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.
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].
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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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".
> 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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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!
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.
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.
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.
> 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
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
“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.
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
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...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
> 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/
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.
>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.
I never mentioned any political parties, but ideology. The social order was slavery and racism, and people that wanted to conserve it were conservatives.
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
> 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.
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.
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....
> 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....
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.
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).
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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,
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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)
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 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 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, 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.)
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.
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...
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)
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.
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?)
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.
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"...
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.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 567 ms ] threadExample: 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.
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.
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].
[0] https://www.mic.com/p/elon-musks-first-foray-into-comedy-was...
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.
The place is context and result is comletely different.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
That would be the ideal world.
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.
What a joke.
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.
I am pretty sure that is exactly what many many people have stated, implied, campaigned for etc.
Its a core part of the culture war
Except when that consequence is being banned from twitter, apparently.
His speech comments were always about public discourse. Not private organizational. In Twitter feed we are all equal. In Twitter internal there is hierarchy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This seems like a funny statement to make when your CEO is literally out buying Twitter.
And apparently putting 90+ hours into Elden Ring, while still insisting to be working 14-20 hour days. [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1528576711209766914
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.
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
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.
I for one think the timing of the sexual claim makes it obvious it’s political, but no one has to work for musk.
So leave if you want to, if musk is so offensive. Not everyone company is an ESG obsessed multinational.
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.
Yes, it’s political.
Why didn’t the employee go to the police? Why didn’t her friend reveal this information years ago.
Your point is ridiculously naive.
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?
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.
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.
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).
Working for Musk - no. You already knew everything.
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.
If one wants to be a political activist, perhaps go find a job that's better suited for that type of behavior.
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.
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.
Who is doing that? Please cite something.
> And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago?
Where does 20 years ago time frame come from? That's pretty arbitrary and seems more to be based on your feelings than fact.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We've all heard there are facts and opinions, but there's a 3rd category I think: definitions.
And this is awful :(
It's normally the Worst Argument in the World: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
Arguing about whether a definition is particularly useful or outlines a cluster of similar things can be good, but it's rare.
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.
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"?
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.
That was quite the insulting seminar.
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.
Arguing for “inclusivity” in a corporate setting is delusional wokeism (as companies are exclusionary by definition, they don’t hire most people)
Seems like we've redefined "political" to mean "things that make me uncomfortable."
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.
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".
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.
Not with proof, just hearsay.
This is political.
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.
Yeah sounds totally believable.
Seems very believable to me.
And who benefited from that? Not talking about it is politics. You cannot avoid that. It's literally impossible.
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.
Also, if someone does that to me, the first thing that comes to mind is "Fuck off". Unapologetically.
Not a good way to convince people.
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.
Hard to disagree with that.
> the exact issues you care about could be very different from someone else's and having all these discussions is pretty distracting.
Definitely, which is part of why women and minorities get ignored and hence exploited when the status quo is embraced.
> weaponize
God I'm so tired of people's exaggerations. Nonsense.
its *
How would you feel if you asked me about a hot button issue important to you at work and I declined to talk about it. Would you approach HR?
No it's not. Trying to change society is politics. What you're saying is akin to "silence is violence" which is just as ridiculous.
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.
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
Why are we surprised when employees then want to talk politics?
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!
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.
I'm much more in favor of unionization than you'd think, but I don't think unions are a reliable defense from these kinds of leopards.
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.
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.
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
Does that include Musk himself, with the way he's been acting on Twitter lately?
I think ESG is the overarching umbrella that has compelled corporations to normalize activism.
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.
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.
Is that what you mean?
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.
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.
It is literally just wasting resources.
Tell that to Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. They’d love to know. . .
They’re built to serve government. Any extra customers they get is just the icing.
Um. They are. SpaceX had almost as many commercial launches as gov ones last year.
Its getting taxpayers money because the official money hole called the NASA can't manage to launch anything in space anymore.
