Here's an experiment. At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. What should the appropriate response be?

You have to work with these people and its incredibly distracting and out of line. These are children that think they can just shout down leadership and suffer no consequences. The rest of us who live in the real world understand that hierarchy doesn't exist arbitrarily and we're not entitled to have someone pay us while we're spitting in their face.

And someone isn't entitled to spit in your face just because they pay you. Respect for people should go both ways, and the view that just because someone is rich, above you in the ladder, you should just shut up and take it, isn't a good one too.

Workers have very little power to fight back, yes there might be consequences but they wouldn't have written this letter if they didn't feel they weren't already living under the consequences of bad leadership.

How is Musk spitting in their face? By shitposting on twitter? By voting for the wrong candidate? These people need to get over themselves. Not everything is about them. They're free to leave.

You're asking questions that were answered in the letter:

"Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks... As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values."

His behavior devalues their work and denigrates the image of the companies they work for.

Then they should go work elsewhere if it bothers them that much. Nobody is forcing them to work for a company ran by Elon Musk.

And I don't know about you, but many people don't just run away when faced with a difficult situation - they face it head on and try to improve it.

Furthermore, if I spent years of my life contributing to a mission that I believe in, giving a company my best work, I'm not going to just walk away because of the actions of a single entitled individual, no matter how rich he is.

And how do you not apply this to Musk, who fired people after a bit of critique?

I would argue it was a good move. Like I said, its a distraction and completely out of line. Imagine you were managing someone and they think its okay to arbitrarily go above your head and call you out publicly. This is incredibly toxic and not a person living in the real world.

Also, you're comparing complaints about the company's double standards with a cleaner complaining about shitty interior design? Do you really think those two things are equivalent?

1. https://wccftech.com/elon-musk-now-owns-less-than-half-of-sp...

People don't have to like him, but it doesn't seem he's actually done anything other than make people work hard at their jobs...

"At SpaceX, we have a 'no a--hole' policy," Shotwell said in a virtual speech to graduates in Northwestern University's 2021 commencement ceremony. "These kinds of people — a--holes — interrupt others, they shut down or co-opt conversation, and they create a hostile environment where no one wants to contribute," Shotwell said. She is also SpaceX's chief operating officer.

Interrupting others stifles innovation and stops people solving difficult problems, Shotwell said.

"In short, the best way to find solutions to hard problems is to listen harder, not talk louder," she said. "Embrace the ideas of your fellow workers, especially when they differ greatly from yours."

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-president-gywnne-shot...

Why does it matter whether his actions are in the context of SpaceX? He is associated with his companies (and vice-versa) to a greater extent than probably any other current head of business. Separating Musk from his companies in the minds of the public would be an exercise in futility, and his personal branding and thirst for public attention seem designed to encourage this. Therefore, every public action he takes has an effect on each of his companies, including SpaceX, regardless of whether said action took place "in the context of" those companies.

With that said, here are some of Musk's "greatest hits":

1. The tweet comparing Bill Gates to the pregnant man emoji [1]

2. referring to the guy who rescued the Thai cave divers as a "pedo" [2]

3. committing securities fraud [3]

4. tweeting that he'd start a STEM school called Texas Institute of Technology & Science (aka TITS) in an industry already rife with casual sexism [4]

5. implying that Tesla employees would lose their stock options if they unionized [5]

6. branding Tesla's driver assist technology as "autonomous", implying it requires no human intervention and therefore meets the criteria for full self-driving. [6]

The above actions range from needlessly trollish to outright illegal. One could argue that you don't build multiple billion-dollar companies without being an asshole to some of the people some of the time, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue that these are not the actions of an asshole.

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496

2. https://time.com/5339219/elon-musk-diver-thai-soccer-team-pe...

3. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/elon-mu...

4. https://qz.com/work/2082746/elon-musks-tweet-captures-everyd...

5. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808

6. https://screenshot-media.com/technology/ai/tesla-autopilot-u...

Well it does matter, because these people consciously came to work at HIS company.

It's like people that move into a noisy neighbourhood and then start to complain about the noise.

Elon is eccentric, yes he tweets some things that people don't like, but he's also built friggin SpaceX...

Unless he's specifically done something to the people at SpaceX then I really don't think they've got anything to complain about... it smells of entitlement and the outrage culture that's appeared in recent years.

Workers (especially the average HN reader) have incredible power to fight back… find a new job and switch companies. Lots a companies are hiring even with the macro economic issues.

