs citizen in public space), while the latter isn't (citizen vs citizen in private space)
Edit: To put it more succinctly, Musk isn’t interested in free speech, he’s interested in his speech.
————
For what it’s worth, I agree with you, but I think that’s one of the least interesting parts of the issue.
From the context of the worker, there’s isn’t too much of a functional difference. Musk is acting as the arbiter of others’ speech. So he’s allowing anybody to say anything, unless it goes against the company line.
It’s not governmental control of the little people, but it’s still hella control of the little people, by a body that can’t be held responsible to the workers (the chances of Elon being voted out are nil).
Ultimately, I think we’re both agreeing that there can and should be social consequences for speech, it’s just that Elon has an army of well paid lawyers to help him avoid those consequences. In this case, the giant power imbalance seems like pretty fundamental framing to this issue. It’s not like both parties would suffer the same consequences for making the same statements.
(In short, if you don’t trust the government to regulate your speech, why on Earth would you trust a single unelected individual to do so?)
Remember the whole thing about Musk buying Twitter? One if his reasons for doing so was because he believes Twitter is "censoring" conservative speech. But Twitter is a private company, running a private service, so your strict government-focused interpretation of free speech clearly wouldn't apply.
Musk has stated in his own words that he is a "free speech absolutist", and given his complaints about Twitter it seems that his interpretation of that is not limited to government censorship, but all censorship.
But Musk has loudly stated that Twitter, a private company, should uphold equally strong standards towards freedom of speech as the state. Which in itself is a fair argument insofar as Twitter is so central to democratic discourse that its censorship will have destructive effects on democratic discourse comparable to what would happen if state censorship did.
But this leads to a pretty blatant double standard if he fires his employees for participating in public discussion and criticism of himself.
Never sending another "unsolicited" email or slack message at work ever again for fear of being accused of "Hijacking internal systems" to ask Johnson for an update on the sales report.
To those arguing that this letter is tantamount to insubordination and is therefore a fireable offense:
“Insubordination (noun)- refusing to obey orders from someone in authority.” [1]
Unless they had received direct orders not to criticize Musk at all, internally or externally, they are not guilty of refusing to obey orders. And if they had received such orders, that only adds to Musk’s burgeoning reputation for pettiness and immaturity, in which case these are the kinds of orders one could be forgiven for disobeying.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> How is Musk spitting in their face? By shitposting on twitter? By voting for the wrong candidate?
You're asking questions that were answered in the letter:
"Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks... As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values."
His behavior devalues their work and denigrates the image of the companies they work for.
Er no, as employees they're also paid partly in stock options (RSUs?). They're literal shareholders in the company, they have a say in how it's run.
And I don't know about you, but many people don't just run away when faced with a difficult situation - they face it head on and try to improve it.
Furthermore, if I spent years of my life contributing to a mission that I believe in, giving a company my best work, I'm not going to just walk away because of the actions of a single entitled individual, no matter how rich he is.
So employees compensated by their employer via stock options are entitled to attempt to sabotage their company’s leadership from within without repercussion?
They're not trying to sabotage anything. They're asking for SpaceX to disassociate itself from statements made by Musk, an individual, which harm the company.
Well yes, they need to get over themselves to the extent that they even thought their letter was appropriate in the first place, and would have no negative consequences for themselves.
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.
Technically, the organization belongs to a group of shareholders, of which Musk is one. And apparently, Musk is now a minority owner.[1] And as chairman and CEO, Musk has a fiduciary duty to the other owners to act in the best interests of the company. I would argue that he failing to abide by that directive by failing to apply the "no assholes" policy to himself (along with the other points the letter makes), thereby harming recruitment and branding efforts.
Also, you're comparing complaints about the company's double standards with a cleaner complaining about shitty interior design? Do you really think those two things are equivalent?
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell on Monday said the aerospace company's "no a--hole" work policy ensures everyone is heard and creates space for staff to propose big ideas.
"At SpaceX, we have a 'no a--hole' policy," Shotwell said in a virtual speech to graduates in Northwestern University's 2021 commencement ceremony. "These kinds of people — a--holes — interrupt others, they shut down or co-opt conversation, and they create a hostile environment where no one wants to contribute," Shotwell said. She is also SpaceX's chief operating officer.
Interrupting others stifles innovation and stops people solving difficult problems, Shotwell said.
"In short, the best way to find solutions to hard problems is to listen harder, not talk louder," she said. "Embrace the ideas of your fellow workers, especially when they differ greatly from yours."
> And in the context of SpaceX, how exactly has he been "an asshole"?
Why does it matter whether his actions are in the context of SpaceX? He is associated with his companies (and vice-versa) to a greater extent than probably any other current head of business. Separating Musk from his companies in the minds of the public would be an exercise in futility, and his personal branding and thirst for public attention seem designed to encourage this. Therefore, every public action he takes has an effect on each of his companies, including SpaceX, regardless of whether said action took place "in the context of" those companies.
With that said, here are some of Musk's "greatest hits":
1. The tweet comparing Bill Gates to the pregnant man emoji [1]
2. referring to the guy who rescued the Thai cave divers as a "pedo" [2]
3. committing securities fraud [3]
4. tweeting that he'd start a STEM school called Texas Institute of Technology & Science (aka TITS) in an industry already rife with casual sexism [4]
5. implying that Tesla employees would lose their stock options if they unionized [5]
6. branding Tesla's driver assist technology as "autonomous", implying it requires no human intervention and therefore meets the criteria for full self-driving. [6]
The above actions range from needlessly trollish to outright illegal. One could argue that you don't build multiple billion-dollar companies without being an asshole to some of the people some of the time, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue that these are not the actions of an asshole.
> Why does it matter whether his actions are in the context of SpaceX?
Well it does matter, because these people consciously came to work at HIS company.
It's like people that move into a noisy neighbourhood and then start to complain about the noise.
Elon is eccentric, yes he tweets some things that people don't like, but he's also built friggin SpaceX...
Unless he's specifically done something to the people at SpaceX then I really don't think they've got anything to complain about... it smells of entitlement and the outrage culture that's appeared in recent years.
Well, you could say the same about all dictatorships, whether organizations or countries: if you don't like it, leave it (unless you can't, e. g. North Korea). But I think this argument is flawed, to say the least. After all, an employment contract (and labour law in general) acts both ways - it's not a subordination of an employee to an employer.
Workers (especially the average HN reader) have incredible power to fight back… find a new job and switch companies. Lots a companies are hiring even with the macro economic issues.
From an employee perspective it’s insane to me that one would put so much energy into fighting their leadership rather than just leaving the company for a better one.
> Workers (especially the average HN reader) have incredible power to fight back… find a new job and switch companies.
Outside of the tech industry (and even then), this ain't anywhere near as easy as you assert. Lots of companies are "hiring"... for positions with shit pay and inflated qualifications.
> From an employee perspective it’s insane to me that one would put so much energy into fighting their leadership rather than just leaving the company for a better one.
From an employee perspective it's insane to me that one would be entirely oblivious to both the risks inherent in quitting (especially given the current economic conditions) and the notion that maybe people might like everything about their company aside from one or two things that need changed.
That's quite a reach, this was posted in an internal Teams channel and leaked. The original authors might not have wanted to become "some sort of public martyr".
There's this long lost dark art known as "tact." Folks who came of age after the advent of social media seem to be completely unfamiliar with it.
It's something you use when trying to address a delicate subject whilst minimizing the blowback. Calling out the head of your organization publicly via a scathing open letter would not be it.
"SpaceX, the private rocket company, on Thursday fired employees who helped write and distribute an open letter criticizing the behavior of chief executive Elon Musk, said three employees with knowledge of the situation."
First paragraph of the article.
And of course there is also this, "In an email, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”"
That doesn't answer the question, obviously. An open letter shared in a private medium is not public. I get the impression that neither the general public nor Musk himself were the intended audience of the letter.
I find the entire notion of calling for the CEO's ouster with "tact" a bit disingenuous.
Flip it over: if you worked for Apple and wrote and circulated an open letter criticizing Tim Cook's advocacy of LGBTQ rights, what would happen?
I bet you'd be fired.
I said the same thing by the way about the guy who got fired from Google for circulating a misogynistic rant about female engineers. That was also stupid and unprofessional at the very least.
Politics at work can be generally problematic. Political rants at work that criticize leadership or coworkers or are broadly offensive are probably going to get you fired.
Strawman to compare criticizing a gay man’s LGBT advocacy to asking a leader to stop being a jackass on Twitter. I am sure board members have made the same statements to Musk because there is fiduciary responsibility to not alienate your customers. As a shareholder in Tesla, I would love to see Musk get off of Twitter.
These people can go work for other employers, or even start competing businesses. This type of agitative behavior is detrimental to productivity and serves no purpose. If they wanted the company to succeed so much why didn’t they just become management themselves and have a positive impact that way?
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.
"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.
> 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" ?
> 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.
> 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.
There's surely two orders of magnitude more people working in academia than in rocket science. Does your argument prove, then, that SpaceX is not the real world, either?
We are all in the same world; this whole "you are not real enough" argument is ridiculous, and doesn't really mean anything.
People working at a rocket company work under the same basic value structure that a person working at a concrete company does.
People in academia do not. The fact that you missed this and thought comparing the number of people in a particular industry subset of a capitalistic enterprise to academia would somehow prove a point basically shows me how poor the thought/logic skills are in academia... The one thing they're supposed to be better at.
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.
> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?
If you are attempting to compare liberties those in academia have to corporate employees e.g. most people who are employed, no its not like the "real world".
I'm not the person you're responding to, but yes I would argue academia is not the real world i.e. private sector companies. Its academia. There are a whole different set of rules because it is not a privately run for-profit company. And nothing ever happens specifically because that's absolutely par for the course in academia. There's a whole different culture there.
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.
I’d argue that a university is a very different type of organization than a company like SpaceX, with vastly different expectations on employee behavior.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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!
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Even so, they're not protected against being fired -- circulating an internal letter criticizing leadership is, in a right to work state without existing workplace union agreements and outside of a whistleblower or other protected situation, enough to get you fired, though not fired for cause. Are the optics bad? Yes. Is it indicative that "free speech absolutist" Musk believes your right to speech ends where his feelings get hurt? Certainly! But there isn't much the employees can do other than claim unemployment and then bring their talents to a competitor.
Except for Montana, every state in the US is an at-will employment state. Meaning the employer (and the employee) may terminate employment at any time, with or without cause or prior notice. In circumstances like this, the idea of "X is enough to get you fired" loses its meaning, since "X" could mean anything or nothing at all.
Therefore, the relevant question is not "is the company within its rights to fire these employees", but rather "was it a good idea for the company to fire these employees".
Somewhat untrue in theory. Completely untrue in practice. There are a few things you legally cannot be fired for, and a whole plethora of things a company would need to very very careful about firing you for, lest they wind up in court.
Which makes this whole thread hilarious, because so many people are implying wrongful termination, which, to your point, doesn't really matter. Unless of course the individual is a protected class.
Firing someone for belonging to a protected class is only one of many types of wrongful termination. There are several other types of illegal terminations.
There are also laws that prohibit employers from punishing employees in certain circumstances relating to organizing/petitioning when in regard to concerns about workplace issues.
For example:
>You have the right to act with co-workers to address work-related issues in many ways. Examples include: [...] joining with co-workers to talk directly to your employer, to a government agency, or to the media about problems in your workplace
And in many of those states, you can be fired for simply being gay or trans.
edit: Given how fast this post hit -4, I have to assume that these people are *OK* with being able to fire gay or trans people at a whim. That ain't cool, one bit.
What other organization wouldn't let go of someone under these circumstances? Are there any employees that openly, pulicaly and very vocally criticize their leadership
Imagine working with someone like this? If you've been in an organization with people are constantly getting into flame wars about political issues, its incredibly distracting to those that want to get work done.
Some people buy the whole "we're a family" HR spin, but its not true. You're there to do a job and you're paid to do so.
The organizations that are worth working at don't have employees who have a reason to publicly criticize their leaders because their leaders effectively manage internal affairs internally.
Yeah people give him the benefit of the doubt that the is meeting his fiduciary obligations because he's CEO. They assume if the CEO does it, it's good for what he wants for his companies. We know it's more about his ego but are we going to argue that fiduciary obligation isn't enforced to people who are obviously part of a death cult?
Yep, exactly right. Instead SpaceX gets Gwynne acting as Musk’s mouthpiece/enforcer. I would kill to know how she really feels about all this considering that the company is primarily her success.
Give me an example of someone doing this in another organization. Would you be willing to share your organization and any criticism you have of leadership?
I don't have any complaints about my current organization, but whenever I feel something has transgressed my personal code of ethics I'm first very vocal about it internally and if necessary externally. I've only ever left companies voluntarily after this, and most have made efforts for me to stay. And it's not like I've been working at the most progressive companies ever.. maybe just don't work at a Musk company.
Google has fired plenty of people for openly criticizing them. I never said an organization will necessarily fire someone for openly criticizing leadership. It's a case by case but within their right.
I personally think its obnoxious and counterproductive for someone to call management out publicly. That's no way to operate an organization. Its a sign that someone is toxic. Some orgs like Bridgewater tried that but that's def not a place I would want to work. The appropriate channels and structure exist for a reason. They're not perfect but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better than everyone else
> I personally think its obnoxious and counterproductive for someone to call management out publicly. That's no way to operate an organization. Its a sign that someone is toxic.
Seems like we have come to the real root of things! We can agree to disagree.
Interesting! What would you do if, for example, the leadership of your company said they were going to start implementing illegal policies preferring people of certain races or sexes for job reqs? Would you say nothing? Leave?
Chances are it won't be found to be retaliation against workers organizing for working conditions with less drama. Even if it is and they get fined, for them it's just a fee.
Basecamp and github most recently off the top of my head. IIRC one of Basecamp's founders is about the same ballpark as Musk and was called out to his face at a company meeting and on the other side Github kept the Nazi sympathizer who criticized the Jewish employee for complaining about Nazis, but fired the HR decision maker and tried to rehire the Jewish employee.
Yeah it's not about progressive vs conservative, it's industry vs workers. The managers who are good to their workers get weeded out before making it to the top.
Common. If your CEO is making extremely inflammatory political statements publicly, and you don’t agree with those statements you are kind of in a dilemma. You either remain silent and and be perceived as broadly agreeing with—or at least tolerating—the CEO’s statements, or you speak out against them. In either case you are making a political decision.
Elon Musk put his workers in this dilemma and he should have expected a subset of them to speak out critically against him. I honestly don’t know other large organizations in our industry that is in the same situation, so there is really nothing to compare it with.
> Musk believes your right to speech ends where his feelings get hurt?
It could be that Musk recognises that a significant group of his staff - likely the majority - simply don't want a loud minority group - possibly a tiny minority - "making waves" and intimidating others into joining their cause.
I've just started Nassim Nicholas Taleb's latest book, but in previous work he wrote about "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority"[0]
This example could easily be one of those instances.
Back in the old days(!) one was expected to do one's job well, to treat others professionally - and to expect others to treat you well - but don't bring your private causes into the workplace and expect everyone to love you for it. Do what you like on your own time, but on the company's time, follow the rules.
> Back in the old days(!) one was expected to do one's job well, to treat others professionally - and to expect others to treat you well - but don't bring your private causes into the workplace and expect everyone to love you for it.
Excluding of course, the CEO of the company in question. He can say anything he wants, fight with and call people pedophiles on Twitter, run a crypto pump and dump scheme, spread pandemic conspiracies, etc etc etc to the point that investors in his companies have spoken up about it and now his own employees are writing letters. That behavior is totally professional and ok.
Also worth noting that in “the old days,” the sphere of “treating others professionally” didn’t encompass women, gays, blacks, Jews, and other ethnic, religious, or social minorities — and protesting that was considered “bringing your private causes into the workplace.”
> It could be that Musk recognises that a significant group of his staff - likely the majority - simply don't want a loud minority group - possibly a tiny minority - "making waves" and intimidating others
That's also Twitter's policy on trolling and harassment which his totally sincere "free speech absolutism" seeks to end.
Intimidation isn't asking fellow employees if they agree with the content of an open letter, it's public figures calling a blogger and telling them if their blog criticising Tesla isn't taken down, their totally unrelated boss will be getting a phone call . Guess which one Musk personally involved himself in...
Like... send email circular asking people if they wanted to participate in a survey and maybe sign an open letter posted on SpaceX communication channels you mean?
So far, the only person who has suggested employees felt intimidated is the COO defending the decision to fire them. Just in case you were inclined to actually believe that her priority was to encourage employees to speak out against harassment and not intimidate them into silence she added that the company had "too much critical work to accomplish", no place for "activism" and told remaining employees to "stay focused",
I mean, I accept it's theoretically possible the real intimidation wasn't the COO firing 5 people for the "unacceptable" sending of emails asking people if they agreed with their views about management and the anti-harassment policy "during the work day", but I'm going to file that one away under very unlikely
Q: Are there (m)any COOs who think their companies should focus on activism and not, you know, actual work?
Perhaps people who support activism should just start their own companies - as majority shareholders they could easily mandate that management specify time to be spent on activism... no need for focus.
> If you want to organise an open letter, put it up somewhere public, tell everyone involved, and wait for people to sign it? Or not, it's their choice.
> Perhaps people who support activism should just start their own companies
Got it. Employees should sort of organise an open letter and tell everyone involved but also not organise an open letter or tell anyone because how employees spend their waking hours and what they should think is up to management.
Also, sending an email circular asking people to sign a petition is intimidation, but telling people that activism is an "unacceptable" loss of focus whilst announcing firings is all about protecting people from intolerance of other viewpoints.
I mean, employers can and do fire people all the time for embarrassing the company, though doing it for criticising the CEO and insufficiently strong protections from harassment tends to be dodgy ground. But the idea that they're doing so to promote tolerance is the most Orwellian bullshit take imaginable. Popper's paradox of tolerance is about what level of safeguard is necessary to prevent free speech democracies from collapsing, not making it clear that people aren't allowed to criticise their boss and especially not on company time.
It's not clear whether employees should be using company resources and company time to organise against the company or its management. Is that something we think is a given right? If so, why?
There is a reason that during a (legitimate!) strike pickets have to stand off their employer's property. We had that in the 70s with the NUM, we had that in 2010 when BA strikers were prohibited from entering (private) Heathrow property[1]
> the idea that they're doing so to promote tolerance is the most Orwellian bullshit take imaginable
1) there's quite a lack of tolerance left of centre, and 2) context is everything.
Your starter for ten: I'll give you a quote, so without searching, take a wild guess who said it...
> "Everybody understands all lives matter. Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement."
Indeed. The context has nothing to do with weird digressions about the tolerance of the left or picket line legislation in the UK. The context is that a company fired some people for sending emails criticising a CEO with a long track record of being even less tolerant of criticism than the average CEO whilst asserting it's unacceptable for staff to question the company's anti-harassment policies. The context is the CEO also has a track record of threatening to get people who never worked with him fired from their completely unrelated job if they don't take their blog posts criticising him and his company down. Stating that he may be legally entitled to do this is one thing. Citing the paradox of tolerance to argue that cancelling people who criticise Elon Musk and ruling out the possibility of debate on SpaceX harassment policy is in fact compatible with "free speech absolutism", because email circulars questioning the boss' behaviour and harassment policies (or blogging on SeekingAlpha, I guess) intimidates people is... something else entirely.
I think that it's interesting that you cite "the most intolerant win" and assume that it applies to those trying to change the workplace today and not the de facto work place that you so cherished.
This isn't entirely applicable here - the minority group isn't being picky, they are alleging misconduct.
Also, that linked post is something else. In the span of one really long essay, he went from halal food, to trying to intellectually rehabilitate Brexit, to a maximally-extended version of the Paradox of Tolerance, and then finally to disproving the right-libertarian thesis that market manipulation is impossible. I genuinely can't tell if this is brilliantly considered, or just authoritarian right-wingers trying to specifically feed me propaganda.
Isn't a group of 1 still a minority? Isn't Musk himself a loud minority of the company who wields lots of power? Isn't SpaceX in this case already a Dictatorship of the Small Minority?
Funny you mention reality. I don't even consider Musk Republican, but let's assume that for the sake of argument. Latest generic congressional polling has Republicans leading by handful of points.
As Terry Pratchett so wonderfully put it in Making Money (Discworld #36)[0], there is "a piece of ancient magic called [..] fifty-one percent of the shares".
As far as what happens at SpaceX goes, Musk isn't the minority. He's the (?? 78%) majority owner.
So, if you work at SpaceX and don't like him, I think the options boil down to: a) suck it up, or b) find somewhere else to work ...
... or maybe c) leave and start your own SpaceX? We all know competition is good. Of course in that case you'll really have Skin In The Game[1] - and coincidentally that's the Taleb book I've been reading this afternoon.
> Is it indicative that "free speech absolutist" Musk believes your right to speech ends where his feelings get hurt? Certainly!
I don't really get how musk's feelings on free speech apply here. SpaceX is not the government, and it's not a communications platform. I also think it's unfair to say "his feelings are hurt" - it seems perfectly logical to get rid of employees that so strongly disagree with the way the company is being run.
And I have to wonder, why even work there if that's how you feel? This just looks like another example of a group of people who have "problems" with their company but don't want to give up the pay that it provides them.
I think it’s probably even worse than that, it’s a group of people wanting attention and publicity, using a cause that an Elon hating mainstream can use, for mutually helping each other.
I principled person would at least quit before making a scene in the media, rather than spamming many people in the company.
This is look at me behaviour coupled with politics at its worse.