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.
Like a lot of things, the blame for this falls on the news media.
If the mefia ignored him rather than running a story every time he runs his mouth the world would be a better place.
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.
90% of what they report on Musk is irrelevant.
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.
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.
The other 50% are not woke.
Anyway, Musk can show me his dick all he likes if I get 200k per viewing.
Are you calling Gwynne Shotwell a tech bro? That’s her stance.
Also I genuinely think you are an idiot.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Tell me you've never seen a union without telling me you've never seen a union.
Which union in particular? There is only one in the US that you could reasonably say that about and it’s the police union.
These companies are nothing without their workers. Remember that.
The intercept had amazing article lately about how this attitude tears organizations apart.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.fvap.gov/info/about-absentee-voting/elections#:~.... [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.
> Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.
Not if you value democracy in and of itself.
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.
Unrestrained government was a really significant cause of death in the early 20th century.
Private businesses have an entirely different purpose.
Companies are synthetic people; there are a lot them in one place and they can die.
Governments are not synthetic people; there is only one per place and the idea is that it lasts forever.
One can generally avoid working for a particular company if one wants. One cannot avoid the government.
> he'll be loudly proclaiming his support of democracy
Unlikely, given his dependence on China - he'll stay quiet, just like Tim Cook does at Apple.
I think they are.
"Silicon Valley" is an idea or abstraction now, rather than a geographic location.
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.
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'm sure recruiters at Boeing, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic are lighting up phones today.
yes, that's exactly what's happening, and precisely the reason why unionization happens. very perceptive of you.
Keep in mind these legal protections actually made unions weaker, so be careful about what you wish for.
People with large capital don't need to collude - they already have tons of power as individuals :)
It's like the term "free market" is a thought terminating cliche or something.
1. Your opinions are not useful or valuable.
2. The company is poor at adapting good ideas through existing channels.
In either case you should leave the company and find another one.
It’s funny all this anti union speak and then when companies are faced with it suddenly their purses start opening up.
Just like millions of people ditched communist countries and moved to USA.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union
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.
I give Gwynne Shotwell a ton of credit for actually running SpaceX on a day to day basis.
I think a lot of the issues with Tesla exist because as far as I can tell Tesla does not have a Gwynne Shotwell.
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.
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...
Can you name a single company that operates as a democracy?
[1] - https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about.html
CHS, Inc up here in St. Paul does almost 40 billion in revenue as a cooperative.
Maybe this is news to you, but the arrangement isn't that uncommon.
Is that Tesla or SpaceX scale? Seems like it's in the ballpark.
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.
I think there is a misconception here, SpaceX does not send anyone to space, NASA, ESA etc .. does.
SpaceX builds rockets that's it, they don't train astronaut or have a program for space exploration or missions.
I think that's why they call them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_astronaut
To me it's more space tourism that anything else, there is a reason why it takes years to train astronauts.
Inspiration 4, Axiom 1, Polaris Dawn, ...
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.
If someone’s productivity slips from wfh then address the issue sure.
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.
Agree with your second point though. There's even people absuing remote work to work multiple jobs simultaneously.
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.
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.
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.
It must suck to simp a sociopath who doesn't even know your birthdate.
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
I knew HN skewed toward tech-bro libertarianism, but this is a bit much even for that.
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
As god decreed. Was that on the 5th day? I lost count. Corporations are human creations and as such are malleable.
Is this a thing? Like feeling pressure to leave a tip or something?
> 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.
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.
It's why home care workers never wear necklaces because they could try to strangle you with one.
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."
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.
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.
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.
https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-aspergers-syndrom...
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.
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.
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.
Labelling non-neurotypical behavior as "being a dick" or "poor behavior" is very neurotypical.
[Addendum]
I for one am happy to see the larger world and its expected rules of behavior get a taste of what it constantly dishes out.
Aspegers does not excuse intentionally hurting people you don't like.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
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.