From an employee perspective it’s insane to me that one would put so much energy into fighting their leadership rather than just leaving the company for a better one.

Outside of the tech industry (and even then), this ain't anywhere near as easy as you assert. Lots of companies are "hiring"... for positions with shit pay and inflated qualifications.

> From an employee perspective it’s insane to me that one would put so much energy into fighting their leadership rather than just leaving the company for a better one.

From an employee perspective it's insane to me that one would be entirely oblivious to both the risks inherent in quitting (especially given the current economic conditions) and the notion that maybe people might like everything about their company aside from one or two things that need changed.

It's something you use when trying to address a delicate subject whilst minimizing the blowback. Calling out the head of your organization publicly via a scathing open letter would not be it.

First paragraph of the article.

And of course there is also this, "In an email, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, said the letter had made other employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied.”"

I find the entire notion of calling for the CEO's ouster with "tact" a bit disingenuous.

I bet you'd be fired.

I said the same thing by the way about the guy who got fired from Google for circulating a misogynistic rant about female engineers. That was also stupid and unprofessional at the very least.

Politics at work can be generally problematic. Political rants at work that criticize leadership or coworkers or are broadly offensive are probably going to get you fired.

Yes, I know Tim is gay.

It didnt say Elon was "all wrong"... it criticized 1 or 2 things. For all we know they agree with the other 99%.

This is a common in these responses defending Elon. They take the letter, turn it into something much much worse.. and then say: dont they deserve to be fired?

The version of the letter youre describing does not exist.

But I also disagree with their argument simply because Musk's actions are very public and represent the employees who stand behind him. It would be one thing if these were internal decisions that employees disagreed with, but that's not the situation. Musk is a leader, and the people who choose to stand behind him rely on him to represent them well. If they feel he is not doing his job, they are well within their rights to voice their concerns to him. If he reacts like a baby-man who can't take criticism, then the workers should be ready to take their skills elsewhere.

Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest!

Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

Universities are a unique creature where ideas and debate are the whole point, “more so than getting things done.” That’s also part of the “real world” in some sense, but it isn’t the world nearly all of us reside in. I would recommend any organization that wants to be successful outside of that unique context to not emulate the model of universities. That includes non profits and NGOs. Hierarchy exists almost universally in human organizations. That’s not an accident—it’s necessary for groups of humans working together to be effective.

Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.

We are all in the same world; this whole "you are not real enough" argument is ridiculous, and doesn't really mean anything.

People in academia do not. The fact that you missed this and thought comparing the number of people in a particular industry subset of a capitalistic enterprise to academia would somehow prove a point basically shows me how poor the thought/logic skills are in academia... The one thing they're supposed to be better at.

Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.

If you are attempting to compare liberties those in academia have to corporate employees e.g. most people who are employed, no its not like the "real world".

This happens often: I'm guessing about once a month, and nothing happens. The difference is that Zuckerberg is not a needy, thin-skinned billionaire,and will directly address employee criticism in Q&As - as well as press leaks like a well-adjusted adult

No, it does not, but it still happens. Most of our internal[1] Q&A discussions leak to the press (especially criticisms of leadership[2]), but Zuckerberg decided it's the cost of internal openness. I'm yet to hear of anyone fired for leaking company discussions, or even witch-hunts to find leakers. Musk is being a baby, I hope they bleed irreplaceable talent.

1. These have remained unchanged post-IPO, have nothing to do with public listing, and Meta would like them to be confidential

2. One of our recently-promoted execs was publicly and vociferously criticized by employees for something they did, and the critics are still employed, because the execs are not petty.

They do if they want customers. ULA and Blue Origin would love nothing more than for SpaceX's leadership to piss off NASA and burn some of those juicy government contract opportunities.

What should the appropriate response be ?

I am sure the people who wrote the letter are adults. You don't have to insult people you don't agree with.

TBF, the behaviors they are complaining about are so far away from "what adults do". Honestly, tma lot of people could be having a better inagine of SpaceX now that their letter is on the open than during the awkward silence phase.

At most places, leadership actually… leads. Musk is a token publicity figure at best at this point, a mascot.

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

Exactly. Although, it's hypocritical of Musk to fire employees who criticize him but criticize Twitter for banning/censoring accounts for spouting opinions that Twitter doesn't align with. If SpaceX has this right, Twitter should too.

SpaceX doesn't get those contracts for nothing - they're the first to commercialize reusable rockets in a serious way and have massively reduced costs as a result.