Oh but there is more employees can do than just work elsewhere for some other indifferent, childish blowhard; employees could not work until these childish snowflakes are dealt with.
Real trade can happen without the speculation game. Some people may not get to build rocket engines in such a system but the species doesn’t owe a minority of first world engineers everything they want anymore than it owes an even smaller minority of billionaires.
The propaganda has worked really well; you seem to actually believe human agency is coupled only to the money making endeavors before us today.
Past technology is a joke relative to ours and so will these fancy things we make today seem to the future. Fleeing Earth on rockets is not the only path. It’s the only path we are allowed to speak to. Alternatives would cause the wrong people to lose privilege and power.
Of course they are. Concerted workplace activity to improve workplace conditions is protected under NLRB. It's literally the definition of protected activity.
Could this be a protected concerted activity? In the US, there are some basic protections when two or more employees work together to improve the conditions of their employment. I don't know what does or doesn't qualify for this protection, though.
And there are probably not clearly defined rules for this. What would need to happen now is for them to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and that group could make a ruling about whether this is protected activity or not.
The NLRB would like a word with you. They've held that public complaints might qualify as protected activity - and "right to work" doesn't get you a get-out-of-jail-free card for that. The key is that this was "concerted" activity - a group of employees, not a single individual grousing.
I strongly hope the fired individuals do look into getting a labor lawyer representing them.
An open letter like this puts management in a difficult position. I'm going to discuss that without considering other perspectives, to keep the comment on point, please don't read that as endorsement of either the system or, well, anything else.
The most powerful response is to have a top level stakeholder meeting, identify changes from the letter which need to be made, then: fire everyone who wrote the letter, and make those changes.
This sends the message that management is responsive to worker complaints, and will also send you packing immediately if you defect on the company by making anything public which should be an internal matter.
If they do only one of these things, it's either demoralizing or mutiny. Neither of those outcomes is good, one is completely unacceptable. So this is what happens.
I'm not sure it's clear that the people who are being fired are directly responsible for the letter being made available to the media. From what I can tell, the letter was circulated internally by the authors and leaked by an unknown number of individuals. If by "defect on the company" you mean "leak the letter", then the company appears to be punishing the wrong people.
One could argue that those writing the letter should have known it would be leaked. But you could also say that about any kind of internal criticism. I'd counter that this argument has the 2nd-order effect of preventing any kind of internal criticism, constructive or otherwise, lest it be leaked at some point in the future.
Not to mention, the "demoralizing" label could also be applied to Musk's public behavior, which is the bulk of the point that the letter and its authors are making.
> you defect on the company by making anything public which should be an internal matter.
I assume they tried making it an internal matter before going public. Pushing your employees to have the feeling they need to go public instead of being able to solve this internally is a failure of the company.
Yeah a lot of people have a very authoritarian bent without realizing it. For many people it is hard to find any example of protest or dissent from the less powerful about the more powerful, ever being acceptable unless it is the type of protest that is easily ignored.
"This should have been kept internal, where we could have fired you without publicity"
I wouldn’t assume that - this was well publicized. That publicity had only one purpose — to put pressure on management to act. But I doubt the authors anticipated this particular action.
THat's not how the term "insubordination" is used in the context of employment.
Insubordination also might be "Directly questioning or mocking management decisions". [1]
Another example: 5 insubordination in the workplace examples [2]
1. Refusal to complete a task
2. Refusal to come into work
3. Refusal to remain at work
4. Disrespecting authority figures
5. Sabotaging team or organizational activities
The authors aren't mocking Musk at all. The tone of the letter is professional yet direct and constructive. As far as questioning "management decisions", the closest example of this that I can find is the mention of the company's selective application of things like the "No Assholes" policy, which seems like a completely valid problem to surface. For the most part, they're questioning his tweets and their effect on employee morale.
As for the 2nd example- which of those 5 points are the letter's authors guilty of? The only one of those 5 that looks even remotely relevant is #4, but even that's a stretch since there's a difference between "criticizing" and "disrespecting".
Musk might believe those two things are one and the same, but they are, in fact, quite different.
I never said they are, and that's not why they were fired. From the article: "The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views," Ms. Shotwell wrote.
Maybe, but I suspect he may turn his followers ire on the accounts operator "Firstname Lastname (picture) in $City has an bot that tweets my location, putting my life in danger. Not cool"
It's a pretty simple universal rule that you don't try to make your boss look bad. And doing so is a great way to end your employment.
I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Whether what they said is right or wrong it was still damaging to the owner of the company and the company's reputation as well.
Its like the Tesla guy who was fired a few months back. Yeah it was his own car. Yeah it was on his own time. But he, a tesla employee was making the company look bad by uploading videos of the car failing to self drive to Youtube.
You don't get to not be a representative of your company just because you are off the clock. If people know that you work for X company then anything you say or do may be seen through the lens of "An X company employee"
> You don't get to not be a representative of your company just because you are off the clock. If people know that you work for X company then anything you say or do may be seen through the lens of "An X company employee"
But that’s exactly the point that the letter’s authors are making about Musk himself, and his tweets. Either the same rule applies equally to both Musk and his employees, or there’s an unfair double standard which should be remedied.
It doesn't work that way when one of them owns the company. If Musk were CEO then maybe they would have a point. But Musk isn't CEO. In fact I don't think he's an employee of SpaceX at all. He is the majority owner of the company. The most important of the investors. And legally speaking the company has a duty to him, not the other way around. CEO's can and do get fired for making companies look bad. Happens all the time. You can't fire an owner.
Now we can discuss how we think it ought to work all day long. But that is how it does work today. It's not an even relationship and never has been. The guy signing the checks gets to decide if he wants to employee you. If people decide that he's a dick and don't want to work for him then he will find it hard to hire good talent.
> SpaceX has fired at least five employees who were involved with circulating a letter around the company that was critical of CEO Elon Musk…[1]
Further, if this link is to be believed, he is no longer a majority owner of SpaceX:
> According to filings that SpaceX has made with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Musk currently owns 43.61% of SpaceX's outstanding stock as of August 2021.[2]
Musk is free speech warrior that's why he is about to be taken to the cleaners on this Twitter deal.
...except when that free speech is a respectful letter crafted by his employees asking him to tone down his social media because it's reflecting poorly on their work.
I think we're in agreement. I made a similar point in another reply in this thread. I argued that talking about whether the firings are legal is irrelevant since most states have at-will employment laws, and that a more useful question is "are these firings a good idea?"
The SpaceX President claims that the fired employees repeatedly spammed a large number of employees during paid time[1].
> "Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters
> and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable."
I appreciate their spirit, because I think Elon is being juvenile and distracting, but this seems cut-and-dry.
Because, in the absence of other evidence, it's the best take I have.
Also, if the SpaceX president's statement is false, then the fired people probably have a lawsuit to file. Would the SpaceX president be that dumb? Maybe.
It's not about "taking their claims at face value", it's highlighting those claims because that's the one thing that might actually make this firing stick. If the claims are accurate, the employees can't claim that the letter was "protected activity" relating to workplace conditions.
SpaceX is the most ambitious company on Earth, working toward the goal of making humans a multi-planetary species.
Their orders are to get to Mars.
Employees that are bikeshedding, sowing internal discord, engaging in mutiny, are not working toward the goal and in fact actively hindering it. That's all the reason needed to prune them from the otherwise focused and ambitious team.
Musk himself isn't "bikeshedding" and "sowing internal discord" with his behavior? I've worked at companies before, and if you've ever worked at a company you'd know garbage flows down from the top. His behavior as an executive affects everyone and the company's goals.
You could make the argument his twitter use is distracting from the mission and I agree in part. I think it's hard to say whether it's a net negative or positive for SpaceX and Tesla, because a lot of what he posts is about those companies. It might be better if he just stuck to that.
First off, I don’t think the average twitter user is in the market for a rocket so I don’t see the point. Second, the target demographic of Tesla is not people who are all in on voting Republican, they are a lot more likely to be affluent eco conscious types, so Elon shitposting about politics is definitely not great for the brand.
But Elon's hyperbolic tweets and offensive behavior don't actively hinder getting to Mars? I mean, he's the guy running the company, you'd think what he says and does would have a lot more influence over the success or failure of the company's goals.
Whether they are offensive is a personal opinion and it's fully your choice whether to take offense.
Personally I don't. I also don't take offense at anything Chris Rock or Ricky Gervais says. Others do take offense to what they say. That's their choice, their opinion, and not one that can or should be enforced on others.
But the point is his behavior causes problems and you're implying it's okay for him to act that way but anyone else to call him out is a problem. That doesn't foster good workplace values.
What those comedians say has zero effect on your career. Like it or not, Musk represents his employees. His childish babbling is actively hurting the reputation of the company these people work for. Thus, it is affecting their careers.
I'm not saying what they did is right or wrong but your outright dismissal of their (valid IMHO) concerns is missing lots of nuance.
What they cite is not an example of misogyny. The pedo guy thing is beyond the pale, but he acknowledged that it was wrong and a mistake. What more do you want? The rest of their examples, who cares. It's tame for Twitter standards. The article's author sounds like a wokescold who has too much time on their hands.
> If we believe in democracy, then allowing the economy to run by a patchwork of private command structures, with no internal democracy or accountability, should make our stomachs turn. Alexis de Tocqueville once asked; “can it be believed that the Democracy which has overthrown the Feudal system and vanquished Kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?”. The question he poses requires an address, and not all are shy to the challenge.
He's been tweeting random memes and joke content for many years. The only thing that changed recently is he said he might vote Rep rather than Dem.
Musk was a fool for bringing politics into this. But its also pretty dishonest for employees to claim to feel intimidated and bullied just because he's considering endorsing a different political party.
Musk's behavior and actions directly impact things like hiring, employee retention and more
You can argue you don't have to follow Elon's twitter, but when you try to hire someone and they quote Elon's behavior as a reason why not to work for your company what do you expect?
Topics that usually include "racial or social discrimination and injustice". They are introduced to the workplace in many different forms and reasons. When it comes to the workplace, some are justified some aren't. There are lots of social issues that should remain muted or non-existent in the workplace, but yea it also just depends on the situation.
They're accused of making employees feel "uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied".
Without knowing the details of the situation, I'm not sure we can confidently know whether these employees were being jerks or management were being jerks.
I don’t hear anyone talking, let alone complaining, about Satya tweets, or Cook tweets, or Zuckerberg tweets, or any other CEO. I don’t hear people discussing publicity stunts performed by CEOs not named Elon Musk. I get that you’re trying to troll but you’re not trying hard enough.
Wait, this is exactly what Elon Musk himself does. Remember the whole "pedo guy" incident? And all of the Musk noise recently about being conservative and buying twitter?
"Stay focused" is a little funny from the guy behind the SpaceX flamethrower, Neuralink, OpenAI, the Boring Company, and a $40B attempt to buy Twitter.
It's not necessarily a contradiction. He has his role to carry out and they have theirs. You may disagree with the description of his role or that of others, but that's how it works.
This letter. Unless mere mortal workers staying focused is more important than the God-CEO staying focused. In which case, maybe compensation needs a serious re-think.
I'm really starting to wonder if 2022 won't be looked back as the year that Elon finally jumped the shark.
A lot of people (myself included) really respect SpaceX and I think that's the last pillar on which Elon's reputation stands. Tesla honestly isn't that interesting and there's a real chance it gets eaten alive as other car manufacturers have caught up. The Cybertruck is still vaporware whereas the F150 Lightning is real and, from what I've seen at least, very highly regarded.
What I think is finally giving people Elon fatigue is his politics. The Twitter acquisition is deeply tied to that. He's just another rich cringe conservative. That's it. Coming out and supporting DeSantis, for example, should surprise literally no one.
He has a very thin skin (remember the whole "pedo guy" incident?), inflates his own accomplishments (eg claiming he founded Tesla) and honestly just comes off (now more than ever) as just an awful human being.
Stories I've heard seem to reflect that SpaceX and Tesla aren't great places to work (at least compared to big tech companies).
I really get the sense that people are increasingly getting sick of hearing from or about him. YMMV.
Given this is HN, I'm just mildly curious about how people who knew Musk 15-20 years ago view him now. I mean, I know this is tangential, but pg had an essay talking about what a bad idea it was that Musk demanded Windows over Linux when Musk ran PayPal - I just got the sense that pg was never a fan.
Do folks view this as "this is an ambitious, hardworking genius whose lack of social constraints due to his success is making him run off the rails, mentally" or is it a case of "Musk has always been more asshole than genius, it's just his 'marketing veneer' that is starting to falter."
I agree, I've always viewed Musk with a sense of awe and amazement ("How can someone have the time and energy to run THREE major companies??"), now I just want him to STFU because what comes out of his mouth/tweet feed is such incessant verbal diarrhea.
I think the success really got to him. As a (cured) ex Elon fanboy who used to like him way before he was widely known to a non-nerd community, I distinctively remember this interview around the pre-Falcon 9 times with him which is like
Interviewer: Neil Armstrong says he doesn‘t want a private company like SpaceX to launch humans to tue moon because it‘s unsafe. What do you think about that?
Humble Elon, literally crying: I… I just wish he could come out here and see what we are doing.
That‘s the picture I carried with me for a long time, together with some really smart remarks about climate change on panels that were way ahead of their time.
These days, it‘s really all an ego shitshow, memes and YOLo. He definitely changed a LOT the past few years.
The impression I got from this article by his first wife was that his growing wealth and power, as well as being surrounded by similarly wealthy powerful people, sort of formed a feedback loop that just intensified personality traits that he already possessed.
When it was Tesla and the beginning of SpaceX, I was like "Oh, that's cool". I didn't care much more than the surface level and didn't care to look deeper. Since then, he's exposed much more of himself and have caused others to look way deeper.
And it's looking more and more like the doesn't so much run three major companies as owns three major companies.
My wife, ever the empathetic, reminds me constantly that Elon is not neurotypical. He has aspergers, and that can explain some of his bluntness, some of his work-life demands, etc.
I don't want to generalize or stereotype ASD in general, but it does produce tangible differences in how people relate to the world.
Aspergers does not explains his behavior. It does not explain grandiosity, oversensitivity, lying, egoism and so on. Also, Musk is pretty good at negotiating, manipulating and can be very charming, people with asperger are usually opposite.
So, that diagnosis is some minor influence somewhere, but does not explains the rest.
I think elon is such a Rorschach blot that people see the evils of capitalism, woes of mental health, drug use, virtuousness of free market ideals, entrepreneurial godhood, corruption of wealth and political power, blah blah, depending on their priors.
Things people say about him reveal more about the speaker than the subject, I mean.
> There’s a common idea that surrounds autistic people, especially those with above-average intellectual ability. This idea states that we have no empathy, that we’re robots who will never understand relationships, that we’re incapable of acting human. TV Tropes calls it Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery, and notes that Asperger’s is a favorite excuse. The Autistic Jerk has become such an ingrained idea, many people expect and assume that we are going to be assholes. But I’m here to tell you: the autistic jerk is just a jerk who happens to be autistic.
I think you're reading into my comment a bit too much. I never intended to over-generalize or stereotype anyone with ASD, and didn't use any negative words re: Elon or aspergers.
- "Musk has refiled his SF-86 security form, which requires a federal employee or contractor seeking a clearance to acknowledge any illegal drug use over the previous seven years, according to the official, who asked not to be identified. SpaceX has contracts to launch satellites for the U.S. military."
- "Musk’s “adjudication” review by the Defense Security Service continues with no decision yet, the U.S. official said. Typically during an adjudication, a person keeps his or her security clearance but loses access to information classified as secret, according to the official. If the drug use involves minor issues or doesn’t appear to contain any serious security concerns, the unit reviewing the case could just close it and update Musk’s record."
the argument about illegal drugs is, in part, that someone using them can be blackmailed, and may be a total junkie willing to sell out secrets for a 8 ball. He isn't hanging out on skidrow begging for change to get his next heroin fix.
I don't think either of those apply with Musk, because he is a pot afficianado and openly pushing it, and pro-legalization. Some states have legalized because they want those juicy tax revenues, There is a significant part of the populace that realizes pot has been overcriminalized particularly for those with medical issues. While there are risks and dangers associated with all of these (see Alex Berenson), I don't see an adjudication authority seeing Musk as a security risk.
Dollars talk, and saving the federal government hundreds of millions with cheaper launches probably influences this some. But, the feds prolly see the long view and recognize Musk is likely to push the Americans into the infinity cash supplies of space tourism, space freight, deep space exporation, space mining, and the national prestige of first humans to Mars. Why would they want to impair that over a bit of weed?
I had a knee jerk reaction to this but taking the high road. I sincerely don't believe that the venn diagram of people with security clearance doesn't overlap at all with "those that use illegal drugs"
I would guess that there's a culture of delusion surrounding this wherein because "it's the rules" they are actually followed. You know because rules are rules. The world, especially those like the Elons of the world, don't care to follow them as diligently as perhaps a command and control military / public service style structure demands. I'd even be surprised if even in the federal government those with security clearance were completely sober and free of the drugs considered illegal under US law.
You know Elon is gonna do what he wants to do. For better (electric cars, reusable rockets) or for worse (open his twitter feed any day of the week).
I suspect compliance for federal workers is very high, pardon the pun. Your average Joe fed is not going to be treated the same if they are caught using drugs vs elon being caught using drugs.
Some states allow from prescriptions, but it's still Federally illegal - and of course the Federal government doesn't care about state law when making decisions about security classifications.
> the Federal government doesn't care about state law when making decisions about security classifications.
I suspect this is less true than you think; since federal prosecution is blocked by law for state-legal use, one of the major security clearance reasons for it to be an issue (the leverage that the criminal behavior might give others over you because of prosecution risk) is very much affected by state law.
I never realized until the comments today that the reason you can't be on even state-legal prescribed drugs is because you become more open to blackmail and exploitation or prosecution risk.
But wouldn't debt of any kind, or regular motivations such as greed, family (maybe a relative got into drugs/trouble) be the same or even worse?
It just seems like a left-over relic from the 'reefer madness' days.
A big part of my early distrust for police stems from the lies they told me in D.A.R.E. 'class'. Marijuana will turn you into a drug-fueled criminal, it eats your brain cells like this spray paint on a Styrofoam cup, and they never come back, this is your brain (egg), this is your brain on 'drugs' (but it's an anti-weed commercial) and the egg starts frying in a pan. They spent years trying to convince the very young and very old that weed==narcotics.
As I've gotten older I've realized almost everyone has some issue- addiction, drug use, over-indulgence of whatever, just seems some are hell bent on hiding it and pretending they don't.
Admittedly, I'm pretty far from that world, but I follow a bunch of NatSec folks on Twitter and Bradley Moss and Mark Zaid are specialist NatSec lawyers who represent many people denied clearances;
> since federal prosecution is blocked by law for state-legal use
Source for that? One would think the supremacy clause overrides any idea of state law.
> This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me that if its federally illegal its still illegal within the states. The only question is if the federal government really cares to enforce the law in states where a large population of the state is openly breaking the federal laws.
I think people are just upset because he is rich I noticed the amount of hatred for him seems to be directly correlated with how much money he has. If he didn't have money people would just see him as a memey nerd.
Ah, yes- behold all of the comments in this thread that have no critiques of Musk other than $!
And incidentally, yes- many poor people despise the rich, just as most rich people despise the poor.
Mamy are the critiques of Musk here, nowhere did I read it was because he's hoarding money.
Edit to add- rich people change laws and construction to benefit them, they can displace and ruin the lives of the poor with a thought. They have all the power and most of the money. They live in gated communities far out of sight of the working class. They literally have an embarrassment of riches while people die around them. There is a very good reason the affluent only live amongst each other in fancy gated communities.
People don't hate the rich because they are rich, it's because of the impact they have on the lives of those without means.
Nice, I love when people put words in my mouth, especially when I've been good enough to state my argument in good faith.
This very comment thread has people saying, among other things, that Musk oversteps on Twitter, bring up the SEC charges, bring up the twitter purchase, bring up his freedom of speech absolution, it goes on for days.
So you are either blind incapable of reading, or are a troll. Since you shoved words in my mouth and are still parroting 'bcuz rich', I'm going with the latter.
I never said you said anything? How is making baseless claims good faith?
> Musk oversteps on Twitter, bring up the SEC charges, bring up the twitter purchase, bring up his freedom of speech absolution
So people are upset with what Musk spends his riches on?
> They literally have an embarrassment of riches while people die around them.
Im willing to bet we are both living in a rich country with ruining water, electricity and plenty of food while little slave kids make our shoes. We are all embarrassingly rich in the context of the real world but I don't think the people upset with Musk are upset about this. I think they just see some one with more than them and get upset and then they use it as a scapegoat that only the richest man in the world has the power to free those little kids making your shoes, and that the rest of us are powerless to do anything but go along with it and keep buying the shoes made with child slavery.
I read your edit wrong. Turns out I was the one who couldn't read. I apologize sincerely.
To your points, stop inserting words into my mouth. Having those issues with musk is in no way an issue with his money. I happen to have both by the way, so this is a possibility as well.
I don't hate him for being rich, nor do the others whose salient points you so succinctly boiled down incorrectly again to 'bcuz rich'.
He has had many issues, and continues to do so. You can pretend it's simply because of his money but for myself I can at least assure you, that is the very least of the issues I have with Musk.
Pointing to poor people and saying there are poorer people in 3rd world countries is a poor argument.
I reiterate Musk has tons of money, sure. And that much wealth consolidation is an issue, to be sure. But that has no bearing on the many, many issues all over this thread people have with him.