No one will care if their competitors have similar issues, SpaceX was sold as different and the illusion of that is fading.
They are doing something NASA can't do so I think NASA is getting good value for the money.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Apparently the letter was not about working conditions. It was about Elon tweeting.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
0. https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/free-speech-absolutist/4...
Free speech and the first amendment are not the same thing.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_letter
Where the fuck did you grow up?
Elon: "Something something I’m doing it for more free speech…"
Employees: "You can’t say that!"
Employees in letter: "Make Elon stop tweeting"
Elon: "You're all fired"
He's not a hypocrite under my interpretation.
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.
So yes, for all intent purposes he is their employer.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-SpaceX-does-Elon-Mu...
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.
In the future it would behoove you to at least familirize yourself with a topic lest you make another ignorant statement.
Wealth will either be given or it will be taken.
Oh, you were just "credibly accused" of IP theft.
It doesn't matter if we can't prove it.
You should be pre-emptively fired!
Welcome to the woke cancer socialist hell hole.
I would not be shocked to hear that this results in a lawsuit over protected concerted activity.
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.
[1] https://definitions.uslegal.com/w/working-condition/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
or deadlines just get moved out
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe those companies shouldn't include statements like this in their corporate filings then:
"The Twitter account @elonmusk is considered an official corporate communication channel."
Especially when Musk is tweeting from it things like changes to remote work policies.
Sure sounds like a discussion about workplace policies and enforcement to me.
You can dislike something and also not think it's illegal.
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!
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.
I take it you are in a country that doesn't support freedom and basic rights.
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.
The former employees may have a case here.
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.
If some of the comments in this thread is any indicator, people seem to believe it should be a protected class, which is extremely disturbing.
"being insubordinate is not a protected class" does not mean "be subordinate no matter what"
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.
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.
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.
Congress has the power to regulate commerce.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause
"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;"
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8
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.
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.
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.
https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-rules-google-firing-...
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.
> 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.
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.
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.
This is the spirit of their demands and they made it personal.
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.
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.
SpaceX employees are the hand that's feeding Musk. Unless you think he can get to Mars by himself.
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.
> 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.
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.
If Shotwell runs the company then why is Musk getting the heat?
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?
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.
Collaborative organizational forms: on communities, crowds, and new hybrids https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41469-018-0036-3
Self-organization in Communicating Groups: the emergence of coordination, shared references and collective intelligence http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Papers/Barcelona-LanguageSO.pdf
There's never been much agreement on what marxism means. I believe Marx himself disliked the term and claimed to not be a marxist.
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.
It's a free country. Workers are free to quit, form their own collective and run it as they see fit. It's perfectly legal.
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/
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.
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.
1 million was estimated, which would cost $100 billion
“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.
Nice try, but no. Employees don't feed employers.
It's not arrogance to want to work on something you're passionate about without a petulant billionaire figurehead actively devaluing your work.
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.
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.
If SpaceX weren't there, they'd be working for someone else or themselves - he needs them more than they need him.
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.
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?
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.
"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.
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 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 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.
This is common and has been common for hundreds of years.
Burn the boss, lose your job.
It isn't rocket science.
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.
> 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.
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.
We are not slaves, but our bosses are not our parents either.
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).
True. And you're not entitled to the job, either. The employer/employee relationship is a voluntary one, for both parties.
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.
(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.)
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.)
Businesses that are trying to stay in business don't have time for you.
Seriously, Hacker News is not the site for you to engage in this kind of low-quality culture war. Stop doing it.
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.
Sure there is, and trivially so- your employer decided to fire you in both cases, in neither did 20000 hyperonline strangers fire you.
* 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.
> 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.
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.
Since this is a closely held company there are different rules as well.
I think in the USA insubordination is neither here nor there, because US employers can dismiss people just because they don't like them.
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.
That said, most places in the US are at-will employment, so you can fire your employees for no reason.