All of this stuff was explicitly laid out by Musk (despite massive knee-jerk criticism which continues despite the proved success) and his companies were able to execute on it.

It's not luck to do this repeatedly in multiple extremely challenging verticals (at the same time) successfully.

Do you know why he paid back early? In the contract the DOE would have had some ownership in Tesla after the payoff period. He paid it early so that the Tax Payer wouldn't benefit from the deal. It would have been a better deal for the US Tax Payer for him to have not paid it back early. It should be clear to anyone owning TSLA stock that we, as the public got screwed there.

And yes, it was a bailout. The government was trying to create a EV market and Tesla was about to fail. The market for EVs just didn't exist at that point and the DOE LPO had a driving mission to create one. So they bailed Tesla out because they wanted a market (notice private equity didn't believe in Tesla succeeding, otherwise Musk would have raised the cash from the private markets).

This is how governments create markets, by paying for technology until the market matures. This is true of Computers and other high technology.

If the government didn't care to create an EV market, Tesla would have been dead a long time ago. Is this Musk's genius or the genius of our policy makers?

SpaceX is exactly the same story. The government wanted a private space industry and so NASA was given a mission to create one. SpaceX is barely surviving now even with the government help.

And of course we have no idea what kind of bribery Musk must have participated in to get the loans and contracts he did from the government. I'm sure time will reveal them. But It's naive to think there wasn't anything.

Yes, it does.

Therefore, the relevant question is not "is the company within its rights to fire these employees", but rather "was it a good idea for the company to fire these employees".

Somewhat untrue in theory. Completely untrue in practice. There are a few things you legally cannot be fired for, and a whole plethora of things a company would need to very very careful about firing you for, lest they wind up in court.

There are also laws that prohibit employers from punishing employees in certain circumstances relating to organizing/petitioning when in regard to concerns about workplace issues.

For example:

>You have the right to act with co-workers to address work-related issues in many ways. Examples include: [...] joining with co-workers to talk directly to your employer, to a government agency, or to the media about problems in your workplace

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...

edit: Given how fast this post hit -4, I have to assume that these people are *OK* with being able to fire gay or trans people at a whim. That ain't cool, one bit.

Supreme Court rules workers can’t be fired for being gay or transgender

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/15/supreme-court-rules-workers-...

Instead it's called "lack of culture fit", "insubordination", or a myriad of any other right-to-work excuses as to fire someone you disagree with.

But yes, for those stupid enough to put "Fired because of gay", well, it still is legal due to the loopholes a Mack Truck could drive through. https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-we...

Imagine working with someone like this? If you've been in an organization with people are constantly getting into flame wars about political issues, its incredibly distracting to those that want to get work done.

Some people buy the whole "we're a family" HR spin, but its not true. You're there to do a job and you're paid to do so.

Any organization that's worth working at, obviously. And there are plenty of them.

I don't have any complaints about my current organization, but whenever I feel something has transgressed my personal code of ethics I'm first very vocal about it internally and if necessary externally. I've only ever left companies voluntarily after this, and most have made efforts for me to stay. And it's not like I've been working at the most progressive companies ever.. maybe just don't work at a Musk company.

I personally think its obnoxious and counterproductive for someone to call management out publicly. That's no way to operate an organization. Its a sign that someone is toxic. Some orgs like Bridgewater tried that but that's def not a place I would want to work. The appropriate channels and structure exist for a reason. They're not perfect but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better than everyone else

https://www.cnet.com/tech/google-fires-another-ai-researcher...

Seems like we have come to the real root of things! We can agree to disagree.

Huge difference between calling out issues and publicly demanding the CEO to be fired.

Elon Musk put his workers in this dilemma and he should have expected a subset of them to speak out critically against him. I honestly don’t know other large organizations in our industry that is in the same situation, so there is really nothing to compare it with.

It could be that Musk recognises that a significant group of his staff - likely the majority - simply don't want a loud minority group - possibly a tiny minority - "making waves" and intimidating others into joining their cause.

I've just started Nassim Nicholas Taleb's latest book, but in previous work he wrote about "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority"[0]

This example could easily be one of those instances.

Back in the old days(!) one was expected to do one's job well, to treat others professionally - and to expect others to treat you well - but don't bring your private causes into the workplace and expect everyone to love you for it. Do what you like on your own time, but on the company's time, follow the rules.