Edit to add- your ninja edit and the reason I read your initial response wrong is because you removed the line about him being rich, and added right-wing- not cool.
Sorry Im not putting words in your mouth you just aren't reading me with as much good faith as you think.
You said:
> Edit to add- your ninja edit and the reason I read your initial response wrong is because you removed the line about him being rich, and added right-wing- not cool.
I said:
> The only criticism I have seen here of musk beside money is that hes right wing, not really a criticism.
He has money and is right wing, people who have money are rich. I never edited anything.
You haven't read anything I wrote you just make claims you are unwilling to substantiate and then when I quote you, you accuse me of putting words in your mouth.
> I really get the sense that people are increasingly getting sick of hearing from or about him. YMMV.
I'm just a rando on the internet so maybe not representative, but this uBlock snippet makes anything related to Twitter or Elon invisible on the Guardian front page. Definitely improved my QoL
I think the fame and power has gotten to him. Plus, he spends way too much of his time engaging with people on Twitter. I think his experience on that site has warped his view of the world. It's also amazing to me that someone in his shoes takes time to respond to randos replying to him.
If only he'd achieved something practical, like revolutionising reusable rocket technology, dominating the commercial satelite launch industry, or selling 75% of the electric cars in the US last year. He may be an arse, but he's a very successful arse that gets stuff done. Doesn't excuse him being an arse though.
Does Boeing and Lockheed Martin not have “actual engineers” and “actual factories”? Of course they do. Probably had more and better for most of SpaceX’s life.
They just can’t utilise what w have, because they have no vision beyond “cost-plus contracts”. That’s on management. That’s why Elon literally caused SpaceX and all/most their successes.
> giving people Elon fatigue is his politics.
> I really get the sense that people are increasingly getting sick of hearing from or about him. YMMV.
YMMV indeed, because every conservative I talk to is seeing him as a hero who is finally speaking truth to power, and calling B.S. on the establishment (political, corporate HR, academic) narratives that have been running through the culture.
They aren’t sick of him at all - they’re cheering him on.
Yes, he's chosen his politics to pitch to that crowd. That's why we're so sick of it, it's the same grift you can get from youtubers and talk radio stations.
Gosh that phenomenon is just so familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it. There's definitely something in my memory regarding a no BS, celebrity businessman who rose to fame as a conservative demagogue. Ah, I'll think of it later I'm sure.
Well, absent a constitutional amendment, the highest level of office Musk can reach (I think) is Governor of a state or Representative (either House or Senate).
Does it matter? Go try and buy a Tesla and see how long the line is.
People are buying teslas and the immediately flipping them for $10k of profit to people who don't want to wait. The demand for teslas right now is insane.
And Teslas are pretty crappy cars from a quality of workmanship perspective.
After testing several different cars in a lab, I got the sense that the people at Tesla know a lot about how to integrate technologies, but only possess the bare minimum viable knowledge base about how to build a car. Whereas the people at Toyota know an insanely ridiculously huge amount about how to build a car, but are risk averse with integrating technologies.
I will say that was a purely technical analysis however. It didn't include things like how marketing might effect perception for instance.
Okay what’s your point? People love Tesla. They want the cars so much that they’ll pay huge amounts of money to get them and even more to get them quickly.
Sounds like Toyota is good at making cars people don’t want. What does that say about Toyota?
It says that being trendy can be very profitable in the short term, but being boring and reliable works out well in the long term.
Consider that well over half of all Teslas have to go in for service within the first month of ownership. For such an expensive car, that is not a good look. Look at how many ex-owners now say they'd never buy another and refuse to recommend them to friends. Go ask GM and Ford how hard it is to regain a reputation that you have squandered.
I enjoyed my P3D. Mostly. It went like stink, which is why I bought it. Lots of misfeatures, though, and still missing obvious features every other car has. I'm in the camp of "won't buy one again, unless something big changes, the competition is better." and we are growing quickly in number.
That isn't a great reason to dump Tesla. A good reason to dump Tesla is that Ford and Toyota are poised to run them out of business. Between the fires and the "autopilot" crash issues and price and production delays, Tesla will end up going the way of the Delorian.
WHen the NY Auto Show rolled around this year I went straight to the Toyota booth to try out the BZX4 (What a stupid name now that I think about it)
This car is the supposed Tesla killer. Take it from me, it is not. The interior is claustrophobic reminiscent of early Nissan Leaf. If you are 6'2 or taller, you are going to have a bad time. Its clear that center console was not tested by any tall person. There is nothing appealing about this car in my opinion other than the Toyota badge. It is ugly inside and out. It is neither a bog standard car(which a lot of people want) nor a stunning looking EV(which a lot of people want). It is the standard mismash OEMs have created int he past. They always make EVs "weird" when they don't have to be. Sure this car is going to sell out whatever limited production they can make because demand for EVs far outstrips supply but Tesla killer it will not be.
For Ford I wonder about their cost structure. The teardown of their EVs indicate that they are still implementing old school thinking from the ICE world that adds unneeded cost to the sticker price. This is uncompetitive with Tesla long term. They need to really reform the organization and fast so their next gen EVs do better.
The F150 is the best selling vehicle in America. American's want an F150 the way it is today. They don't care about gross margins and doing it the most efficient way. And if they can get that F150 with a battery that saves them "oodles" in gas money, but delivers an otherwise same experience, you can bet your ass they will pay for it.
The F150 has its supporters but others can take the steps to cut their costs and as a result, make the F150 a harder sell when you have everything else as equal. I strongly believe the current demand for Lightning is partially due to scarcity of choice.
Just to be fair here, I believe dumping the stock of a company whose leader is acting so inexplicably that one can no longer be certain of his/her rationality is the right thing to do. I always say, no matter how much you have, it's tactless to throw away money. (Probably the more money you have, the more tactless and tone deaf the act of throwing away money becomes.)
All that said, in this case, as you point out, there are multiple reasons to be dumping stocks of companies owned or influenced by this guy. At least until we have a better handle on what's going on. If nothing's wrong, we can always buy it back. But right now, very few of the market's concerns have much to do with politics. He's acting in an unpredictable manner just when the market appears to be entering a period of uncertainty. It may be because of his politics, but the market doesn't care about the why. Rational people are looking for some level of safety, stability and security at the moment. Unpredictable leaders who appear bent on market manipulation fly in the face of that.
Delorean sold about 7,000 cars, total, in its existence. Tesla sold about a million last year. Regardless of how you feel about Tesla, it's safe to say it's now a major, fast-growing auto maker that's not going away.
This is actually bad investment strategy. Warren Buffet once made a shit load of money because of this.
During a more conservative time... waaay back. A company was doing very well but the CEO had an affair. The public caught wind of the affair and the stock tanked, because people had your exact same philosophy. Those people cared about the behavior of the CEO while ignoring the metrics of the company. Warren Buffet looked at the fundamental performance of the company and saw that it was doing quite well, so he bought it at super low prices.
Eventually the stock price changed and began to reflect the fundamentals of the actual business as people forgot about the behavior of the CEO.
You shouldn't care about his erratic behavior. You should care about the business sector and the overall performance of the company.
A CEO having an affair is probably different than a CEO with a sizable control of votimg shares, appearing to be pretty impulsive in general in public.
The CEO with the affair could presumably be replaced if romantic fidelity is important to the company or if the relationship violated company policies, but if it doesn't affect their business choices, maybe it's not needed.
A CEO with strong control is a lot harder to replace, and fighting over replacing such a CEO is likely to happen in public and be a negative for the company. General impulsiveness is, IMHO, more likely to show up in business choices than romantic impulsiveness (if that's what was the basis for the affair), and business choices made for impulsive reasons at the very least increases volitility and may likely reduce expected value. If I'm investing in an established company, I think I want stability and rational choices, not volatility and impulsive choices. But then, I don't invest in individual companies, apart from stock based compensation.
Interesting point, I suppose the affair didn’t affect the bottom line of the company, but Musk trying to buy twitter and considering how strongly his company’s brands are tied to his personal one are not something to be ignored. I believe they have a tangible effect on the value of the company. So in this case his behavior should be considered.
It has a tangible effect on the short term value of the company. Just like the affair. People all tend to have short term thinking. The price of the stock drops because of behavior, this is real... but it is also opportunity. While you sell, I buy. You lose out.
The underlying performance of the company does not change based off of random tweets. If Tesla is good enough to take over the entire automobile industry even the CEO pulling off his pants walking around in public is a separate issue to actual performance.
Doesn't your example support his/her position though? Dump the stock now, wait till the price drops, buy at a reduced price ... profit! I know, timing the market and all that, but this seems like a sensible move now.
His shady practices around market manipulation are starting to catch up to him. He's facing lawsuits from shareholders for tanking his own stock prices. He slimes his way through every loophole.
I hear that cofounder thing about Tesla every now and then. Doesn't matter when the company was founded, if someone joined before the company finds its market fit, that person is legitimate to be called cofounder imo.
"On Monday, a Tesla representative said that Eberhard and other principals in the dispute have come to an agreement. The company did not reveal any details of the resolution, except to say that there are now five, rather than two, agreed-upon "founders" of Tesla.
In addition to Eberhard, other founders include current CEO and chief product architect Elon Musk, current chief technology JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, and Ian Wright."
Yeah, it's pretty sad. I think what happened is he "crossed the chasm" so to speak and became mainstream. He was famous for his work, which is super interesting and so he was appreciated by a subset of nerds. In the last year or two he bacame famous for his personality, which turned out to be "generic right-wing edge lord". Thing is, there's very few people who can talk in depth about rocket design or actually bring their wild schemes to life and he's one of them. On the other hand, there's a whole spectrum of thousands of celebrity right wing edge lords to choose from if that's your thing and there's absolutely nothing interesting or unique about his take on this.
Eh he comes off as a normal human being to me. Definitely quite awful, but that's also very normal.
The difference between Elon and others is that Elon doesn't put on as big of a facade.
There are CEO's who are psychopaths and are much worse then Elon but are much better at keeping their actual persona hidden.
Elon is just as awful as the next human being. We tend to have a higher set of expectations for people in Elons position. Very rarely does anyone actually meet these expectations. Most people just pretend to meet this expectation. Elon fails at both meeting the expectations and pretending to meet it.
> The difference between Elon and others is that Elon doesn't put on as big of a facade.
It is fascinating to me that you see Elon as not putting on a facade, rather than his public face constantly being a changing facade.
As far as I can tell, Elon has two modes: "engineering", which is where he's super awkward and, as far as I can tell, totally and completely honest, if optimistic on capabilities and timeframes, and "public", which is where he's totally erratic and populist.
His twitter persona is almost totally public. Nothing is serious, everything is flippant, and his opinions sway with the breeze, or on the basis of who he feels slighted him most recently.
This is a fallacy that really irks me. You can't even argue against a statement like that. If Person A acts like a decent human being it's because they're putting on a facade, if Person A acts like a dumpster fire it's because they're not putting on a facade.
Would you describe your inner circle of friends as "quite awful"? I really hope you wouldn't. I certainly don't. And I presume most people don't. So there must be sizable amount of human being that another sizable amount of human beings consider good humans. The CEO of the multi-billion dollar company I work for seems and acts like a normal (meaning decent, as opposed to your definition "quite awful") human being. Never goes on rants like Elon, quite worker-friendly, always there to chat, doesn't fire people on the spot because they can't answer a question that he only started verbalizing halfway though his stream of consciousness rants. And we compete in the same industry as Elon. Isn't trying to influence politics with his position on several dozens of matters that have nothing to do with out company. Also doesn't cultivate a cult following with himself as the head of the cult.
That's all that matters to me, if there no evidence of him being an awful human being, it would be downright unethical for me to assume that he is an awful human being hiding behind a facade.
Also: Before anyone hits me with the "Well your CEO isnt a visionary trying to get us to Mars". Well, yeah. I'd rather be stuck on Earth with him than live under whatever fantasy a sociopath is promising to unfold on Mars.
>Would you describe your inner circle of friends as "quite awful"? I really hope you wouldn't.
I would describe all humans including myself, my circle of friends and everyone I met to have an immense awful side that they cover up. Only when the media focuses on your every movement will these flaws be exposed.
I'm not a fan of Elon Musk. But unlike the people who hate him, I don't see anything abnormal other then failure to put on a facade. He's as inconsistent and emotional as any other human being.
Keep in mind. What he does, from his perspective appears justified and if you can rationalize from his perspective, you will be able to at least understand how it is justified. Very few people on this earth knowingly act out pure malice.
> I would describe all humans including myself, my circle of friends and everyone I met to have an immense awful side that they cover up.
I don't. Which is why I don't think this discussion will go anywhere. I would never in my life call anyone with an "immense awful side that they're trying to cover up" my friend.
It's discuss-able. Because it's not opinion. You can draw upon actual recorded events as evidence. This can go beyond anecdote (which still has a level of validity) and even into statistics if we dig deep enough. The trouble with your anecdotal experience is that the sample size comes from one country... a wealthy country as well.
When resources are plentiful things are different. When resources are scarce our base nature is exposed.
This is part of the reason why it's covered up. Even for yourself. You don't realize how awful you can get until you've lost everything.
You can analyze the psychology of a country like China where something like this:
is common place. What is the statistical likelihood for this to be an anomaly? Of two hit and run drivers running over a child AND every passerby just ignoring it? You can make a somewhat true statement here that most of the Chinese populace is quite awful. I would know, because I am one of them.
The fact that I am chinese myself, and I am calling MY own race/country quite awful shows you how dispassionate and logical my analysis is. It is very hard for someone to recognize the evil within their race, let alone themselves. This is how you know my answer lacks bias, which is very much different from your outlook.
But you must also ask yourself, what causes the Chinese to be like that?
It's because China was once a hard place to live. The mentality of harder times still pervades much of the populace. There was once a time in colonial america where the mentality was much the same thing. There are even parts of modern america, where you can see the same thing.
Go to places where resources are scarce and people are barely scraping buy. The projects, the ghettos. You will see evil in it's purest form. Evil is a biological base necessity because it is what humans must turn to in order to survive hard times.
Either way this is not an explanation for why Elon is "awful" but it is an explanation for how low humans can sink. For how much capability for being awful we have in our nature. Elon is well within these typical boundaries.
Cringe, yes, he may be. Conservative? Maybe in the opportunist sense. At most, I think he's much closer to being libertarian and would otherwise be left leaning if the mainstream left hadn't drifted so far left. Elon really wants people to get out of the way of his view of progress. Yes, I'm sure ego is a part of that, but when is it not with anyone? I'm not even sure what Elon would be conserving other than whatever ability he has to launch cars into space or dig pointless tunnels.
A better example of a "cringe conservative" would be the My Pillow guy or even Lindsay Graham. And many would of course say Trump.
There is no "far left drift" of the mainstream. Outside the gender craze which is real, the "far left drift" is an entirely made up talking point in the conservative war against basic institutions and freedoms.
For example, never in its history was the SCOTUS so conservative compared to the views of the general population. It used to be one of the most progressive actors in society, forcing race and gender equality judgments to a country where working wives and interracial couples were still a faux pass.
I dunno. I’ve lived in Los Angeles and worked for a few companies in CA where social justice was more important than the product. Also, people seemed to really like socialism despite working at a corporation.
> Grow a spine and push back against the illiberal left.
Utterly insane. Black is white, up is down. Multi-level, coordinated conspiracies orchestrated by the sitting President of the United States are the embodiment of liberal democracy.
To be honest, I kind of went the other way. I saw what republicans are really about and noped my way out. I used to believe them when they said they were USA first, bring the jobs back to America, stand up to foreign dictators, small government, etc... But the past 10 years have put a lie to their posturing on nearly every front. January 6th was a turning point for me, all of a sudden there was a chance that we were going to have a president sitting in office despite the end of his term. A man willing to start a civil war rather than concede a valid election.
The Republican I really respect at this point is Mike Pence. I used to think he was a theocrat idiot with mush for brains. But now I realize he's all that AND a brave and honest man who actually gives two shits about democracy.
Precisely why the two-party system is such an abomination. It boils down ALL politics to a binary system -- are you red, or are you blue? Both you and the previous commenter have completely valid reasoning for switching parties, based on separate issues. But the only method of communication with our democracy requires that you pick one of two awful choices. Sure, you could vote independent -- with the basket of issues that come with opting out of the two majority parties -- and primaries let you cut some of the least-aligned folks in your party from the ballot.
It's kind of like going to a restaurant and being forced to pick raw vs. burned beef, and there's a ton of different sides that come with each option that are nonconfigurable. And then critics constantly debate "raw vs. burned" in polls, and try to gain insight from that on whether people really prefer corn or salad or biscuits. But in reality there's just too much noise to generate any signal.
I feel like Adam Kinzinger talks a similar talk to you, if you're looking for more republicans you can respect (I'm not affiliated in any way, just came across him via twitter)
I can empathize, but my point was in regards to the accusation of being a “conservative” by just coming down in the other direction on the lesser-of-two evils calculus. Sane Americans are struggling with the fact that there are good arguments to be made that both political parties in the US presently present meaningful existential risk. There are several methods one could argue in how to tie break, purely in the interest in minimizing the risk of collapse, tyrannical overtake, or the development of a police state. From example, you may vote against the ruling class broadly, which is left-aligned, if you feel that the broader ruling class has power superiority over the narrow set of elected leaders at a given time. Under that framework, no tyrant can successfully seize power unless they are aligned with the ruling class.
There never really was a chance of that. There was nothing Trump could of done that day to make that happen. Even if the process would of been disrupted, it wouldn't of caused that.
Say that Mike Pence was killed on Jan. 6th before he could certify the election. Now you have an election with no result which leads to the first succession crisis since the post-civil war era with Hayes. Trump appoints a new Vice President which says that he won and refuses to certify the election. When the senate almost certainly gets bogged down trying to elect a new president we are stuck. Now what? Does Trump remain president? It wasn't even a close election, so they can't manipulate the votes any further in his favor.
At that point we have a ticking time bomb. At the end of his term is Trump still the president? Or are we a country without a president? When that happens, if Trump stays in the White House and acts like a president, what then? Would the republican filled Supreme Court back his play? Would the military follow him? Who would oppose him? Would the secret service still protect him? What happens if some states recognize him as president, but others do not?
That's a lot of what ifs. While technically possible, none seem plausible. Many of those things could of happened outside of the riots as well (Pence dies). It's kind of pointless speculation. I don't think Pence had a serious chance of being killed that day, even if they did get in close proximity. That's just my opinion.
Where has the left gone off the deep end other than in Tucker's lunatic and manipulative ravings? Please give us concrete examples, yes woke politics might have gone overboard for many's tastes but where has that had any real impact on day to day life? In the mean time the right has gone full throttle on an anti-democracy cult following of a single person's unproven and clearly false claims of election fraud, and taken the country on a very dark path that is in direct opposition to our constitution, the rule of law and our way of life.
Look at any time series on polling regarding political hatred - the left has been largely ineffectual at enacting crazy policy, but the demonization and willingness to punish people for views that are well within the Overton window of public opinion has increased dramatically in recent years, eg. adopting and defending the views of Barack Obama on gay marriage in 2012 will lead to your swiftly being deplatformed from Twitter, Reddit, etc. This impacts my day to day life in the sense that I am no longer able to express many reasonable, non-hateful views in many parts of the internet being censored and putting my livelihood at risk. If you think that this isn't really an impediment that I should care about, then I don't see how you could lament these SpaceX employees being unable to publicly excoriate their bosses without consequence.
For many of us, seeing what happened to people like James Damore was a turning point that something had deeply changed in the political culture.
So one issue I see here is that you are against gay marriage?
This isn't "the left" it's "the US" that had a change of view. The poll numbers are through the roof. And when it's such a personal thing with the very families that are our friends, it's not hard to see why gay marriage is so popular. That you feel "hated" by others for rejecting their friends families is a weird way to put it.
Obama was a centrist for his time, and often times after society opens up to more people it's hard to go back to closing it off to our new members.
As for James Damore, somebody disparaging their colleagues, publicly, and not even their leader for specific actions, but an entire gender, based on bad reading of biology... do you have similar sympathy for the people fired here, or it only when somebody is expressing beliefs that are hurtful to those not at the top?
Gay marriage was a major shift in culture, but bad sexism has been out of vogue for decades, even if overall sexism hasn't decreased a huge amount.
I have all sorts of politically unacceptable views that I don't share. But I don't play the victim for being "hated" just because I don't get my way.
I'm not against gay marriage. I'm using it as an example.
But you're really illustrating my point here, by arguing not that there hasn't been a shift but that the growing hatred and intolerance is in fact a good thing. I feel like this is a more honest position than pretending that prevailing attitudes haven't shifted.
As a personal example, last week I had a comment deleted on Reddit for being "hatred" because I described drag as a form of kink. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but this kind of banal censorship has become a regular experience for anyone who offers any sort of resistance to woke narratives. If you think this is a good change, then I disagree but at least acknowledging that there's been a change puts us in the same reality.
I've had comments incorrectly deleted in Reddit but I didn't think of it as political persecution.
Same on Twitter. A lot.
And if it were political persecution, which it very well could be, Reddit is moderated by absolute randoms from the internet. Starting new subreddits and moderating to one's one preferences is very literal free speech.
>I've had comments incorrectly deleted in Reddit but I didn't think of it as political persecution.
Please. We know that this isn't considered as "incorrect" by the people doing the deleting, and that a well-reasoned appeal would be productive. This isn't happening due to simple randomness, as basically anyone who pushes back against woke narratives will attest - for example, openly endorsing JK Rowling's views on gender will get you banned from most of Reddit and quite possibly fired from your job if you do it under your real name on Twitter. This wouldn't have happened 10 years ago.