Any bets on whether (CEO == assclown) is a protected class?
some countries have decent labour laws that won't crucify you for disagreeing with your employer
These employees clearly messed up in that regard.
> 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.
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/our-enforc...
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.)
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.
In the first case you are hoping they will use their free time on your platform.
In the second place you are exchanging money to get them to do what you want them to do instead of what they would otherwise be doing.
If I pay a plumber to fix the toilet and he starts bothering me about ANYTHING BUT FIXING THE TOILET... he's gone.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
1. not qualified or diminished in any way; total.
free adjective: free; comparative adjective: freer; superlative adjective: freest
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?
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.
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.
Being a free speech absolutist is meaningless if you are going to fire people the moment they say something you don't like.
If you are a free speech absolutist, it would mean believing in no consequences.
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.
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.
What you describe is just regular ole free speech.
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.
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.
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.
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.
or more simply: by using that word you sound dumb
then again, maybe that's how you want to identify. who am I to say
- Publicly attacking a man as a pedophile because he dismissed his submarine as an unworkable solution during the Thai cave rescue efforts.
- Cutting off analysts during a Tesla call, calling them boring and then soliciting fluff questions from the Internet.
Musk, like most free speech absolutists, is a hack. It's an argument used to allow _them_ to say words without repercussions.
If anything, being ruthless and deceptive are better traits to achieve this. Of course there are some exceptions. But I don’t think Musk is one.
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.
if there are exceptions then it isn't absolute
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)
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 you call your friend mean things on twitter and your friend decides to stop talking to you, freedom of speech has not been violated.
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.
Either way, to act like this "business relationship" is perfectly reciprocal is either naive or malintentioned.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Obviously, I am not saying what these employees are saying is equivalent, but cancelling somebody for what they say is not always cancel culture.
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.
I'd expect them to go on a interview campaign after this actually. I think they'll be quite publicized and amplified.
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.
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.
Trying to destroy someone's life for a wholly-subjective slight is cancel culture (social cancer)
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".
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.
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.
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.)
Musk's companies are not town squares. They are private entities and employees can be fired for insubordination, harassment, or abuse of company resources.
So... racism, porn, gore, etc are all ok? After all, they are within the letter of the law
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.
You cannot compare at-will employment with public speech within the letter of the law.
Simplified:
Woke Cancer Culture != Protected Class
You simply cannot compare the employment relationship and open debate within the letter of the law.
No, I don't know that. This is explicit retaliation for what appears to be organizing around working conditions. That's protected.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172915/elon-musk-spacex...
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.
Markets are great!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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?
Those are just two examples. There are more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tell that to James Damore.
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.
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.
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.
Which is what they did.
All indications point to Tesla and SpaceX not being very open to 'change' initiatives that are employee-initiated.
Good job firing the employees that actually try to give a damn. The yes people are quiet and will stay. That's how you kill a company, slowly.
Also retaliation is very much still illegal, not that it matters.
Did he attempt to supress the letter?
Freedom of speech != freedom from action
They have the power to work someplace else.
If you have a full pantry, go ahead and bite.
Or live somewhere where you get free food.
Wasn't that an old Soviet or similar joke? "In {country_name}, we have freedom of speech. What we don't have is freedom after speech".
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 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."
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.
Actually it's the rightists that are against those things. And this is also not a partisan comment, it's just an objective viewpoint.
Edit: here's a fun college course: https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf
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.
Don't need a seminal research paper to know that.
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:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-liberals-who-lov...
On the other hand, more Republicans voted for the civil rights act as a percentage than Democrats: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1041302509432817073
You're not doing so hot with your example.
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.
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".
I also agree that both parties are big tents. But I will continue to argue that the democrats were and are still the more racist party: https://nypost.com/2016/03/21/the-progressive-movements-horr...
"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."
Your repeated attempts at condescension say much about you and how unfairly you feel life and other people treat you.