Again, you're free to say that this is a good change, or just wave all this concerns away with pithy slogans like "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", but I'm just trying to establish that there's been a shift on the left and it seems like you don't disagree with this.
This has been my experience too, and it's very frustrating for those of us who have long held left-wing beliefs but are skeptical of these recent social trends. The obsessive focus on identity issues almost seems like a deliberate distraction from the larger societal concerns regarding the cost of living, housing, employment rights, environmental catastrophe, and similar.
I feel that social media companies are largely to blame here, with the impact of their efforts to increase engagement metrics at the expense of users' wellbeing. We all have a perpetually-available outrage machine in our pockets these days, encouraging us all to react with emotion rather than be considered and thoughtful.
Regarding your example of gender views, the other reason why this wouldn't have happened 10 years ago is that hardly anyone believed that stuff. JK Rowling's opinions would have been met with a shrug. But there has since been a concerted effort to capture the minds of the younger generations at an age where they're unlikely to see the inherent contradictions in this ideology.
> And when it's such a personal thing with the very families that are our friends, it's not hard to see why gay marriage is so popular. That you feel "hated" by others for rejecting their friends families is a weird way to put it.
I voted "Yes" in Australia's 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite, and if they repeated the plebiscite again today, I'd still vote the same way. And yet, I feel like there is a problem here. It is a complex question, and I don't think it necessarily has a simple answer, but a lot of people treat it as a simple binary "Yes"-vs-"No", with only one answer to that binary being socially acceptable. And even in pointing that out publicly, I feel a certain degree of anxiety – should I? I don't think it is all in my (admittedly rather prone to anxiety anyway) head, there are external cultural forces contributing to it, and I think it is fair to question those forces.
To give just one example of the many complexities I see: I compare my own country of Australia to the US, and although both arrived at roughly the same destination (legal same-sex marriage nationwide), they arrived at it by very different routes. In Australia, federal legislation, in-principle pre-approved by the voters in a (non-legally-binding) nationwide plebiscite – as such not constitutionally entrenched, but anything approved in a nation-wide plebiscite (even a non-legally-binding one), is politically impossible to repeal without having another plebiscite to approve that repeal. And it was mostly a symbolic measure, since (nationwide) Australian law already gave unmarried couples in long-term relationships (de facto relationships as we call them), whether opposite-sex or same-sex, 99.9% of the rights of legally married couples. (I won't deny the missing 0.1% causes real practical problems for some people, but that is the experience of a relatively small minority, and there is no reason in principle why those problems could not be solved with further legal or bureaucratic reforms).
In the US, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision (Obergefell v. Hodges), based on highly contested principles of constitutional interpretation, which the current Supreme Court majority does not share – and, given they are likely to soon overturn a famous decision based on a similar style of legal reasoning (Roe v. Wade), you have to wonder how long Obergefell will last. The whole situation seems to support the idea that social reforms are better achieved through the democratic process than through the fickleness of judicial decisions–a viewpoint which in the US is often labelled as "conservative" or "right-wing", but not so in much of the rest of the world. Indeed, what in the US is seen as "conservative jurisprudence", in many other countries (Australia included) is just the mainstream consensus approach to constitutional law, to which few would attach political labels such as "conservative".
And, at the same time, that has happened against the background that unmarried couples (whether same-sex or opposite-sex) in the US still lack most of the legal rights and protections granted the legally married–an unfairness which few in the US seem to care much about, even on the Left–and which made the legalisation of same-sex marriage a change of far greater practical consequence in the US than it was in Australia. Couldn't this issue have been used as a vehicle to try to address that unfairness? Well, I think it could have, but my impression is that most marriage equality activists in the US didn't want to try, because they saw it as a distraction from their ultimate goal. A squandered opportunity?
I don't think it is unreasonable for a person to look at the two situations, and think the way the US has gone about addressing this issue leaves much to be desired, when compared to what certain other countries have done–I'm sure Australia is not the only country which has arguably done better than the US has–and those deficiencies in the way in which the reform was achieved in the US are a potential threat to its long-term durability there. But, that kind of nuanced conversation is rather alien to the "either-you-are-with-us-or-you-are-against-us" attitude to this topic which many people seem to have.
I hate to dove into another country politics on the open internet. But I’ll bite as simile things are happening in canada which ended up with Ontario conservatives dominating the provincial election.
The left needs to pay attention to every day issues. It’s not that the right has answers but they have acknowledged these issues as being the main issues. For instance, it should be absolutely not shocking to anyone that inflation has happened and is a direct result of our fiscal policies. Well, some did not seem to be concerned about printing money to buy bonds to fund record deficits which actually paid people and companies to reduce productivity and output. Surprise! School closures are another huge issue. Most of us with children saw the massive harms from keeping them home. It was absolutely devastating! I could go on. The left NDP party of Ontario admitted they focused too much on the chatter-class (Reddit, Twitter, journalists, etc) and not the working class
Except that it's a flawed democracy in that you only seem to have two choices, with people often choosing the lesser evil, or deciding not to vote anyway because it doesn't matter.
"the left" and "the right", or "the democrats" and "the republicans" in essence, is too wide a net. "The left go off the deep end" is also, when you look into it, a fairly small percentage of the wider population.
But it feels like people are pushed to the fringes, because the Other Side is being pushed to the fringes. There's just, from the perspective of an outsider, a lot of antagonism between the two "sides".
And that antagonism is being fueled by someone. There's people with a lot of money and / or special interests who benefit off of the infighting and polarisation.
For a broad range of voter preference classes, two-party systems are an expected result of majority voting. It's the best way to get the issues you care most about handled while hopefully not inflicting too much harm in all the other less important points that also get brought in. To fix that you need to change people's relative preferences or adopt an alternative voting scheme.
Politicians have no accountability. In 2024 Biden will take zero responsibility for inflation and the economy and spend all his time talking about how Republicans are racist.
And Republicans will take zero responsibility for Trump and Jan 6th and spend all their time talking about how Democrats want to force your children to be trans.
In the end no one has any responsibility to do anything to actually make the country better. If Musk could start a moderate party that took responsibility for results I would be on board.
No party is going to solve the problems the US chooses to occupy itself with currently. They are too complex. The right move is to just pick simpler problems.
There is an upper limit to what level of complexity any group can handle.
But Americans have been told the upper limit doesn't exist so often and for so long that they are learning the hard way where the limit lies.
I'm not American, and definetely not an expert on your politics, but like many other digital native Europeans hold pretty strong opinions on them anyway. I would honestly like to learn what in your opinion the actions of the Democrats are that lead to you sliding into second tier. From my perspective most of the blame would have to be put on Republicans.
It's not quite that easy, to be honest. And here's where I lose my audience...
We have two very pro corporate parties, that are pro military, one who is right and one who is center right, if you look at actual policy and spending. The main difference is on abortion legislation, gay rights, gun legislation (sort of... and that depends on the Democrat), and to an even lesser extent some tax policies, but with political funding how it is, no parties really bite the hand that feed them so 95% of tax policy is talk and "trickle down economic policy" is entrenched, much to the detriment of our country.
Most of the substantial difference is talking points and bluster, it pains me to say. Even gay rights is pretty new to the table... that didn't come about until Hillary Clinton ran against Trump, when she finally changed her position on gay marriage (though I think she was one of the last major hold outs).
The major problem with our American system of politics is the two party stranglehold that has been imposed upon and that those two parties have made nearly impossible to rid ourselves of. It's one of the things (other than war profiteering and insider trading) they vehemently agree on.
Thanks for the reply! Regarding corporate lobbying there seems to be a small relatively powerless group within the Democrats that are strongly against it, and I guess parts of the so-called alt-right fall into this category, too, but I agree that the core of both parties is strongly pro-corporate in a way that is anti-democratic. I'm re-reading a great book currently called "Why nations Fail", and looking at the US through their lense is super interesting.
The main thesis of the book is that the success or failure of nations is predicated on institutions working in a predictable way and guruanteeing broad and equal access to these institutions and the economy at large. The US was better than other countries at this for most of its existence (despite the horrible "exclusion" of non-whites and women). Today, the US seems to be slipping, and while I do agree that the Democrats aren't innocent on this either, and things like insider trading, corporate lobbying and political nepotism apply strongly to both parties, the Republicans always seem to be a bit worse (or have worse marketing).
Only having two choices in party certainly makes this way worse, but there's also the constant challenging of political norms that I would think mostly comes from the Republican side. (Although Obama was the first president to largely rule by EO, which itself is a pretty major breach of convention, and an attack on the democratic instituions)
I’ve disconnected myself from the contemporary political back and forth, but my outsider take is that it rather seems like the US left has… mostly accomplished little? What sweeping changes or policy platforms have them ‘off the deep end’?
They don’t have an answer because the modern democrats are the basically republicans of the 90s leaving the GOP with only a lot of complaining and projection as well as anti government theater.
It’s sort of a joke but it’s more sad. I used to vote Republican and I would again if anyone there was even half willing to be more considerate and rational.
Just so we’re clear, you replied to this person 10 min after their comment posted. You’ve already passed judgment before giving the OP a chance to respond. Discussions here happen over days not minutes. This isn’t a telegram chat. Your comment is in incredibly poor taste.
This is largely true. The US’s political left gained a ton of traction behind Bernie Sanders. As we know his campaign went nowhere (twice). There are a handful of progressive candidates winning some primaries, but this is abysmal in the larger context. For every progressive that succeeds there is another progressive that fails (see e.g. Nina Turner in Ohio and Jessica Cisneros in Texas). And for every attempt there are 10 non-attempts. And we are even seeing equally many conservative democrats that honestly should belong in the Republican party in the national and state legislators.
Outside of partisan politics the left is seeing some more successes, that is in the broader culture war. This includes broader acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights, calls for immigration reforms, calls for reprimands for centuries of slavery, etc. However these successes are not making their way to the legislator by a long shot, and quite often to the contrary (see e.g. reversal of Roe v. Wade).
And I say this firmly from the left wing of the political spectrum.
The far left has been entirely captured by the illiberal (really, anti-liberal) sociopolitical frameworks of Critical Theory, and this has now fully been integrated into most modern day institutions by the ruling class, such as universities, corporations, etc. This is backwards looking, it’s already happened. Before I can vote for the left again (which I used to) I need to see them explicitly reject many of the principles behind Critical Theory.
Can you elaborate? How is critical theory affecting the policy advocated by left wing political candidates? Which left wing ideology did they promote previously which you could vote for, but are unable to now because of which specific policy? Can you give me an example of critical theory expressed by the left wing candidates in your elective district? And why these examples in particular make it so that you can’t vote for them?
Leaving aside the inherent bias of asking the general public whether they support a vague and/or nuanced issue, and also leaving aside these extremely narrow cherry picked issues. Where did you get the data showing that Americans do not support this?
>The poll—which surveyed 1,503 people across the country between May 4 through 17—found 55% of Americans don’t believe transgender women and girls should be allowed to compete in high school sports.
>Almost 60% of those surveyed were opposed to transgender women and girls’ participation in college and professional sports.
>Americans were less likely to oppose transgender women and girls’ participation in youth sports, with about a third of those surveyed saying transgender women and girls should be allowed to compete, while 17% said they did not have an opinion.
>According to the poll, roughly two-thirds of Republicans now believe “parents should be allowed to sue school districts if teachers discuss sexual orientation [70%] or gender identity [66%] when teaching children in kindergarten through grade three.” Independents agree (46% and 47% percent, respectively) more often than not (34% and 36%). And a significant minority of Democrats concur as well (25%, 22%) or aren’t sure (16%, 17%).
And keep in mind that is not people who have read the bill, so they could be basing it on the name.
>When registered voters were shown the actual language of the bill, which prohibits age or developmentally inappropriate sexual education in pre-K through third grade, they supported it by more than a two-to-one margin.
>Overall, 61 percent of voters supported the text of the bill. Just 26 percent were opposed.
I did some vetting on these opinion polls. Your first two seem legitimate. Although I hope you keep in mind the wording of the questions here and the varying levels of nuance that people put into before they answer on a 5 point likert scale. For example the “don’t say gay” bill opinion poll by youGov is not asking about support for the bill, but rather if they should be allowed to sue school districts under certain conditions. You might be in full opposition to the bill in question but still feel like you should always have the right to sue. This is like three levels down from the main focus of the poll and the respondents will read differently into the question, with nuance which doesn’t translate into a 5 point likert scale.
Now for your third poll, it was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies which is a republican pollster. The news source you gave me was written by Amber Athey, a senior fellow of the Steamboat Institute, which is a conservative think tanks that promotes American Exceptionalism and other nationalistic conservative values. I personally don’t put much faith in polls such as these.
Now this is all aside from the fact that these are cherry picked examples. This is hardly proof that “The left is being decimated on the trans and sexual related issue”.
Wow. Just wow. The "radical" US left equals the conservative right in many European countries. While you certainly may think Europe is full of "second tier countries", I think it's time to broaden your horizons. If anything the problem is they are ineffective and are poor at keeping file and rank compared to the GOP. The GOP on the other-hand tries to drive the US towards a ultra-conservative future, erasing the separation of church and state.
This may have been true sixty years ago, but certainly not today. The conservative right in European countries is turning hard-nationalist in response to massive net immigration. Simply look to the campaigns of Zemmour and Le Pen in France or Orban in Hungary.
I don't follow their platforms, but in Europe one can still expect conservative parties to believe that people should have public goods like healthcare and childcare and education and retirement as basic human rights, that dignity is something we deserve, that a job should mean something more than wage slavery and that the average citizen shouldn’t die in debt. Who they define as persons or citizens is up for discussion on the right, but measured on this other corporate-capitalist scale of being "right", the Democrats are off the scale in European terms.
Yes, that's all true, but that does not support the claim that the "American radical left is the European conservative right". In some ways, some of the demands of the American radical left mimic some of the expectations of European right-wing platforms, but the American radical left would still be identifiably left-wing in Europe, mostly due to their positions on immigration, regulation, sociology, and taxation.
The follow-up question to demonstrate this point would be "would an American who identifies as radically left-leaning join a European conservative right-wing party if they moved to Europe?"
I think the claim here that: “The "radical" US left equals the conservative right in many European countries” is a bit of an exaggeration. A more accurate statement (and probably what OP meant; albeit less inflammatory) would be something like: “Moderate and conservative (i.e. mainstream) Democrats in America closely resemble the conservative right wing parties in Europe”. And I think this is largely true. Biden is in many ways to the right of Macron even though Macron is in the center-right of the political spectrum. While Bernie Sanders (the most left wing the US could possibly hope for) really only approaches the center-left Olaf Scholz.
This isn’t that true today, the US far left is solidly left nowadays by European standards, and Europe had a far right that isn’t too distant from the US
The far left in the US is materially different than the classical understanding of the far left. The far left in the US is now primarily concerned with pushing the goals of Critial Theory (a cultural neo-Marxist ideology, to oversimplify) as supposed to the goals of traditional big S Socialist or Marxist economics and workers party goals. This slow dialectical evolution of the left in the US has led to a lot of confusion regarding how it can be possible for people to be arguing the left in the US is not just extreme but increasingly radicalized when it rejected democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. It's because the revolutionary tilt of the left has moved away from overturning economic class and systems of capitalism through labor organization, at least as the primary lever to push on.
Oh my god the Patterson bullshit. Please mate, stop the cap. Bernie Sanders is the furthest 'left' in the US and man wants free education and healthcare which are the status quo in every other developed country.
Cultural Marxism is not a thing, please educate yourself beyond the videos of the lobster psychologist. You claim the left is 'radicalized' in a right-wing country where the right-wing party literally tried to undermine democracy through an insurrection less then a year ago...
My bad, he's the most egregious offender of that BS in the media space. What I'm getting at here is that the US has no true left. Your workers are exploited and healthcare/education/life costs are making it so that jumping over the poverty line is getting so hard you might as well live in a third world country.
And somehow the narrative is about the non-existent 'radicalized left' doing stuff and cultural Marxists trying to change our pronouns. It just feels sad to hear.
Bernie Sanders wants a lot more than that and would be left by European views as well, and yeah the left has become radicalized just like the right has, this is all non-controversial
No he's not. You do realize free healthcare, education and social security is the DEFAULT in Europe. Even in conservative countries. That's far from 'far left'.
The left in the US is to the left of Europe now in many ways. By second tier I wasn’t referring to politics, but referring to our collapse into a weak economic and cultural power.
A slide into a second tier country? I lament the difficulty I have in understanding how one to come to this belief after the last 10 years. It's like we don't even share the same facts anymore.
Guy here who also got pushed into the arms of the right based on what the left has been doing. Interesting that you think going in this direction apparently merits some kind of emergency introspection while going in the other direction doesn’t. People want different things out of life.
What has "the left" done that pushed you away to support a part that says LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that their version of the Christian god deserves special protections in law, etc? Those are explicate positions documented in the GOP platform that members of the GOP are required to support.
Since you seem to agree with the user above, can you give any concrete examples of how the left "went off the deep end" or just explain what you take issue with the left doing?
I am particularly curious about politicians and their actions, rather than woke twitter users, since we are discussing who we vote for. Please do mention if wokeness is your main complaint with the left, as it seems to be the case for many conservatives I know, but I felt the need to mention I don't believe wokeness is actually relevant amongst politicians.
As far as I can tell, left leaning politicians have not gone off the deep end in any objective sense. Their voting patterns seem to be mostly centrist/conservatives leaning and have remained that way for some time.
Without concrete examples, it is really hard to accept "people want different things" as an explanation for statements that I would consider to be outright false. So I ask in hopes that I might understand the opposing perspective on this.
In 2019, Democrats in Virginia tried to pass a bill that would allow abortion at the point of birth. Long past viability, basically just unnecessarily killing the baby.
I'm not a conservative, but I respect conservative values such as the rule of law. I will grant you that the populist wing of the Republican party in no way reflects conservative values.
> There are a lot of people who have seen the left in the US go off the deep end
As crazy as the left in the U.S. might be, it's genuinely hard to beat the craziness of e.g. suggesting that injecting bleach is a legitimate COVID-19 treatment, or shameful pandering to anti-masks, anti-vaccination sentiment.
People who spend too much time on twitter think they have seen the left go off the deep end. But what insane policy has actually occurred? Biden isn't off the deep end. Meanwhile the right has actually passed laws to tear apart families with trans kids, have actually passed laws to turn citizens into vigilantes to track down women having abortions, have actually tried to stage an insurrection, have actually put dishonest supreme court justices on the bench. But the left has gone off the deep end because there exist unhinged radical leftists on twitter saying crazy things.
Left intellectuals have gone off the deep end, sure, but the actual left politicians in power are solidly centrist.
Meanwhile Trump.... The Republican party isn't just off the deep end, they're a genuine danger to democracy globally. As the US goes, many other countries follow and as a Brit, and conservative one that grew up in the Thatcher/Reagan heyday at that, I dread the thought of another Trump presidency. I'll never forgive the Republican party for putting us through that the first time. Thank all the gods and angels the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened under Biden, he may be a bumbler but at least he's not an out-and-out traitor to democracy and the national security of his country.
I see this kind of comment a lot and it's bizarre to me. It echoes Elon's own views [1]. It's bizarre because it shows just how normalized right-wing views are in the US. Some highlights:
1. There are like 4 progressive members of Congress. Compare this to how many Republicans openly support QAnon conspiracies and other right-wing positions;
2. Anywhere else in the world, the Democrats would be a center-right party;
3. The Democratic Party actually hates progressives and goes out of its way to rid the party of them. Look at the hit job on Bernie Sanders in 2016. Look at the recent primary in the Texas-28 where Nancy Pelosi and Clyburn went to campaign for Henry Cuellar, who is pro-gun and the only anti-choice Democrat remaining in the House over Cisneros, an actual progressive;
4. Based on leaks there's a high likelihood the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, pushing back 50 years of progress;
5. IN 2008 (in Heller) the Supreme Court for the first time recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right;
6. The Roberts Supreme Court also decided money is speech, which has openeed the floodgates for primarily conservative PACs;
7. The same court gutted the Civil Rights Act in terms of voter protection, which has led to a wave of anti-voter measures in red states;
8. Primarily red state has gerrymandered the hell out of states. For example, in Wisconsin, the GOP holds a super-majority despite getting 10% less of the vote;
9. Despite numerous incidents of easy access to firearms leading to the mass murder of school children multiple times there is not (and will not be) any meaningful restriction on access to mass murder machines (aka assault rifles);
10. Obamacare, pretty much the only lasting achievement of the Obama era, has largely been gutted;
11. Trump's tax cuts despite a Democrat in the White House and Democratic control of the House and Senate remain largely in place; and
12. As soon as the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, they'll probably next come for gay marriage.
This is just off the top of my head. So how exactly has the left gone off the "deep end" exactly?
There's really only been progress on two issues:
1. Gay marriage was legalized (but, as noted, that's at risk of being reversed); and
2. There have been advancements in trans rights.
This I think is the crux of the matter when people talk about the "far left". They really mean they hate trans people and want them to go away.
Conservatives are sore winners but great propagandists as evidenced by the fact that this myth that conservatives are "losing" perpetuates at all.
They never have any examples to back their claim. But the message is always the same: the left has gone too far. Its clearly more important to get that out then it is to defend it with logic, probably because of the truthiness of the statement.
I would wager good money that in many cases these "I was left wing, but the insane Left pushed me to the GOP!" posters were never, in fact, left wing and are instead trying to spread a particular message. See also the "walk away" hashtag that was pushed in the lead up to 2020.
I agree with your points, but I think you're painting with too broad of a brush with:
> They really mean they hate trans people and want them to go away.
It is certainly an issue; viz various bathroom panics over the last decade. But, at least in the tech sphere, most of the fear I've seen comes from Twitter BS and hate. There are vocal people who want to use "wokeness" as a tool to attack people. I can see how it would be easy to conflate those kinds of attacks with progressivism for people who are predisposed against progressivism from the start.
I'm not sure about that. The right is returning to a more traditional conservatism. The right used to support tariffs, using the government to push their agenda, more of a small tent party, nationalist, etc. The small government conservative, neoconservative, globalist, and big tent ideologies are new (for conservatives) and being rejected. I don't think returning to your roots is "bonkers".
Is your post implying being conservative is inherently bad? It seems like that’s the unspoken crux of your argument - ie you actually have an issue with a “conservative” (I hesitate to label musk as one) winning the culture war. Conservatives make the same argument about “don’t be political” when liberals are winning.
I’m mostly in agreement with what you said, but I don’t think your reasons are coming from a principled place.
For me the weak point in that post is using the phrase "coming out and supporting Desantis" to refer to Elon Musk responding to the questions of if he'd be voting republican ("tbd"), and who he's "leaning towards" ("DeSantis").
That said I think it's a horrible look and DeSantis's response to the matter is one of the most tasteless and tone-deaf things I've heard from him all week.
I'm neither suggesting that supporting a republican is a horrible look nor that being conservative is bad. Please be careful not to derail this into partisanship.
> A lot of people (myself included) really respect SpaceX and I think that's the last pillar on which Elon's reputation stands. Tesla honestly isn't that interesting and there's a real chance it gets eaten alive as other car manufacturers have caught up.
Build quality wise? Definitely, Tesla has a lot of issues there which the established industry has ironed out and perfected over the last hundred years.
Other problems? No way in hell the others can catch up. The old guard of automotive manufacturers simply is too stuck in their old ways - they have to manage the expectations of dealerships (as the only service most electric cars need is brake pad changes and Teslas are sold online, their existence is threatened) and suppliers (your average ICE alone takes something around 1000-2000 distinct parts, whereas electric cars need far fewer for the drivetrain), and no automotive manufacturer has anything resembling a history with developing modern software and it shows everywhere.
You bring up a good point, but I think old school car manufacturers don't believe that directly competing with Tesla is the winning move. If they're smart, I think they'll go for affordability, which is an utterly failed promise of Tesla. Bring down the price of full-electrics and plug-in hybrids, and you've got an audience of buyers that Tesla never took seriously. I for one would love an electric vehicle but in the year 2022 it's still not economical for me to trade in my beater car for even a used plug-in hybrid.
When there's a recession, no one's going to give a shit about a car with a bunch of bells and whistles. They want a car that they can afford to buy and afford to drive. In any case, that's what I want.
You need experience though to bring batteries down to affordable prices - both for yield improvements and for actually figuring out stuff like "how to construct a BMS that keeps batteries somewhat alive?"... Tesla has had well over a decade to fine-tune their entire stack, the only one who can match them in experience is Toyota with the Prius lineup. The second-next is BMW, but the i8 is a niche model for rich show-offs and the i3 is a toy - and BMW hasn't been associated with "affordability" in many decades.
The car manufacturers that are associated with attributes like "affordability" don't have much experience with electric vehicles, so they will have to buy that experience or do it the same way Tesla did, which means they will need a decade.
I don't think experience has that much to do with affordability. Tesla might assemble their batteries at their factory, but the actual lithium ion cells are manufactured by Panasonic, was well as supporting electronics. There's nothing magical or mysterious about the Tesla EV powertrain. Affordability is going to come down to necessity, demand (related to necessity), and how cheap a plentiful number of li-ion batteries can be made.
How much experience do you think is required? Other companies like Chevy, Chrysler, Hyundai, and Ford already have semi-electric vehicles for sale today. They don't all need to be successes. It can take just one of them to come out with an affordable electric vehicle when the economics are right, and sticking to plug-in hybrids gives them plenty of time to get experience.
As I understand it, there are other computer-controlled cars which are notable further along than Tesla. For example, Mercedes is will to take legal responsiblity for their system, while Tesla isn't.
This kind of claims are used also as PR stunt and to assure a "monopoly" over post-sale period. Any repair or maintenance out of Mercedes and I assume that the legal responsibility would vanish. In the past car owners were asked for extra guarantee for a minor increase in the price. Now they probably aren't being asked and is silently included in the overprice.
Yeah, I stopped reading at the assertion that other car companies have caught up to Tesla.
Lots of people have not internalized what's going on at Tesla. They still seem to be stuck on the idea that when the large, experienced auto manufacturers start really ramping up EVs, Tesla will be swamped.
What seems to have gone unnoticed is that Tesla has significantly higher margins per vehicle than all other major automakers, including Toyota. Tesla is years ahead on batteries. While the rest of the industry is fighting over a limited supply of third-party batteries, Tesla is buying nickel directly from Vale, for their own batteries, in their own form factor, with their own chemistry.
Tesla is beating the established automakers on scale and profit margins.
OTA Updates? Rapid iteration cycle? Supercharger network? Doubling factories every few years?
Tesla has lots and lots of problems, from servicing, to pricing, to build quality, to various ethical issues. But they're years ahead on EVs.
> Tesla has significantly higher margins per vehicle than all other major automakers, including Toyota.
I feel like this is because they charge BMW prices for less than Honda quality, especially with the Model 3. Maybe they can keep this up, but we’ll see. Tesla tech is certainly better than most if not all and is a huge selling point.
Based on what management said it wasn't necessarily what was in the letter, but the behavior surrounding the formation of the letter and soliciting people to sign it. Basically they were fired for using company resources for personal use and intimidation of their peers.
> Basically they were fired for using company resources for personal use and intimidation of their peers.
Knowing that this would be leaked and make news, they could have framed the letter to all employees in the best possible way for the company (both PR and HR). Let's hold out and see what SpaceX insiders and the fired employees actually say.
No doubt they could have done it better, but all we know right now is the contents of the letter. What we don't know is how they went about soliciting signatures and so called surveys of employees (likely management won't release this detailed information either). The fired employees won't tell you what really happened...more than likely they will play the victims in this. The details may only come out once a lawsuit is filed.
I'm not sure I totally believe that. But loud, public, insubordination is a fire-able offense in most companies. Create bad PR for your company = ticket to firing. Even in the companies that pretend that isn't true, they would still fire you if your "call out" wasn't socially sanctioned.
He doesn't intimidate his peers, he intimidates his lessers.
It's conservatism in a nutshell. The end game is a class of people protected by the rules, but not bound by them, and another class that's bound by them, but not protected.
That activity is protected, but not during working hours and using company resources (ex. you can't use internal email to spam the entire company with pro-union information).
That's not speculation, it's quoted by the SpaceX president...it may not be true, but it's not speculation.
"I work 120 hour work weeks" is CEO speak for "Any time spent in the penthouse I built with company money and in which I occasionally remote work but mostly do lines of cocaine off a hooker's back is work time".
Musk does maybe 50 hours of work a week, it's just that it's spread out over time and not 10 hour long shifts like he forces on his employees.
These activists employees are free to get funding to buy spacex if Elon can be persuaded to sell.
Your point makes no sense. It’s a free country, just because Elon is buying Twitter to make different rules on it makes no difference to this point. He has the resources based on building multiple billion dollar businesses.
These activist employees can do the same over 30-40 years and buy companies and implement whatever they want.
But don’t expect to not get fired from a private company if you don’t align with its values
I am personally thrilled to see a company stand up to cancel culture and political employee activism. The ridiculous non-work related distractions from employee on various political crusades we've been seeing at many companies like Google are one of the things ruining Silicon Valley. It's nice to see Elon not allowing it at his companies, and Coinbase in being another standout against this silliness.
I think we're on the tail end of Extreme activism working within organizations. Everyone talks about the pendulum swinging and I think with economic downturns, people will find out really quickly how fast it can swing back.
Having seen the full text of the letter it has a bit "But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion with equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo." Which sounds quite cancel culture.
The other thread is full of this nonsense. You give the impression that you believe that free speech absolutists think you ought to be allowed to walk up to your CEO and tell him to go fuck himself, without retaliation. What other things would you have us believe that free speech absolutists would allow? Catcalling coworkers, perhaps? Threatening to murder someone's children?
No, you just want to snipe at Musk, and you see this is a way to do it.
Did you read the letter? No where does it tell musk to go fuck himself. That’s your characterization.
I read the letter, and thought it was reasonable. If it was my company, I would allow it. Been a founder several times, so that’s not just wild speculation. The only way to get your reading of it is if you have super thin skin and can’t take any criticism.
Hilariously, in both threads I have not seen a single comment claiming that "spacex is a private company and free speech doesn't apply and blah blah blah".
As far as I can tell, having a billion dollars thins your skin pretty appreciably. Takes a few years for some people, but it seems to get them all in the end.
His actions show that he considers calling someone a child molester to be acceptable speech so it isn't too much to think that much more polite speech he would not have an issue with.
That person was not a boss or coworker, he was a stranger who had insulted him.
It's completely wild how over the past twelve months the anti-Musk people have somehow eclipsed the pro-Musk people in their monomania and inability to step back and objectively consider any situation.
> It's completely wild how over the past twelve months the anti-Musk people have somehow eclipsed the pro-Musk people in their monomania
He's a perpetually online guy, it was bound to happen. If he shut up every now and then it would help.
If he realized he can't derive unified theories of social behavior through logic untainted by the real world and then proudly announce them to universal acclaim, he could probably go back to the widely enjoyed persona of a year or two ago where the only die hard haters were Boeing stock holders.
> objectively consider any situation
hHaha, ok, I look forward to the objective discussion of the relative merits of calling someone a "pedo". Super objective!
> If he realized he can't derive unified theories of social behavior through logic untainted by the real world
This isn't at the root of what we're discussing here. That would be like applying Postel's law to natural language, confirmed by your own experience of receiving maybe a few passing "death threats" per month while bantering, while brushing aside the predicament of someone who receives ongoing death threats from a persistent stalker.
Rather, this topic just seems to be basic hypocrisy. If one cannot stomach a critique written in good faith to make one's company better, it's utterly disingenuous to invoke appeals to free speech elsewhere.
Of course. People like to point out the man's hypocrisy. He claims to feel that people shouldn't be punished for the things they say, but has a long history of punishing people for the things they say.
He makes it so easy, and everyone can tell by his personality that it grates on him.
One can reasonably take positions such as "you can tell me to go fuck myself, and I'll appreciate if you articulate why" and "I don't mind being catcalled". I would expect someone describing themselves as a "free speech absolutist" to take such positions.
(Leaving aside your tangent of trying to make those decisions for others)
The purpose of Twitter is speech. People like Musk argue it is analogous to a public space. Twitter users don't work for Twitter and are not subordinates of Twitter. Do you also imagine that Musk believes service people ought to be allowed to mock their superior officers to their faces without repercussions?
Musk got someone fired from a job because they once worked for the SEC.
So I imagine Musk believes anyone who causes him displeasure, in any form, even by association, should be put in their place by measures including, and up to, loss of livelihood.
I'm not so sure he gives a damn about anyone in the military, unless they run afoul of the ideas presented in previous statement.
That lawyer INVESTIGATED Musk. I don't think Musk behaved very well in that situation, but if you are a law firm and you rely on Musk's companies for business, maybe don't hire a government lawyer who went after him?
Maybe freedom from Twitter censoring you, but not freedom from repercussions from what you said (or tweeted). That’s ultimately determined by e.g. the courts and (as in this case) employers.
Actually, about half of the political spectrum of the US believes (or steadfastly pretends to believe) that this is precisely what "free speech" means.
I guess they haven't processed the famous XKCD on this issue.
Gen-X is middle management at these companies. That generation has never been a martyr for ANY cause - isn't Gen-X's whole "thing" that they're all nihilists and nothing matters etc etc?
People should be called out. Musk is always talking about upending established orders and questioning the status quo - guess he's more interested in loyalists.
Gen-X when they were young were sort of anti-conformist and anti-corporate. "Selling out" was the biggest insult. You see it reflected in the popular media of the time--like Office Space and Matrix. But in order to have financial success and raise families they "sold out" and went to work for the man.
>People should be called out. Musk is always talking about upending established orders and questioning the status quo - guess he's more interested in loyalists.
Depends what you mean by calling out because must of current call out culture is toxic garbage. I think successful organizations need to encourage questioning decisions. But questioning isn't the same thing as loudly criticizing in a public manner.
Amazing how harmful trashing educational and economic opportunities was for democracy. We could always get jobs with benefits and almost enough money for a house and family. They can’t.
The trouble makers amongst Gen-Z are mostly the privileged college educated ones. The working poor aren't too tired from being exploited to engage in this stuff.
And that's the problem here. They would have ended up looking for different jobs anyway. Others will leave too. The only people working there will be other assholes.
Maybe the current “thing” is to recognize what happens after getting fired and learn to exploit it: outrage PR, podcast and media spots, outreach by like minded people with other opportunities, etc
I'd guess not. We (gen x) grew before social media wokeism and have an understanding that thrashing your company or boss publicly isn't the smartest move. I bet these are some entitled zoomers right out of a college.
For this to be consistent you have to define access to a Twitter account as more important to ones future freedom of speech than being able to put a roof over your head.
Can somebody explain me "free speech"? What does it even mean? Does it mean that you are "free" to speak out whatever you want, but after you have done that, we can decide to punish you? Or does it mean, you can speak out freely without the fear of punishment(consequences)? If I know I will be fired for speaking out, is it still free speech?
He is. He just - like most other free speech proponents - conveniently fails to mention the part about consequences.
It's also no secret that he's very much fine with Claqueurs and boot lickers, but amusingly thin-skinned when it comes to critique aiming at his person, ideas, or companies. He even shut down his personal "The Onion"-clone for fear of its activity might reflect badly on him or one of his companies at some point in the future [0].
The consequences of “free speech” are way easier if you’re the one doling them out as opposed to receiving them. There’s a massive power imbalance that this particular billionaire is looking to escalate in his favor.
Anyone can sue musk if he libels them with his tweets.
Anyone can circulate letters in spacex, but spacex can fire you.
You can say whatever you want. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.
Critics of free speech need to realise this is a silly debate between them, no “free speech absolutist” wants speech without consequences. This is basically a NYT and CNN talking point and nothing to do with reality.
Not to mention there is a difference in criticizing the CEO of a company for unsubstantiated and unproven claims, circulating internal letters, and getting fired, and saying that a man is not a woman on Twitter and not being able to work in most academia or media ever again in the next 5-10 years or maybe forever.
The place is context and result is comletely different.
There's also always the option to simply not spout off about personal opinions all over the internet unasked, especially when knowing about possible consequences.
Does everyone these days feel the need to become a martyr over completely insignificant personal opinions about all kinds of drivel that doesn't even affect them personally?
Is this really the hill some of you want to die on, because it's more important to you to discuss the relevance of genitals with billions of people, than to just keep this shit to yourself and maybe rage about it offline with friends and family and keep your job and future prospects?
Do you really have so little going on in your lives that you absolutely must have a strong opinion about everyone and everything and just have to share this in the most public, traceable, and persistent way possible, lest your mind implodes from all the piled up internal stress?
A weird defence you say? How about publishing a newspaper article about how certain aspects of communism make sense in the US back in the McCarthy era.
Heck, back then just a word from a disgruntled neighbour could land you a visit from the feds and potential jailtime. Today, it's getting banned from some oh-so-irrelevant social media platform that gets people all riled up.
You want to know what high consequences are? Outing yourself as homosexual in Iraq, Suda, Saudi-Arabia, or Jemen. All these countries can have you sentenced to death for just expressing your love to an individual of the same gender - or worse, just being accused of doing so.
It's truly fascinating how whiny some folks are about potentially facing negative consequences for trouble they voluntarily and willingly getting themselves into for no reason and over miniscule BS they just want to rage about.
Instead of doing the grown-up thing and writing letters to their representatives - you know, the people you elected to care about such issues and pass legislation that reflects your interests - they instead want to stand on a pedestal and shout their opinions for all the world to hear.
If you want to try and convince people, go talk to them. Do it in a context where it actually matters, like a school board meeting where rules are discussed that go against your conviction. No one's stopping you and no one's going to "cancel" you for doing so.
Honest to god question: what did people do in the early 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, etc.? Did they all spend their free time writing angry letters to newspapers, TV- and radio stations and have heated discussions in the middle of time square shouting their opinion at every passer by?
By that logic, we shouldn't be concerned about people living in poverty, because there's other people being shot and killed and raped and tortured in war. How about those activists for the hungry and homeless just stop getting riled up about it, don't they know how much worse war is?
When children are getting hormone treatment, without any real oversight, with lifetime consequences, a lot of people feel like they have to get involved yes. That's just the way some people are.
You might not like that, but I do.
And in case you don't believe the truly terrible effects of this, have a read in the detrans subreddit.
I have read the detrans subreddit. A lot of the accounts involve trauma in not being accepted in a non-cis identity. Others in not receiving enough support from either doctors or through therapy. There is varying oversight in receiving hormone treatment as well.
Trans groups are wide and varied. You will find plenty who believe in the weight of the decision and that it should be made accordingly.
This doesn’t excuse the huge amount of disrespect and hurt that gets thrown towards someone because they ask to be identified as a man or a woman. Just the other day someone burned a pride flag in Baltimore and ended up burning down three houses and sending four people to the hospital.
Surely in their mind somewhere, there was a thought that they were saving children from a “delusion”. But in this instance who has the delusion?
I mean we all know what you are saying here. It is objectively wrong. And yes, if you profess it, I genuinely hope you could not find employment for the rest of your life, subject to squalor and begging for chump change on the street corner.
Yeah, good luck standing in court against a billionaire...
His money puts him above most laws, especially non criminal ones.
This is ok because he owns stuff is an antithesis to a democratic free country with a rule of law. It's basically a step towards monarchy.
That's just the most hypocritical thing to be.
Free speech means not being prosecuted by the government, so being a free-speech absolutist as an indiviual is completely meaningless.
If he is trying to be a free-speech absolutist in terms of every opinion being heard equally and fairly without punishment, which is what absolutist implies, he is also a hypocrite as shown in his numerous actions against critics.
Overall, no matter how you spin and turn it, Musk is not a free-speech "absolutist" in any way. He has no specific position on free-speech other than what has the basic law that applies to every citizen.
It certainly sounds hypocritical if you're willing to play liberties with the definition of free speech. However, free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences of such speech. The audience can respond any way they like without infringing on the speaker's rights (and it's not a right to work at SpaceX).
These employees should have expected this reaction; Musk doesn't seem like the type to pass up executing his right to impose consequences. Hopefully they were prepared and have achieved some of the impact they were hoping for.
He's free to whine about it, buy the company, or start his own platform. If he truly cared then he'd be lobbying for Congress to limit the "ban rights" of companies and individuals running platforms like Twitter (personally I would not vote for anyone supporting such a bill). Before the recent Supreme Court I would say that it would take an amendment; now I'm not so sure that such a bill would be overturned.
This is a little disingenuous. Twitter itself is the means of "speech." I don't think Musk or anyone else has stated that your Tweets should exempt you from consequences off the platform. Similarly, the ability for everyone to speak their mind on the world's modern town square doesn't give Twitter employees carte blanche within the corporate hierarchy.
This action and being a "free speech absolutist" are not mutually exclusive.
Free speech, refers to public speech, and especially in the context of the state not creating laws / rules that stifle dissent or criticism of the state or those holding public office
Free speech does not mean speak anything and it certainly does not mean my speech may not have any downstream effects.
Proof is that the employees were free to say what they wanted. And now they get the door. Where is the problem? Free speech does not mean you don't get to suffer the consequences of what you say.
Free speech absolutists are rarely consistent about absolutism within their own fiefdoms.
As far as I can tell, the only intellectual consistency within that movement is that the people pushing it want to be allowed to say anything they want anywhere they want, without any consequences.
The fact that this comment is upvoted and is taken as a gotcha argument or something with any validity when it requires five seconds to realize it's easily refutable is not a good show for HN
There's no contradiction between desiring free speech in the public sphere - which is what Musk claims he wants - and not wanting to associate yourself with people who support certain speech, which is what Musk has done.
The comment I replied to before is a non sequitur, this doesn't mean what Musk is doing is right, simply that mindlessly upvoting a Trump-rally-tier argument is not conducive to anything good.
Eventually HN will become reddit and we'll just upvote "our side", regardless of whether the argument has merit.
That's not a left or right issue - it's simply a fact of life.
Example: you are free to verbally shit all over your boss and company in public; just don't expect to work there for much longer.
Another example: you are free to call the 1.93m thug who bumped into you a blind idiot, just don't expect to face no physical consequences for exercising your right to give him a piece of your mind.
It's funny how some people try and make this a political issue when it's really not and never has been.
If a company decides you violated their ToS and consequently doesn't want you on their platform anymore - then yes. They didn't involve the government to take away your civil rights or punish you and you are free to join a different platform.
It's like being banned from the regulars' table for constantly being a nuisance and then complaining to the bartender that your former buddies don't want you at their table anymore.
The audience can respond any way they like without infringing on the speaker's rights or breaking any laws. It's not a right to work at SpaceX and it's not illegal to fire employees with cause.
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.
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.
>Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
>Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
70% of people, including Musk and the consequences promised are all just plain wrong.