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.
The HN guidelines are always worth reading again, and again, and again: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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/
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.
Here's a fun one: https://winteryknight.com/2020/11/16/target-bans-book-critic...
"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."
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.
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
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
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.
Get off the internet and talk to an actual human who knows what they're talking about.
What's your best example of either of these?
>while openly lying and distorting truth
Same, best example of either lying or distorting truth.
>The culture war will be fought and won once these evil influences are eradicated
How is a culture war fought? What is the metric for winning? And how are the opponent's influences eradicated, exactly?
>non-leftist political opinion without fear of being fired or ostracized
What is an example of a non-leftist political opinion that is suppressed due to fear of being fired or ostracized?
https://www.prageru.com/petition/youtube
https://summit.news/2022/01/27/youtube-bans-another-prominen...
Open lying is harder to prove. Who admits they openly lied? But we can at least show many, many, examples of leftist media being factually incorrect. Here's one: https://www.city-journal.org/exposing-the-washington-post-on....
Here's another fun one: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-yor....
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....
At least he didn't lose his job, yet? Others aren't as lucky when they "slip up": https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/media/rick-santorum-cnn-depar...
im not seeing this vast left-wing conspiracy, but maybe you can enlighten me....
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.
Weird the incestuous circles of tech.
I think what's really funny is that North Korea has freedom of speech in their constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea#:~...
You have a right to speak. You just need to expect a bullet through your head shortly afterward.
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.
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.
Oh yeah? What other platforms are there?
Figured we had a more high brow audience here clearly I was mistaken
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.
“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.
What are the Terms of Service (EULA) of a public shopping mall? What are they for Twitter?
When you click on "I agree" to the terms of software, or a website, what did you agree to? 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.
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."
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Cor...
I understand the point, but I hate this saying. After all, what more is the government throwing you in jail for speech than a “consequence”?
The spirit of “free speech” does not give you a free pass to impose draconian “consequences” in response to speech you don’t like.
By that definition, everyone in the world has freedom of speech.
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.
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.
Both are private property.
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.
Thus stands the difference. Capisce?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Regardless, businesses don't care what you did in the past - for that, your reward is your compensation - you are hired for what you do tomorrow.
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.)
He even went with him to Russia before SpaceX was founded,
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin
Mike G also started the Space Development Agency, with a goal of funding govt LEO constellations with specifications matching Starlink.
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.
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.
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.
Free speech protects individuals from government prosecution only. It has nothing to do with employment or labor law.
[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.
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.
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).
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.
No doubt it is amusing, but it doesn't compare to the detractors having a meltdown after his every move.
Why let a pesky little thing like intellectual honesty stand in the way of jumping on a good hate bandwagon?
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.
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.
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.
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)
There was a saying in Eastern/Communist Europe (Poland?):
Do not think. If you think, do not write. If you write, do not publish. If you publish, do not sign (your name). If you sign, do not be surprised.
You can vote for a new government but in the end what happens in your workplace will have more consequences on your life.
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.
I still don’t think it’s wrongful termination but do want to appreciate your point.
This sounds strange to me. Since there's a massive power imbalance between employee and employer, how is that seen as an equivalent tradeoff?
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.
They just have to find an excuse.
At-will only benefits the employer.
It does not benefit the employee in any way.
At all.
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.
>“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.
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.
So much for "changing the world." You're not changing the corporate world, that's for sure!
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.
Nope, the word cult has a definition.
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.
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.
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.
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...
"Turning rebellion into money", as Joe Strummer sang.
0. https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/free-speech-absolutist/4...
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’.
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.
————
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?)
Maybe. I think what he does with Twitter (if the deal goes through) will prove it one way or the other.
But this leads to a pretty blatant double standard if he fires his employees for participating in public discussion and criticism of himself.
So does that mean you should be allowed to think your boss is an asshole too??
Definitely not biased at all.