Clearly the the government (local, state, or national) is not punishing the speaker of any tweets, never has done, doesnt have any intention to etc - so what is the big deal, who are we "saving freedome of speech" from?
Also last time I checked, being critical of one's employer is neither a crime nor a violation of any employment contract that I have ever signed. Its a bad look sure, but to be honest it is boardering on a 1984 thought crime if you are instantly fired if you think your boss is a bit of a dick.
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 disdain from certain groups. I'm no Musk fanboy, but I find that really interesting.
> 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.
250,000 USD paid to keep a corporate jet flight attendant quiet about alleged sexual harassment by Elon and now the immediate firing of employees asking the company to clarify Elon's views don't reflect SpaceX's views or its culture. There can't even be a hint of criticism of Elon.
> “Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable,” she said.
If this were true, I don’t see a problem here. This is harassment
Well, no matter how it came about, the US can build rockets again. The best ones in the world. You can pretty much get away with anything if you have a relationship like that with the DoD.
> SpaceX was sold as different and the illusion of that is fading.
The "illusion" of what, building actually working and affordable space hardware? The only way that could "fade" would be if someone else like Boeing replicated their successes. As long as SpaceX is technically successful and others aren't, SpaceX being different will be not an illusion but reality even just on that basis alone.
> SpaceX was sold as different and the illusion of that is fading
Is it really? They're moving faster than anyone else right now, and hitting some good milestones on Starship. They're building a portfolio of business lines from Starlink, through smallsat ridesharing, to super heavy lift and human space flight for commercial and governmental customers. I don't see other space companies catching up soon.
The illusion of Musk being some sort of business guru is certainly fading, but I don't feel that SpaceX are losing their edge.
The gift of a bunch of employees who care more about activism than the work? This is not a gift I would ever want to receive.
I doubt this affects their ability to win contracts in the slightest. Their biggest competitors are all defense contractors, not exactly more sympathetic to causes like this...
Musk may end up being the most influential person to:
1. Electrify our vehicular infrastructure
2. Get humans to the Moon, if not to Mars
3. Accelerate the unionization of Silicon Valley tech workers
His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat. Just as he's loudly supporting public free speech as long as it's his speech, I predict within a few months of taking over Twitter (assuming he doesn't just eat the penalties for dropping out of the agreement) he'll be loudly proclaiming his support of democracy as long as it's not within his companies.
I should have just left out the "Silicon Valley" part of that, true. Unionization of developers and technology workers is starting, but remains slow because unions are usually formed when the cost of speaking out becomes worth more than enduring the negatives and unreasonably low pay is usually one of the biggest issues for workers and we don't really have pay issues. Musk's approach to treating his employees as cogs in his machines, to the point of becoming belligerent when they assert their human individuality, could be an accelerant in forming unions even in this high-pay sector.
I think anyone in the tech sector that wants to be apart of a union should go work for the government for a few years… then decide if that is what they really want…
Right, right, as everyone knows all unions and all government jobs are pretty much the same, and your phrasing clearly demonstrates your deep experience with both.
First, have you ever asked (even if just yourself) if anyone sees an issue with massive corporations?
The second thing is that it isn't the right question. Anything make by humans is imperfect. The question is, does union representation lead to better outcomes for a larger number of people? And the answer is pretty clearly yes.
The answer to "massive corporations" isn't another massive corporation. These unions operate in the same manner as corporations but produce nothing. The ones at the top get massive bonuses and get filthy rich from your paycheck.
Also the amount of corruption within these organization is insane. They also lobby like corporations (just ask biden) They ARE "corporations" masquerading as a good cause, does that remind you of any tech giants?
I think they both have a significant number of software engineers but I think astrophysicists, aeronautical engineers, and etc likely fall in a similar bucket as software engineers as far as supply and demand / leverage go.
I'm sure recruiters at Boeing, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic are lighting up phones today.
Where does the idea originate that there has to be a democracy in a private company?
If I were to take my money and start a company, and risk it all, I would go to great lengths (within the law) to make decisions that make my venture successful.
That does involve exercising my rights to choose employees that further this goal, and firing those that don’t.
Democracy in politics where we have an inalienable right to vote, happens in a different domain.
I fail to understand why everyone gets so worked up.
Because he markets himself one way but acts another. As you point out, one can be both a champion of democracy and someone who runs a company with a standard hierarchy, but he doesn’t market himself that way. It’s fugazzi.
CHS Inc is about as democratic as McDonalds. The farmers can vote, just as McDonald's shareholders can, but I'd bet that the Hispanic laborers they rely on have less of a say over their working conditions than McDonald's workers.
There are many worker coops that operate as a democracy, some of them quite large. From manufacturing to food service to coding to agriculture, they are in nearly every sector.
Maybe this is news to you, but the arrangement isn't that uncommon.
As someone who believes in free speech even for people I despise and opinions I find nauseating, I hate that people like Musk have become the public face of the free speech movement.
Remember when DeVore got fired from Google, and there was a massive "free speech" outcry?
Very odd that it's not happening now. People feel that it's OK to disparage lots of fellow colleagues with bad interpretations of science, but not OK to critique the CEO for specific actions are not a group of people I want to be associated with either, even though I have always been a "free speech" proponent. I just use different terminology.
Unions are democratic, employee-run institutions which promote higher involvement of employees in the operations and logistical planning of companies. I'm not referring to Twitter becoming a Co-op, that would indeed be nearly unprecedented.
Government is a necessary evil with a monopoly on the initiation of force, and as such a primary concern with government is restraining it. Democracy is all about restraining and also providing a (usually) non-violent pressure valve to avoid revolutions and insurrections that destabilize the entire system or threaten to cause government's restraints on the use of force to be removed.
Unrestrained government was a really significant cause of death in the early 20th century.
Private businesses have an entirely different purpose.
Governments compete with each other as well, and they still have a monopoly on force in the territory they govern. The owners of corporations do not have to compete for power over the corporations they own.
> Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.
Yes, they do compete, but changing a country isn't as easy as switching a car brand.
I don't value democracy. I value freedom and prosperity. I think democracy has become too holy to criticize.
I think the perfect world would consist of small autocratic city-states. There would be a single monarch in each city-state who chooses which laws are implemented. Laws would be on Github, everyone could suggest patches or fork them, and the monarch would just have to choose which set of laws they want to implement. Lots of people would collaborate on the laws in an open-source manner. Citizens could easily check which laws are implemented in each city-state, and choose where they want to live. I think something like this would be better than huge countries with democracy.
Eh, we vote in the top people but government's are mostly run hierarchal just as companies are and shareholders vote in board members who appoint the ceo who then runs the company hierarchal so I honestly don't see that much difference.
Well one difference is that the people who work in the government bureaucracies are still citizens, and are able to vote for or against the leaders that manage them. Workers don’t have a say in who manages the company or how they do it.
> Well one difference is that the people who work in the government bureaucracies are still citizens, and are able to vote for or against the leaders that manage them.
While technically true, this seems laughably inaccurate in practice. Government bureaucracies are almost entirely composed of unelected employees.
"There are 542 federal offices: President, Vice President, 100 U.S. Senators (two from each state), 435 U.S. Representatives, four delegates to the House of Representatives from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, and one Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico."[0]
"Federal Civilian Employment ... Total, All Areas* 1,869,986"[1]
Yes, the latter number includes Dept of Defence civilian employees.
Examination of the situation in a state of your choosing is left as an exercise for the reader, however I suspect the ratios for state employees vs elected officeholders will be similar.
If I might be so bold, I don’t think anyone around here really appreciates Musk’s antics very much. However Tesla and SpaceX are fundamentally sound, if overvalued, businesses. Since the start of Tesla he has had loud and obnoxious detractors who have had any number of reasons Tesla is about to implode. Instead they keep churning out solid EVs and SpaceX keeps putting stuff in space. As much as I dislike him, I would not bet against his businesses.
Tesla is certainly a solid business in the sense that they make cars people are happy to buy. I certainly wouldn't expect the value of the business to drop to zero.
But Tesla has a Price/Earnings ratio of 100 while other car companies like Toyota only have a P/E of 10. So Tesla's stock price could drop a long way while still being reasonable.
And if Musk had got a loan against his Tesla stock to buy Twitter, a substantial drop in Tesla's price could have disproportionate results.
Fundamentally sound doesn't always matter if they are overvalued enough. Companies that take a 99% drop in stock price are likely to end up losing the last percent in a bear market based on lack of confidence from investors.
It's an interesting strategy, really -- build a sorta-neat stable business, and affiliate it with a buffoon who constantly overpromises to his cult following to inflate the stock price to outrageous values.
Then, your "sorta-neat stable business" has MASSIVE amounts of value from stock grants, capital it can use to hire more, pay more, finance debt for large purchases, etc. Kind of a superpower for an otherwise unremarkable company.
Of course, there's other externalities from the buffoon and his cultists. They can drive away good workers, or pivot the company in unpleasant directions, or just leave some day, tank the company stock, and then the company loses the superpower and all of the things that come with it. But if your main mission is growth, well, it makes a lot of sense...
This is incorrect. Inspiration4 sent astronauts they trained. This was largely true for the Axiom mission as well, and will be for the Polaris missions.
As far as I can tell NASA had no plans to return to the moon until spaceX came around with starship. Hard for me to say spaceX isn’t the direct reason for the planned mission
That's not correct. The Constellation program (which would eventually morph into the SLS via Ares) have been in development with the goal of returning to the moon since before the F9 launched even.
> His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat.
We don’t have the data to determine the long term viability of work from home. Maybe we never will - causation is not correlation, and I don’t see any RCTs happening.
Like most decisions, we can’t simply consult ”science” or ”the experts” - we have to use our instincts and our priors.
I would be surprised if he didn't. He has a history of being vindictive towards critics and has a lot of grudges and is more hands-on than typical CEOs.
> His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat.
Nobody can read minds of course, but I think it is smart to not always take people at face value and consider all of their motives in saying anything. Personally I think Elon Musk is probably strongly supporting working in the office for 2 reasons. (Obviously pure speculation)
1) Forcing an ultimatum is a means of achieving a stealth layoff. Tesla probably wants a few percent of people to quit and trim expenses without losing investor confidence, as their stock price is of course inflated. (My prediction is that many businesses are probably going to be needlessly promoting working from the office to try and effectively achieve a round of layoffs by having a percentage of people quit)
2) The people who are the loudest about working from home probably are the biggest workplace trouble-makers about relative non-issues. To give an example: I know that this is genuinely a sensitive issue for some, but we all know that there are at least some people who are loudly trying to milk Covid-19 for eternity so they can stay home from work and meanwhile are going out to eat at restaurants and living life care-free.
What’s wrong with living life care free and restaurants? If they get their work done I see nothing wrong with a positive outlook on life and supporting the economy with restaurant dining.
If someone’s productivity slips from wfh then address the issue sure.
> What’s wrong with living life care free and restaurants?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's what I've been strongly advocating for during the last 2 years. Go out there and live your life normally as you see fit.
One problem is that at least some people out there are trying to milk Covid-19. Publicly, they tell their employer they're too scared of Covid-19 to come to the office so they get to stay home. Privately, they go out every weekend and interact with people normally and live their life.
Another relevent consideration here is that SpaceX and Tesla are both fundamentally manufacturing businesses, which developed their processes via rapid iteration. I assume that means the managers and engineers are expected to be closer to the factory floor than in other businesses. So WFH for Musk's businesses might actually be very impractical.
Not sure about the stealth layoff take. It's too unfocused, you'll lose people you want to keep and keep people you want to lose. Severance isn't that expensive and gives a lot more control.
Agree with your second point though. There's even people absuing remote work to work multiple jobs simultaneously.
> Not sure about the stealth layoff take. It's too unfocused, you'll lose people you want to keep and keep people you want to lose.
Given how political worldview seems to be pretty correlated with concern about stuff like Covid-19 and the new labor movement that has emerged, I'd suspect that it's reasonably focused.
or
3) Being a manufacturing business, it's bad for company culture. It further divides your executives and 'pencil pushers' as their own privileged above that of the grunts actually creating the products.
I don't understand why "4. Stay at your company and try to change culture within by organizing collectively, either through the guise of a union or informally" isn't also something you are free to do, besides that you think doing so is not "do[ing] something positive to the society", but is instead "becoming a bunch of cry babies."
Also why is 3 binary? If I am a minority investor in a company, I am not free to criticize the management? I have to buy the majority of the company and fire the management?
It kind of seems like you don't actually understand that soft power exists. The canonical book on this within organizational politics is "Exit, Voice and Loyalty". Have you ever had a social interaction in your entire life? Not everything is an ultimatum, some things are conversations.
To accomplish (4) you have to become a sociopath and sociopaths won't attempt to substantially improve culture for its own sake because they lack empathy.
Most employees never consider starting their own company, so we can strike off (2). Buying SpaceX is vanishingly unrealistic, so discount (3). My impression of working at SpaceX is that the options for employees are:
1. Keep working at SpaceX - work on truly innovative technology with a lofty mission. The work environment sucks, you work 100 hour weeks but the _work_ itself is great. Your work might land on Mars this decade.
2. Join another startup (Relativity, Firefly, Rocket Lab, etc) - no proven track record of success or work on smaller scale (but successful) projects. Work hours and culture are variable, but there is a general sense of urgency. Your work is not landing on Mars this decade but could still change the aerospace industry in smaller ways.
3. Coast and enjoy life with your family (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Blue Origin, etc). Work 38 hour weeks. You will get the chance to work on large prestigious projects. Your project is regularly in the news for being over budget and late. There is no sense of urgency. You have complete job security.
Why should I be compelled to use the systems someone else designed? Who is so wise and righteous that their external control over my decision to join or not is justified?
Because the system is designed mostly by founders who built the company from ground up and had the maximum skin in the game. Employees have minimum skin in the game, never have full context on things and are easily replaceable. You are always free to start your own company according to your own rules.
Sure. Also for the employer to fire employees for doing that. So doing it is stupidity instead of just finding a better company that values your skill.
If you want balance of power improve your skills and get job in a company that values you more. There would never be perfect balance of power. It's not real life.
It's not about perfection, quite a misnomer of an argument imo. You would be the kind of person that 100 years ago would probably be against woman getting the vote - "It's not about equality, that's not real life"
You are changing the goal posts. On an individual level that might all be fine 'in a perfect world', but moving somewhere else, improving ones skills, not a given at all. You sound bitter and lack empathy.
If the problem is big enough for you, you are perfectly capable of changing company or country. If not, it's not important for you or you don't care enough to put in the work.
Now that comes across as some perfect utopia. Maybe certain people don't want to stick their neck out in fear of losing job, which is not possible since they have to support a family. Etc. You live in a hypothetical dream world.
I used to have a dim opinion of unions because of some media and some political views. Now I would describe it as much more nuanced.
In working with some public sector unions though, arguing for management, I've actually seen very different focuses in play: namely efficiency. The unions with whom I work are definitely about fair labor practices, and pre-decisional input, and that is just common sense though. In working with them I was very impressed with what I saw. They never talked politics, only members, and issues confronting them regarding efficiency which was in their agreement with management.
Now, on the other hand, had a neighbor that was high up in leadership of a national union. He never talked with me about efficiency, or his members, just continual rants around a specific political party, and how he was attending political events from his political party.
I will ride the down arrow roller coaster with you. People can make a choice about where they work. Companies are not democracies. Organizing unions is a fast-track to a closed location, relocated factory, or loss of a job.
Companies exist to make profit. Unions extract profit at a disproportionate rate to the value they provide. Every business owner knows this. People who think unions add value are drinking the kool-aid. High performers are not rewarded because the ocean is now higher.
If you are an average performer, you definitely want a union. If you're a high-performer, unions are a form of arbitrage for your salary.
Unionizing is pure free market. Workers are holders and sellers of labour (which free market advocates typically class as a commodity). They bargain for the best contract in exchange for that labour. Why is a worker's optimization of their commodity lame and negative, whereas a company's optimization for profit is not?
Username checks out I guess. This is an extremely low-effort comment. It seems that you would _prefer_ to live in a society where job security is so fragile that a well-meaning letter can get you fired?
Ignore all the employment rules lawyering, and "Elon is for free speech..." / "SpaceX's mission says...", etc. arguments. This is not a computer program, nor a debating society.
Humans, especially most top corporate executives, are definitely primates. Some lower-down members of the SpaceX troop issued (de facto) a very clear and public challenge to the dominance of the troop's alpha macho male 900# gorilla. They failed to get a chorus of overwhelming support from other members of the troop. They don't appear to have any serious 900# backers from outside the troop.
Can anyone give an example of such a situation ending well for the challengers?
Only consequence of speech should never be more severe than speech.
"Freedom from consequences" is a weak argument used by supporters of autocrats, mobocracies, cancel-culturists, religious bigots wanting to punish blasphemous comments, and so on.
If you don't understand that getting fired from your job is not what the right to free speech protects you from, you may have lived in a free country your whole life.
I have never taken "free speech" to mean "in all places, all the time," so I don't see a conflict. The public sphere (irl and on the internet) is where people are advocating for free speech. A private company's internal email list does not qualify.
I don't understand why so many people have a hard time understanding this even though it has been repeated like a million times at this point. Are these people illiterate or using some kind of TSLAQ block list like in Twitter, because they're afraid of seeing any dissenting opinions?
I'm going to go out on a limb here but I think most most people acting in good faith understand the difference between the public sphere and their place of employment with regard to free speech.
For example: if these employees had been other employees (or Musk himself) people racial slurs I think that's reason to fire them but I don't think it's reason to excise them from the public discourse.
Elon's behavior has gotten so erratic and gross in the last year that I'm done defending him, I am now embarrassed to own a Tesla, and now no longer want to work at SpaceX one day.
I can't even name another car company CEO. Musk brought this kind of reaction on Tesla by closely associating Tesla's brand with his own personal brand. This cuts both ways though and what was once a net positive is starting to turn negative.
Good. According to Shotwells response they were basically harassing the rest of the staff and trying to get them to turn on the company.
Fire them immediately. Name and shame them so that they have to explain this behavior to their next employer. This type of thing is so toxic and so abusive to everybody they try to suck into it.
The contents of the letter quoted in that article are all moral allegations, but not new ones, and not presenting novel evidence of any wrongdoing. Whatever Musk has done, or whatever kind of person he is, it's all well understood and settled from a business perspective. Despite his antics, Musk hasn't gotten fired — far from it — and won't get fired for old news. So, their letter (at least what's quoted in that article) amounts to: "yes, but the CEO's behavior is not to our liking, somebody should do something about it." What would possess someone to believe that would work? It feels like the kind of thing that, ironically, might work on Twitter, but not in the real world.
The dude claiming to be a "free speech absolutist" fires people who said something about him he doesn't like... yikes. Musk is slowly turning into a Mad King
At every place I've worked at there were rules on the contract I signed that forbade me to engage in any activity that could be detrimental to the company public image, and I'm sure SpaceX contracts contain such clause too, so technically they can fire those people, but doing so at first strike and without warnings is pure evil and is the sign of just another company in which executives live in a different universe than their workers.
> Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”
This is absolute bollocks. Feeling intimidated and bullied because some colleagues criticized the CEO? Come on...
The most disgusting fact I learned in this article is that Shotwell personally backed Musk on denying claims he sexually harassed the flight attended. What?
Anyone who knows these people and their friends knows that the situation as described in the media was not out of the realm of possibility. Unless Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, was on that plane and witnessed exactly what happened, she is not qualified to assist in burying someone’s totally insane traumatic experience.
My fellow HN readers, the space startup scene is growing fast. Don’t work for a CEO/COO that is willing to throw any and everyone else under the bus to ensure they can continue to collect their own multi-billion dollar paycheck for “making the world more connected.” This has shades of Sheryl Sandberg all over it — and we know how that worked out for society.
The government needs to work harder to build competition against these people, and regulators need to be a lot more careful about allowing them to blast all of their crap into space.
I would guess we are a few years away from some former SpaceX employees with exit liquidity revealing the dirty truth as a means of handling their own PTSD.
The fact that you’ve inserted “political” into a fact-based happened-or-didn’t situation says more about you, and your willingness to buy into people’s conspiracy theories, than anything about the situation.
SpaceX is operating in a highly regulated industry and shoving crap into space, which affects every person on Earth for the next several decades. They are way more accountable to society than almost every “multinational” you can think of.
The "political" aspect of the situation is that a newspaper is reporting what an anonymous person says her friend told her in confidence years ago without any real corroborating evidence. If the media organization were not motivated by political animus they would not run such a flimsy story. Or, I don't know, maybe they would, but that's how I interpret "political".
A friend of the employee made unsubstantiated claims right when Elon was doing his Twitter thing, and threatening the stranglehold of establishment lefts information control.
Yes, it’s political.
Why didn’t the employee go to the police? Why didn’t her friend reveal this information years ago.
You're calling someone naive, while also asking why an employee didn't go to the cops with an accusation of sexual harrassment against their employer who is the richest man in the world?
We all know what would actually happen in this situation. A bunch of angry Musk fans would claim that it's made up, the papers are fake, that they're a political hitjob etc followed by self-made investigators harassing her at every step. Or Musk would just hire another detective to follow her around and call her a pedophile as he seems to do whenever someone gets visible enough.
There is no level of evidence that would meet standards, and the reason why this became a 'political shitshow' was because Musk caught wind of the story ahead of time and as powerful people often do, tried to spin it into an us-vs-them story.
The victim isn't the one out there making these accusations. To be honest I imagine she just wants to live her life without worrying about being harrassed further by a bunch of Elon Musk fans demanding to see a paper trail or asking why she didn't go to the police
To be fair, I don't think most people would go to the police for sexual harassment. It's handled as a civil offense unless it rises to the level of sexual assault and becomes criminal.
> Unless Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, was on that plane and witnessed exactly what happened, she is not qualified to assist in burying someone’s totally insane traumatic experience.
Or maybe, just maybe, she knows more about the case than armchair experts like yourself? She would have been involved the investigation/settlement review so would know the full details.
I've owned TSLA stock for over a decade, and I believe in the company, but I find Musk increasingly distasteful. If I had sold the last time it was over $1,000... of course that's the silly wishful thinking we all do in a contraction/correction, but goddamn, I want him out of my life.
I've already sold some of it, just to assuage my conscience a little (as well as lock in some of my profits). The next good opportunity to get out, I will, regardless of my belief that the company could well be worth $2,000 a share. It's just not worth being associated with such a terrible human being.
Maybe I've read to much history, or maybe I just need to pay more attention to Musk, but I'm pretty sure he isn't anywhere close to the category of "Terrible Human Being" I have in mind - even for the West.
He's not guilty of genocide, or even murder, so there's certainly much higher bars that can be set.
But I have a deep aversion to trolls. They cause pain deliberately. That pain is diffuse and hard to account, but so widespread that (a little bit) times (a lot) adds up to a large number. And I think it's pretty clear that Musk enjoys inflicting pain on people.
Perhaps that's too low a bar to set for the title of "terrible human being". But that's my bar, and he sails right over it. I tried to ignore it for a very long time, and I'm not sure how much longer I can.
He's also running a company that is making enormous strides in getting the world off of fossil fuels -- and pushing others to do the same. (I have quibbles with continuing the multiple-cars-per-household lifestyle, which I think will need to be reconsidered if we're going to stabilize our effect on the environment, but at least he's doing something -- and it includes reducing fossil fuels in areas besides transportation.)
And he's running a company that is revolutionizing space transport. I don't believe in his goals there, but I think good will come of it. He's doing it for real, not just running his mouth off.
And yet, on balance, he's contributing to an American social climate which keeps nudging closer to literal civil war. You probably think that's hyperbolic, and perhaps it is, but it's undeniable that its making a lot of people angry a lot of the time. He's in a position to know better, and it looks to me as if he enjoys it. To me, that merits the designation "terrible human being".
You can legitimately disagree with that, but I think we can agree on the reasons I say it.
An alternative way of connecting the same dots (I'd argue the truth is somewhere in the middle):
Musk's comments are moving us closer to a civil war because people are putting too much weight in them. If general society viewed musk as someone who wasn't a "terrible human being" but rather just someone they disagreed with, there would be no justification in their minds to consider a civil war as the response. Someone (even someone with less influence then musk) who says the "bad things" on twitter will likely get more media coverage and outrage then someone doing objectively evil things on a smaller scale.
>But I have a deep aversion to trolls. They cause pain deliberately.
So Elon is a troll because he posts things you disagree with? Because that's the only explanation I can think of here. You didn't provide any evidence to support this assertion.
I am beginning to find his erratic behaviour distasteful too.
But I think in this case(if the news articles are accurate), SpaceX actions were not entirely unjustified. It is an internal matter of a private company.
Free speech is a constitutional right that applies to every individual. Employment contracts and terms of it do not have to adhere to it.
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 to work assigned to him. The job of a union is to ensure that the work assigned to a worker is reasonable, safe, legal and properly compensated (Over time, etc)
We have no idea how many other employees agreed with the five, and the point is that we'll never know, because the precedent of "speak up and you're fired" has now been set.
Being an autocrat doesn't mean getting rid of everyone who disagrees with you, just the ones who dare to do something about it (or potentially might).
This case reminds me more the classic boycott handbooks. A tiny group of people sparking the flames of revolution for no reason, maybe desperately trying to get the attention of Musk, maybe for profit.
This people can sink a startup really fast. The kind of people drawing caricatures of the CEO where they should be doing calculus on critical parts of the system. Letting they go is the correct move. They are 100% free to fund a better, more moral and more ethic Space-Z with their own money and promote a CEO that they like more.
You are forgetting that the Stasi needed quite a lot of concrete and border guards to keep people from leaving and that the whole thing collapsed in the end in a peaceful revolution because the people didn't want to take it anymore.
I understand that drama like that can't be easily tolerated in a company but if it's the owner causing drama all the time I also get the frustration of the people taking part.
I wonder whether this could have worked in a publically traded company with a board - someone who could try to rein in Musk but the hierarchy doesn't work this way here.
I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. Maybe it does and we just don't hear about it. Free speech does not exist within the confines of employment, and there's a big difference between speaking truth to power and inciting mutiny or rebellion. Musk has absolute control of SpaceX, and if employees do not agree with his policies, views, or anything else they need to vote with their feet and quit. Same for any other employer as most of the F100 are becoming increasingly political. Work for a company that aligns with your values if that is important to you.
I see this type of comment a lot - "if you don't like it then leave!" - and at best it seems to indicate a lack of vision. Change is possible! First, there are two possible motivations for saying the above:
(1) The practical advice sense (an "is" statement): "workers currently have little power in large corporations and so trying to change the company will not succeed and is a waste of time, therefore you should leave"
(2) The moral sense (an "ought" statement): "corporate leadership should not respect the opinions or desires of workers; the hierarchy exists for a good reason and should be maintained, and trying to have influence beyond your position in this hierarchy is wrong; therefore you should leave"
If you meant your comment in the second sense, fair enough, although you should be explicit so I know we have nothing more to talk about. If you mean it in the first sense then this ignores the option of collective worker organization, which among the oft-touted compensation improvements also gives workers an actual say in the running of their workplace - and certainly the ability to talk about what they want without fear of being fired.
You are paid to work and solve problems not create problems and harass colleagues.
If you feel it is worth it to risk your career on a letter do not spend one second of company time on it and do not use a single bit of company technology.
Honestly sick of these Prima Donna employees who think they can LARP as activists on company time and equipment.
If it is that important to "speak truth to power" do it on your own time.
I am amazed by so many who are defending Musk for his actions. I hope they would consider working for him in one of his companies & enjoy a life of subordinateship. Afterall Musk needs such workers - smart, hard working & yet someone who doesnt question him. I think dictator is the nearest term for it in the dictionary?
Sounds like these employees were really pushing it.
> The letter upset many staffers, Ms. Shotwell [SpaceX's President] said, saying they felt pressure to “sign onto something that did not reflect their views.”
> “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism,” she said in the email.
Seems pretty consistent. He's big into pretending to be for freedom of speech and never being for it if it ever actually matters. I see a lot of people here saying any billionaire boss would do the same, well, yes, that's the point, but the thing is that he very consistently and incessantly lies about not being like those "other" people and being for principles that he has never once stood for in reality. I don't recall Steve Jobs blathering about "free speech" on podcats and Twitter.
[edit]
p.s. Did anyone read the comments here before posting? It's just the same comments over and over and over and over again, wtf is this shit. Can't we do better?
The Facts that you have presented to the Elon defense force gave the Elon defense force uncomfortable Feelings. Not Respecting the very important and precious Feelings of the Elon defense force and their meme coin twitter daddy is just about the very worst thing you can do! I hope that you will moderate your wrongthink in the future, comrade!
That was the accusation by the former employees, but that seems more like projection. The small gang behind this is an embarrassment and causing distraction, and little else.
These 5 or so clowns also:
> made other staff feel "uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views.
Elon is becoming a joke. For a person who had such a big vision, he surely appears to spend too much time voicing himself on Twitter, thus exposing his less good thoughts (which we all have).
I have worked at companies where I was entirely in disagreement with the senior staff's political views. I never sent any letters or complained about it.
We had a great relationship. My job was to provide value to the company while their job was to pay me for my job.
If I felt it was too much for me to listen to their political views I always had the choice to leave.
Musk believed he needed to compel people back into the office to get what he wanted. These employees believed it was worth it to speak out. Both parties were capable of understanding the consequences of their speech. And none of those consequences were unethical or or even disproportionate to their cause. I'm not sure there's even anything to talk about here. There's no right or wrong to people's preferences for their workers' jobsite presence. And there's no right or wrong to public disagreement. In fact, this is a public market disagreement that will happen for years to come.
I would be willing to bet that in the employee handbook it requires that nobody act in a nature that is contrary to the advancement of the company. This most certainly is, and is also likely easily cited as a lack of productivity of the employee while being paid by the company.
Illegal policies are not enforced by courts. For instance, forced arbitrarion clauses, no discussions of wages, non-disparagement (Does your company say you aren't allowed to say negative things about the company, whether online or otherwise? Again, this probably violates your right to discuss working conditions), confidential information (if it violates your right to discuss working conditions), or social media prohibitions (if the company social media policy says you aren't allowed to discuss or disparage the company in social media, that may well violate your right to complain about working conditions)
There are some protections for whistleblowers exposing illegal activity, yea, but these employees were not exposing illegal activity. They were complaining about his antics/politics.
At will employment. You can be fired anytime for any reason, and there's not much in the way of recourse. Though you also get to quit without notice at such a job.
At-will employment says you can be fired any time for any reason except reasons that are explicitly illegal. This would include, for instance, discrimination against a protected class; anything covered by whistleblower laws (FCPA, all the relevant Dodd-Frank whistleblower provisions); or for organizing a union. It doesn't appear to me that the employees in this case have a slam dunk legal case, given that their allegations mostly don't seem to line up with whistleblower protection laws and while they were collectively speaking as employees, they were not formally unionizing. There are likely other ways to pretextually fire people engaging in protected activities anyway. But the question isn't crazy, this is certainly adjacent to the kind of territory that could have some legal protection.
Suing a corporation is timely and costly; and even if they're at fault for an illegitimate termination, they will drag you to court and humiliate you in the public domain. In practice, this means they can and do operate with near impunity.
At-will employment laws aren't an equivalent tradeoff -- which is why they are very uncommon outside the United States -- but the alleged benefit of such an arrangement to an employee is two-fold:
1. In places where termination is for cause, termination often causes an employee not to have access to various government benefits
2. At-will employment likely encourages more hiring in the first place, so it's possible that with more restricted firing you'd never have gotten the job.
I do not feel these benefits make up for the drawbacks and do not favour at-will as an organizing principle for industrial relations. But I just figured it would make sense to at least say the apparent argument.
It should be mentioned here that "for cause" can be any number of things, including simply "attendence issues", which realistically can be any sickness of you or your children that aren't quite covered by FMLA. All this realistically takes is you plus your three young children getting influenza at different times in a span of two months. Or not working mandatory overtime due to child care issues.
Doesn't seem imbalanced to me. I can leave and take my labor to any other company tomorrow without obligations, covenants or restrictions (non-compete agreements notwithstanding). I prefer at-will employment. Perhaps low-skill or low-quality workers feel otherwise, but I'm confident in my ability to gain employment.
At-will, in a sane world, means that a company cannot fire an employee unless they severely disrupt business operations, but the employee can quit and recieve unemployment benefits.
But I don't trust you to understand basic human decency so let me communicate that in a way you can understand: goo goo ga gah, bllblblbbb goo goo ga gah.
SpaceX leadership is clearly within their legal rights to fire these people, but the classic "CAN vs SHOULD" principle is important. The letter, which is pretty benign, is available at the bottom of https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
The letter is insubordination, it is fireable, and the employees that wrote it are also correct. Elon Musk would likely get fired for his behavior if he were a different executive - certainly disciplined - and that's a problem for SpaceX (and Tesla, and Twitter). It makes it seem like he's not accountable to anyone. Steve Jobs would not have done behaved this way publicly, nor would any other singular founder/execs I can think of at his level.
> In an email, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”
Whatever the situation, this is just brazen propaganda techniques. How shameful and obvious. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been called out in this discussion.
Unfortunately, tech bro culture has a lot of people who agree with her sentiment. You can't say that tech bro culture makes "outsiders" feel uncomfortable, intimidated, and bullied, because that makes the tech bros feel uncomfortable, intimidated, and bullied.
The comparison to "cancelling" is coming up a lot, but I think this is a reasonably simple way to distinguish the two:
Employment requires sustained two-way consent. An employer should not have to pay someone money only to have that person make their lives more difficult than otherwise. Just as an employee should be free to quit a company whose goals they find disagreeable.
Cancelling is when a 3rd party comes into an otherwise consensual employer-employee relationship (or publisher-author relationship, really any business relationship) and demanding that to end.
I am pro free speech, but would never dream of using company resources to try to publicly embarrass my CEO. And certainly not when the issue at hand is not related to company performance.
> would be scared to go to mars with this guy.
Anyone who is against Musk will add this to their litany of complaints. Anyone who loves him will be baffled why this is a story ;)
As an aside, even negative publicity is publicity, and I imagine that this whole Twitter deal will lose Elon gobs of cash, but make his other companies more valuable. "Distancing themselves from Elon Musk", from a purely capitalist perspective, sounds like a bad bet.
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.
This is why your CEO shouldn't be spending his days on Twitter bleating out college freshman-level hot takes on "freedom of speech." Right or wrong, this sort of thing will become like catnip and make everybody look ridiculous.
Damn, SpaceX sounds like a company I would never want to work for. What a horrible atmosphere. Who wants to be bullied by people that do not understand the irony of calling the sending of that open letter as distracting.
How would we have made it to the moon, if employees took surveys, sent letters, and posted numerous signs about their disagreement with upper management? Why do they work there then? I don't see how Elon has really changed much since 5 or 8 years ago to have fooled anyone who signed on for the company's mission. He wants to go to Mars. If he makes them uncomfortable, these people should not be in mission-critical positions, and possibly not at SpaceX.
I tend to like Elon or at least some of his professed ideas and goals but this is gross. Either there is a culture in his companies where people like this are fired without discussion or prodding or it was a direct instruction.
I wonder if these employees tried any internal avenues to voice their concerns before going open with it? If not, it seems more like grand-standing and the firings are more acceptable. But if internal discussions were ignored this is out of line.
"The letter called the billionaire’s public behavior and tweeting “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” and asked the company to rein him in"
Lmao thats pretty funny tbh. Employees should be allowed to say what they want but the firing was to be expected and maybe some of the employees learned unfortunately they do not have the power they thought they had.
The open letter wanted to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior”.
It's only a small step until these activists start demanding similar things regarding random public people they don't like. Like DeSantis. Surely any sane leadership would condemn DeSantis' harmful behavior?
I hope firings will continue until this kind of activism subsides.
Ah, the ever present amusement of action and consequence.
If you criticize your employer, expect to get fired. Just got fired? What do you care, you don’t like your employer anyway. Just fired everyone smart enough to criticize you? Enjoy your dwindling years with the team of incompetent cronies.
This is a perfect snapshot of the human condition.
I know most of HN wasn't even born when this happened, but from 1990 onwards, Jerry Sanders III, the then-CEO (& founder) of AMD created a similar schism in his company. A the time he was presiding over an industry that was seen as disrupter-AMD taking on villain-Intel.
Sanders always had a giant ego and a lust of showing off and thumping his chest. We all took this with an eyeroll, well, some of us did. At one point it was too much, had a bunch of internal promotional posters and flyers made depicting himself as a buff Indian Jones whipping Intel, while his playboy-bunny wife looked on longingly at her hero.
Many AMD employees literally saw him as a muscled hero savior and themselves as victims, like Rambo-Trump photoshops of today, or the sycophantic adulation of Musk worshipers. This lead to people picking sides: Sanders had so distracted his employees with his mouth and antics by creating a schism where some people were like "knock off the rich-guy BS", while others were like, "Go get 'em!". It created a lot of internal conflict. I was only there for a while, but it was amazing how you couldn't do your job without some image of Sanders as hero being shoved in your face by some fan employee.
I can relate to the SpaceX employees, having a mercurial asshat for a boss is tedious, even if the pay is great. But AMD was floundering technologically at that time, and it wasn't until Sanders FINALLY stepped down that AMD really took Intel to task: beating them to 1 GHz and 64-bit processing. I can only imagine the brain-drain due to his asshole behavior was the problem, but that's just my $0.01.
Of course they were fired. It's a dictatorship, you do what they tell you and work. There is no point getting this involved with the company, it never pays off. Work as little as possible to maximise your gains, and invest in other aspects of your life.
>Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks.
What happened in recent weeks?
The letter is condemnation by innuendo. They don't say exactly why they want Musk removed and only hint at it and make general statements.
An advantage of that approach is that it is difficult for the accused to defend themselves. The disadvantage is that if the accused has power they can squash this and the accusers are exposed because vague accusations are difficult to justify as they are to defend against.
I suspect they don't say why they want Musk removed because their reasons stated clearly and directly would be unpalatable. I think the reason they want him removed is because he expressed support for the Republican party. In the USA, in many circles, it is still unacceptable to condemn people based on political affiliation.
It is however, more acceptable to use innuendo about racial and sexual rights as a weapon for indirect political persecution.
When Musk started to spread his bullshit on Twitter, I immediately thought about how the high-profile engineers working for Tesla, SpaceX, etc, would feel about that. My friend works in a tech company composed of 90% engineers, although not that high-profile, still if a CEO would publicly voice all that crap, I’m sure many would seriously consider resigning. In the end, it’s not that difficult to find another job.
If I were a tech company recruiter now, I would 100% go shopping for musk companies’ employees right now…
As a recruiter, you could seriously poach some amazing talent just because Elon can’t keep his fucking mouth shut. They aren’t idiots over there, and Elon should realize that most of the people working for him are likely much, much, much smarter than he is.
It seems like every "diversity of thought!" and "freedom of speech!" proponent keeps having a moment where it's revealed that isn't what they actually believe.
Firing people for speaking out against the boss’s childish public behavior.
What message does that send? Don’t speak out about things you disagree with?
This is not the company we want taking us to Mars.
But also valid if people felt pressures to join in on employee activism they don't care about, I’ve seen that trend and I’m totally find curb stomping that whole mentality. I can empathize with the lack of employee power in the US that could lead one to these outcomes, there are other ways (that may not be available to those employees or in the US at all)
For Shotwell, I still think it is disingenuous to suggest there aren't other daily distractions people don't get fired for
This is a critical time for the company. As Shotwell pointed out:
> We have 3 launches within 37 hours for critical satellites this weekend, we have to support the astronauts we delivered to the ISS and get cargo Dragon back to the flight-ready, and after receiving environmental approval early this week, we are on the cusp of the first orbital launch attempt of Starship. We have too much critical work to accomplish
There are times for open discussion and there are times to just shut up and get with the program.
People tried to get corporations to “use their platform”, some started doing that at the annoyance and exclusion of employees that werent interested in having those unrelated causes and discussions in the workday while being told “silence means you’re against us and for whatever we’re against today”
The corporation does not exist for that and is a conduit for revenue exclusively
Some other type of organization is more suited for that, they exist. It may be incompatible with someone’s ability to exchange time for food and shelter but thats exclusively their problem
So its nice to see more examples of complete and immediate excision, a reversion to the mean
The corporate form has been and is now, legally, an enterprise to return financial value to shareholders. Corporations are routinely sued when they stray from that. People with a different vision should change the law rather than be continually surprised.
Fiduciary responsibility is a myth. Company officers basically have to yell into a megaphone “I am making this decision to harm the company, there are no possible upsides to the company for this action” to be liable.
It's a fair criticism, albeit written with an entitled flavor.
Where these 5 employees went wrong was in writing it as an internal memo, and attempting to rouse the rabble. That's clearly unacceptable and they misjudged how swift and certain the reaction would be. I do wonder what they were expecting.
Where they went wrong was by posting their criticism as an internal memo using internal resources. They should have taken to twitter.
"Right to speech freely doesn't give you magical protection from consequences of your speech."
You are correct. Money and power does it, though. Your boss won't get fired for talking badly about you, in general, but you can get fired for talking badly about your boss.
Oh I absolutely agree, you can view my comment history if you don't believe me. But that is not how Musk has framed his support for free speech in the past. Musk has made it clear that he is "anti-moderation", the case of things like banning Trump from social media with the reasoning that moderation is not free speech. But this kind of behavior is de facto retaliatory employee censorship. You can't have your cake and eat it too, you are either pro free speech or not.
Well if their aim was to eventually not work for an asshole then I guess mission complete?
I always find these collective actions strange. Like you if you want to change anything from the inside your only option is to (try to) unionize, anything else is pointless.
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 free speech.
"It's a private company. They can fire whoever they want so long as it's not a protected class." And Twitter is a private company that can ban anybody they want. Don't like it? Go to Mastodon. Usually this argument doesn't fly for the people that defend his Twitter free speech position.
>The letter asked SpaceX management to publicly separate the company from Mr. Musk’s personal brand.
This is not realistic. It will not happen. Elon Musk is the founder, chairman, CEO and CTO. He owns 47% of the company and 78% of voting control.
A company you work for is not a democracy. You are not an owner. You don't get to call out, to make governance decisions, to create pressure campaigns, etc. This is doubly true for privately held companies. It would be truly bizarre if these employees weren't fired for this wannabe activism routine.
Just shows that Musk has no actual interest in free speech. But SpaceX is a private company and is free to fire employees for their speech, you say. That's true, they can legally do that, since there's no union contract, but Twitter is also a private company and free not to publish speech that advocates the overthrow of the government or vaccine denial. My prediction is that a Musk-owned Twitter will wind up banning posts or even accounts for criticizing Musk too aggressively, since the guy has thin skin and will have the power.
My parents ran a small factory in the 1970s. One of their employees was a hippie who kept ranting about how they were a part of "the system". About him they said "We had to fire that guy" because his attitude toward his employers indicated he couldn't be relied on to do the job that was asked of him.
Elon Musk can make a grade-A ass of himself, but within the bounds of the law to work for him is to serve at his pleasure. Complaining about him and NOT expecting the potential axe is madness.
In light of recent allegations against our CEO and his public disparagement of the situation, we would like to deliver feedback on how these events affect our company’s reputation, and through it, our mission. Employees across the spectra of gender, ethnicity, seniority, and technical roles have collaborated on this letter. We feel it is imperative to maintain honest and open dialogue with each other to effectively reach our company’s primary goals together: making SpaceX a great place to work for all, and making humans a multiplanetary species.
As SpaceX employees we are expected to challenge established processes, rapidly innovate to solve complex problems as a team, and use failures as learning opportunities. Commitment to these ideals is fundamental to our identity and is core to how we have redefined our industry. But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion with equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo.
Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more. However, we feel an unequal burden to carry this effort as the company has not applied appropriate urgency and resources to the problem in a manner consistent with our approach to critical path technical projects. To be clear: recent events are not isolated incidents; they are emblematic of a wider culture that underserves many of the people who enable SpaceX’s extraordinary accomplishments. As industry leaders, we bear unique responsibility to address this.
Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.
SpaceX’s current systems and culture do not live up to its stated values, as many employees continue to experience unequal enforcement of our oft-repeated “No Asshole” and “Zero Tolerance” policies. This must change. As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.
Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone. Apply a critical eye to issues that prevent employees from fully performing their jobs and meeting their potential, pursuing specific and enduring actions that are well resourced, transparent, and treated with the same rigor and urgency as establishing flight rationale after a hardware anomaly.
Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently. SpaceX must establish safe avenues for reporting and uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.
We care deeply about SpaceX’s mission to make humanity multiplanetary. But more importantly, we care about each other. The collaboration we need to make life multiplanetary is incompatible with a culture that treats employees as consumable resources. Our unique position requires us to consider how our actions today will shape the experiences of individuals beyond our planet. Is the culture we are fostering now the one which we aim to bring to Mars and beyond?
We have made strides in that direction, but there is so much more to accomplish.
I thought Elon Musk was being hailed as the champion of "free speech?" Hmmm. Maybe not.
Regardless of what people say their actions always betray them. I have no idea why people idolize Elon Musk when he has repeatedly shown us what he is. Then again the same is true for Donald Trump. I honestly don't understand it.
If you publicly embarrass your employer, you will in many cases be fired: see James Damore, Juan Williams, etc. It may seem slightly unfair that Elon Musk is allowed to embarrass Elon Musk, mostly with impunity, but that's the way it goes.
Does Elon Musk always ask himself “ok what’s the most petty/childish/immature response I can produce for this situation?”
I’m not sure what’s actually wrong with him or if it’s at all clinical or just the billionaire disease of being surrounded by people who agree with you for too long. But I get a feeling there is something a bit off with his behavior and/or mental health, and that it’s been getting worse lately. I also don’t know if this shift is subjective and merely because I see more of him now than before. But I can’t help thinking that now he seems like a massive asshat in nearly every single human interaction whereas before he had some kind of likability.
I don’t think that fully excuses or justified everything he does, but it has some explanatory power.
It’s obvious by his work output that he is not a very typical person, and it seems like society as a whole is gaining tremendous benefit from his eccentricity. I don’t think we have to like him, but speaking for myself, I still respect him and on the whole am grateful for his life’s work. I wish he’d stay away from Twitter… but, oh well.
>He has Asperger’s and has talked openly about his difficulty understanding social cues.
In the history of items written on Musk in the past 20 years, was it ever mentioned prior to 2022?
Yeah, sure, like 90% of SV claims to be "on the spectrum", often as a behavioural excuse. Don't believe me? Look at any comment section of an article discussing the subject on these forums.
I hadn't heard it was Asperger's specifically until recently, but if you've ever heard Musk speak it's always been readily apparent that he had some kind of mental abnormality. He seems to have more trouble forming ideas into sentences than your average person.
A quick google says 1 man out of 42 is autistic and 1 out of 200 workers in the U.S. is a software engineer. Let's assume every SE is a man and half the working population is men, that would mean 1 out of 100 men is in software.
Based on those numbers, it would be possible for every software engineer to be on the spectrum.
I'm talking stuff like calling people you don't like pedophiles in a public forum. Not social missteps. Attacking people using your twitter account as a megaphone and doubling down when people call you on it is absolutely unacceptable behavior.
Aspegers does not excuse intentionally hurting people you don't like.
I see you have moved from the indefensible bailey to the motte from which you attempt to redefine the bailey. You may have your misconception about the conversation topic. I do not.
Referring to the rescue diver as a pedophile is uniquely odious and as far as I’m aware the only time Musk has done that. Maybe you are closely tracking his public utterances against pedos, MAPs, and groomers and can shed more light on how that occasion is part and parcel to a broader pattern of behavior, unacceptable in your mind. Of note, the public letter didn’t coincide with that specific incident.
That makes sense, thanks. Being on the autism spectrum doesn’t forgive any behavior of course but can explain it. He should get people to explain social issues, and people to filter/write his own output. It would benefit everyone, most of all him.
I don't know that I ever found Musk likable though.
EDIT: I was thinking about my answer to "When did you stop liking Elon Musk?" and I suppose it was when he seemed to go on a tangent calling a rescuer a pedophile. That was a WTF moment for me.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Sadly, the people who do the most to change the world are often unreasonable in their personal lives. And if a person sincerely believes they are working to prevent climate change or give humanity a backup planet they'll tend to view opposition based on quality of life issues or whatever as unreasonable.
The point is, he doesn't, The people working for him do. He managed to create an environment where these people working for him can do it. But he does not land those rockets.
There are two sides of this coin: 1) a company without its employees cannot function, 2) somehow everyone became entitled to everything during covid.
It's sad, I get the point of view of both sides. Hopefully they can reach a compromise.
Do you think SpaceX would have landed rockets if Elon wasn't there?
I feel like the safe bet in 2010 was compete on government contracts and print money. Without Elon, SpaceX is just another Boeing. The best teams won't get to Mars if investors want them to crank the money printer or congress wants a jobs program.
But that’s exactly what I said: he created an environment where there people can create those awesome things but he doesn’t build rockets. He employs people who build rockets for him. All of them complement each other.
In my opinion Musk is to SpaceX like Jobs was to Apple. Apple today wouldn't exist or would be in a much different place if not for Jobs and his vision. I believe the same for Musk and SpaceX.
But, you shouldn't have to be. And more importantly, what happens when he brings this attitude to long term space missions or other endeavors where human lives are at risk? Just because he's doing something you like doesn't mean it's okay, or good, or right.
Frankly, I'm more concerned about never-happy SJW mob infiltration into long term space missions. Like, Twitter employees are not the ones who I would like to share risks with.
Qualitatively it's not clear. There was that "pedo guy" a few years ago.
Quantitatively no doubt. There is a "pedo guy" incident every few days now and it is accelerating and it could be every few minutes before it gets too fast to measure and reaches some kind of singularity.
I thought he was just trying to imitate Trump but I think he's really trying to surpass Trump as "America's most unhinged."
Travis Kalanick visited a bar with escort services with female employee presence, and he resigned in 2017. Elon Musk exposed himself and propositioned a female employee for sex, he keeps his job in 2022.[1]
I feel sorry for the progress of gender equality in Silicon Valley.
i uninstalled twitter off my phone to stop the elon musk notifications. i guess i'll miss out on his future crowdsource pump and dumps, but that's pretty sketch anyhow.
i have a lot of respect for tesla and what they've done, i'll be able to maintain that respect with the tweets squelched.
It seems that what is happening here is that “woke” people (ultra left) working at spaceX and Tesla are finally realizing that Elon Musk is actually not part of the “woke” (ultra-left) movement but more like good old Republican.
So they are angry and they want to explain that to others. On the other hand, some people know that there is no “woke” white rich guy.
I'm picturing Apple employees writing an open letter criticizing Steve Jobs and saying they don't want him to be the face of the company, or Amazon employees saying they don't want Jeff Bezos to be the image of the company, or GE employees saying they don't want Jack Welch to be tarnishing the brand of the company, or...just about any other big corporation. The CEO's job involves, among other things, being the public face of the company. If you don't think the CEO is doing their job well, you leave the company, or hunker down and shut up about it.
There are people who can fire the CEO if they think he's damaging the company's reputation. They called the "board of directors". If you're not on the board of directors, the way you register displeasure with your CEO is to leave the company.
Yeah, the idea that employees can't criticize a CEO is patently ridiculous. There are plenty of companies with compelling products and talent, but poor leadership. Those companies would be lucky to have employees willing to speak up.
Maybe interesting: Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic (i.e. continental Europe), I haven't found a single comment on one of the bigger newspaper sites (usually filled by fans) that would defend SpaceX's position in this matter. The reputation is pretty much gone.
Update: In the largest newspaper forum of my country, there are now 2 posts out of 96, agreeing with SpaceX (but more on the basis that the employees' action was ill-advised).
> There are people who can fire the CEO if they think he's damaging the company's reputation. They called the "board of directors".
Sounds like getting enough employees to write a letter criticizing the CEO and damaging his reputation is a pretty good way to get the board's attention then?
Barring some sort of Carl Icahn "activist investor" forcing themselves on to the board, I don't see SpaceX changing anything. Bad PR doesn't affect a company which makes its money mostly through long-term government contracts, and common sentiment is that Tesla/SpaceX long had the boards purged of dissenters and populated with "loyal soliders" to Musk's cause.
> If you don't think the CEO is doing their job well, you leave the company, or hunker down and shut up about it.
If nobody ever speaks up, then how does change happen? Say you dislike the CEO or other executives but like the company. Then you can vocalize this and change happens and you stay, or no change happens and you leave.
There are proper channels for speaking up within a company. Posting an open letter publically after trying to bully people to sign it is not a proper channel.
Or you write a public open letter, accepting the risk it might cost you your job but deciding that it is your highest leverage option to enact the change you want to see. What’s your point, exactly..?
> If you're not on the board of directors, the way you register displeasure with your CEO is to leave the company.
What? No!? That is a sure way for your displeasure to never even reach the same hemisphere as the CEO. Even this letter is better, at least he’s aware, and the end result is exactly the same (not at the company any more).
This seems right to me, though I will observe that if you joined an Elon Musk company 5 years ago, then you were joining a company whose head presented a very different public persona than he does now. It's an understandable situation that some folks ended up loving a company but finding the CEO's 2022 public persona objectionable and diminishing of the company.
Given the choice between "just leave" or "state my concerns about the company I believed in", I might do the latter. What does one have to lose in that case?
You are wrong about his public persona. He seems to have always been this way. The first time I heard about Elon Musk was when he responded publicly to his ex wife's tell-all essay about their marriage. This was in 2010!
I mean, this whole bruhaha was spearheaded by five (5!) people. Articles were presenting this as if it had been representative of a larger portion of the workforce there. I think companies are realizing "activist" workers are a disruption that suck productivity from a company and are taking steps to dial that down, including progressive stalwarts like Netflix.
This comment is psuedointellectual brain-death. The only country it includes that isn't literally at war with the rest of Europe is 80% of Poland... who have health insurance.
Nope. The Oder starts (barely) in the Czech Republic and the other 99.999% flows through Poland, ending in the Baltic Sea. The Baltic states are north of it (and also not the fascist paradises OP wishes they were) while the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania are south of it. Geography fail.
There are two points I was getting at with my heuristic.
I primarily wanted to highlight that the people quipping about "there's no far left in the US" or "the far left in the US is the mainstream left in Europe" are far left hence why they don't see much to the left of them in the US. Left-right, tall-short, skinny-fat, if you find yourself on a spectrum and one side of you is sparsely populated you are the extreme by definition.
Second, these people are generally ignorant of how far right some of the "other half" of Europe leans on social issues. Sure, they have lots of government services and safety nets, healthcare included. But they don't lean as far left on many social subjects as the US does. Identity politics, sexual orientation and abortions are three good examples of topics on which the left half of the bell curve of opinions on these subjects has more of it's meat to the right than the US equivalent. (Arguably a lot of this is a function of the US's history of reactionary politics but that's outside of the scope of this discussion, the positions today are what they are.) So even in a context that includes "nations who literally tried communism and kept the stuff they liked when they were done" the opinions of the "far" left in the US is decently out there.
> I primarily wanted to highlight that the people quipping about "there's no far left in the US" or "the far left in the US is the mainstream left in Europe" are far left hence why they don't see much to the left of them in the US.
I mean that's literally a fact, so...
Even Orban is just a racist "far leftist"... Give me a break.
> Sure, they have lots of government services and safety nets, healthcare included.
Sure, they're 100000% far-left wing, but they're not far-left at all. Okay dude, gtfo.
> Identity politics, sexual orientation and abortions are three good examples of topics on which the left half of the bell curve of opinions on these subjects has more of it's meat to the right than the US equivalent.
Except most of the 3/4 of a billion people do. It's not a bell curve at all. Did you even bother to look into this or just go with your gut? Even in the east where it's the lowest, for example, gay marriage support is still 43%... higher than in the US in 2009 (Gallup)!
They mentioned a country with more welfare than the US and then you mentioned a handful of countries you must not know anything about in order to list them together with the others... shrug As racist as Polish and Hungarian politicians are, they still do more from their people than any Americans do and would be called "socialists" by FOX news if they knew anything about them. And the Baltics, I mean, come on, what are you even talking about.
What a bizzare take. You’re suggesting that the person who announced his support for rightwing lunatic DeSantis is clearly actually a liberal? What definitely of liberal could possibly support such a position?
He’s saying the left went so far left that his only reasonable choice is a guy on the right. Imagine that. A guy who has voted Democrat is now moved to vote for a right wing candidate because the left's policies have deviated so much.
The far left have to come to terms that moderate liberals do not identify with people on the far left with their attitudes toward crime, identity politics, economics and other mainstream political issues that the moderate left of Bill Clinton and Gore of yore would not have supported.
If Bill or Al Gore or Kerry of 2004 were running, Musk would vote for them. So would the many who will vote out some democrats in congress come 2024. In large part people voted for Biden because he promised to return to the mean --but instead has embraced the left wing of the party rather than the center of the Dem. party.
You forget he's voted Democrat or independent in the US before now. He's leaving because he believes the left has left him (moving too far left for him).
We've banned this account for massively breaking the site guidelines. I lost count at 150 comments in the last several hours. That's arson, regardless of how right you are or feel you are, and regardless of which side of whatever argument you happen to be on. Seriously not cool.
Honestly, I suspect he's just trying to appease conservatives to make them more likely to buy EVs.
If that's the case, it's not a bad strategy. They're easy to manipulate into thinking you're on their side if you say the right soundbites. And they're the toughest group of consumers to get on the green tech train. Musk could be acting as a chameleon in an attempt to simply get some of them to accept the reality of climate change.
> he's just trying to appease conservatives to make them more likely to buy EVs
The GOP is on track to take Congress. There is a decent chance they hold that through 2024. American politics have swung against “wokeism,” or rather, since I haven’t seen a good definition for that term, leaders who identify with “woke” cultural figures.
SpaceX sells to the government. Tesla relies on the government. He’s aligning with the new political winds.
I don't think it's that. The government doesn't have an emporium to buy things from. Sometimes they have a real choice like between Amazon and Azure, but most of the time it's one vendor and a few far second place hopefuls.
All this talk about "inclusivity" that woke-inc preach is the mother of all red herrings.
It's labor laws that keep things inclusive and accessible for all. What the left has been doing with great success is taking over HR departments and enacting new corporate rules that A) go well beyond the law B) are exclusively left-wing de jour and C) extremely authoritarian.
I know, their claims are the exact opposite, which is why they've been so successful at sweeping into HR departments but the writing is on the wall: letting far left activists take control of HR will mean one thing with absolute certainty: Morale will plummet and profitability will go right after it.
It could. If the CEO is bringing undue attention to the company and being detrimental to its operations. But here it appears to have been 5 people at the center of this. I'm sure we could find 5 people at Google who would like to be vocal against the current CEO.
But there are quite a few CxOs who are vocal and people don't complain much about them, including Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Hastings, Chapek, Gates (though retired), Bloomberg, Forbes, etc.
It does. There are plenty of investors who want to see Musk's publicly traded companies run by "an adult" but they're outnumbered by the people who think that his lack of fucks to give is a greater positive to the company than the ire of the people he irritates is a negative.
This is fundamentally the same kind of calculation that brands make when deciding to public-ally sponsor things that people feel strongly about.
Hopefully the tech layoffs are from the activist types so the rest of us can just focus on the code and design in peace and quiet. So far everywhere I worked in SV the activists were vocal but unliked by the majority. And they were also the least productive employees by far.
Activists are usually the least productive because they have more than one dish they’re cooking.
But they’re also like a group dedicated to “saving the spotted skylark” once they save the skylark, their mission is complete. Do they disband? Of course not!!! Let’s find a new cause, the threatened fire ant!
> Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently.
That's exactly the problem with companies that like to brag about their "we-don't-allow-jerks-here" culture: It's arbitrary. If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.
Given as much, if this is really about Mr Musk's political endorsements, folks need to get over it. But inasmuch as he embraces dishonesty (one example: the "pedo" incident from way back) then I'd agree that the company should discipline him.
> If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.
I dunno, jerk is arbitrarily defined by society. There’s no objective way to define it - which is why most companies that do end up on “whatever behavior makes us the most money”, ie acquiescing to power.
I’d go further, a lot of people obsessed with “facts” and “honest” is a recipe for jerks. “I’m just being honest” is a common justification for being a jerk. A no-jerks culture is one where you know how to pick your battles and where you can let other people be wrong when it keeps the peace and doesn’t actually matter.
> If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.
Are you speaking from experience? As a consultant, I occasionally run into companies that have an asshole problem (it’s pretty rare, fortunately), and your comment seems like wishful thinking to the point of naivety. In fact, overly blunt and “honest” communication is one of the ways assholes express themselves.
The other thing about assholes in companies is that they’ve made themselves indispensable—often raising themselves up by pushing the people around them down—because the ones who don’t, don’t survive.
For every company I’ve been in that had an asshole problem, management was aware that they had an asshole problem, but felt they couldn’t resolve it because the asshole was a “star performer.” (They weren’t really. Overall performance typically increases when they leave, because previously-suppressed people are now able to step up and grow.)
Objectivity, honesty, and facts do nothing to fix this problem, except in a fantasy world where everything is measured and the impact of people’s actions is perfectly visible. That world doesn’t exist.
Yes, from 30 years of professional experience in fact; in federal govt, state govt, startups, megacorps and then some.
If you must insist that objectivity & facts are a fantasy world, and that people should be attacked for being honest, then there is nothing anyone can do to help you.
> If you must insist that objectivity & facts are a fantasy world, and that people should be attacked for being honest, then there is nothing anyone can do to help you.
That’s not what I said.
I’d ask for you to elaborate on how you’ve seen assholes successfully dealt with, in your 30 years of experience, but you’re coming across as being more interested in “winning” than having a conversation in good faith. (Ironically, I don’t trust your response to be objective and honest.)
My experience is that the more you try to spell these things out, the more scope you give for bad actors to engage in language lawyering and make the problem worse.
Therefore as an employee I prefer these things to be vague and arbitrary, as long as I have some trust in the people making the decisions.
Of course in time they become formalized and problematic. Which is one of the disadvantages of working at a big company.
>If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.
And this is how you get the modern Google, where there is lots of nepotism, politics, and a shift from being a company that makes cool innovative shit to one that hires AI "ethics" "engineers" that lose their marbles.
When people say "culture of objectivity, facts and honesty", what they really mean is "ability to inject my moral code into any conversation and have it be heard and accepted". In a company as high strung as Space X, there is absolutely no place for that.
Isn't a "no asshole" policy better than a "define all forms of unacceptable behavior" policy, so long as you have confidence in leadership? And if you don't have confidence, you should leave regardless.
How can you even define all forms of unacceptable behavior? If someone doesn't put "pooping on coworkers desk" in the document, does that mean I won't be punished for it now?
Well I'd like to see examples of the dishonest tweets you're talking about... But that leads into a more important issue: These employees insisted that Musk's personal Twitter account is his de facto business Twitter account. Confusing this business/personal boundary is part of the problem. I don't think it's fair for them to say, "You're a public figure, so you're not allowed to have a personal life," but perhaps Mr Musk does need to clarify his boundaries.
> Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently.
I wasn't keying in on a word "dishonest" (though I believe he knows exactly what he's doing with his crypto/dogecoin musings). I was keying in on "no-asshole" which while subjective, started with tweets like his famous "pedo" comment surrounding the youth soccer team stuck in a cave during floodwater.
> Musk's personal Twitter account
If your tweets impact the market substantially and the majority of your wealth is tied to those stocks, it cannot be considered a personal account. At best a hybrid account of some kind.
Being a public figure is hard, and you lose privileges. Lets not act naive and pretend this is not a well understood phenomenon.
IANAL, but you may want to edit or amend this comment if you're in a leadership position because it might technically be illegal (assuming U.S.), even though it's satire.
See Ben Shapiro's and Ben Domenech's recent NLRB ULP charges. Shapiro had his thrown out because he RT'd an Employees Rights poster (which is more or less the remedy anyway), and Domenech got lucky and had a judge reach a "no-coercion conclusion" in his case.[0]
WSJ https://archive.ph/RSlmu