[0]https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Excluding of course, the CEO of the company in question. He can say anything he wants, fight with and call people pedophiles on Twitter, run a crypto pump and dump scheme, spread pandemic conspiracies, etc etc etc to the point that investors in his companies have spoken up about it and now his own employees are writing letters. That behavior is totally professional and ok.

That's also Twitter's policy on trolling and harassment which his totally sincere "free speech absolutism" seeks to end.

Intimidation isn't asking fellow employees if they agree with the content of an open letter, it's public figures calling a blogger and telling them if their blog criticising Tesla isn't taken down, their totally unrelated boss will be getting a phone call . Guess which one Musk personally involved himself in...

Errm, if fellow employees feel intimidated by you pitching up and asking them to sign, that's what we call intimidation, at least these days.

If you want to organise an open letter, put it up somewhere public, tell everyone involved, and wait for people to sign it? Or not, it's their choice.

So far, the only person who has suggested employees felt intimidated is the COO defending the decision to fire them. Just in case you were inclined to actually believe that her priority was to encourage employees to speak out against harassment and not intimidate them into silence she added that the company had "too much critical work to accomplish", no place for "activism" and told remaining employees to "stay focused",

I mean, I accept it's theoretically possible the real intimidation wasn't the COO firing 5 people for the "unacceptable" sending of emails asking people if they agreed with their views about management and the anti-harassment policy "during the work day", but I'm going to file that one away under very unlikely

Perhaps people who support activism should just start their own companies - as majority shareholders they could easily mandate that management specify time to be spent on activism... no need for focus.

> Perhaps people who support activism should just start their own companies

Got it. Employees should sort of organise an open letter and tell everyone involved but also not organise an open letter or tell anyone because how employees spend their waking hours and what they should think is up to management.

Also, sending an email circular asking people to sign a petition is intimidation, but telling people that activism is an "unacceptable" loss of focus whilst announcing firings is all about protecting people from intolerance of other viewpoints.

I mean, employers can and do fire people all the time for embarrassing the company, though doing it for criticising the CEO and insufficiently strong protections from harassment tends to be dodgy ground. But the idea that they're doing so to promote tolerance is the most Orwellian bullshit take imaginable. Popper's paradox of tolerance is about what level of safeguard is necessary to prevent free speech democracies from collapsing, not making it clear that people aren't allowed to criticise their boss and especially not on company time.

It's not clear whether employees should be using company resources and company time to organise against the company or its management. Is that something we think is a given right? If so, why?

There is a reason that during a (legitimate!) strike pickets have to stand off their employer's property. We had that in the 70s with the NUM, we had that in 2010 when BA strikers were prohibited from entering (private) Heathrow property[1]

> the idea that they're doing so to promote tolerance is the most Orwellian bullshit take imaginable

1) there's quite a lack of tolerance left of centre, and 2) context is everything.

Your starter for ten: I'll give you a quote, so without searching, take a wild guess who said it...

> "Everybody understands all lives matter. Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement."

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/mar/16/british-air...

Indeed. The context has nothing to do with weird digressions about the tolerance of the left or picket line legislation in the UK. The context is that a company fired some people for sending emails criticising a CEO with a long track record of being even less tolerant of criticism than the average CEO whilst asserting it's unacceptable for staff to question the company's anti-harassment policies. The context is the CEO also has a track record of threatening to get people who never worked with him fired from their completely unrelated job if they don't take their blog posts criticising him and his company down. Stating that he may be legally entitled to do this is one thing. Citing the paradox of tolerance to argue that cancelling people who criticise Elon Musk and ruling out the possibility of debate on SpaceX harassment policy is in fact compatible with "free speech absolutism", because email circulars questioning the boss' behaviour and harassment policies (or blogging on SeekingAlpha, I guess) intimidates people is... something else entirely.

Also, that linked post is something else. In the span of one really long essay, he went from halal food, to trying to intellectually rehabilitate Brexit, to a maximally-extended version of the Paradox of Tolerance, and then finally to disproving the right-libertarian thesis that market manipulation is impossible. I genuinely can't tell if this is brilliantly considered, or just authoritarian right-wingers trying to specifically feed me propaganda.

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia%27s_Polling_Index:_Gener...

As Terry Pratchett so wonderfully put it in Making Money (Discworld #36)[0], there is "a piece of ancient magic called [..] fifty-one percent of the shares".

As far as what happens at SpaceX goes, Musk isn't the minority. He's the (?? 78%) majority owner.

So, if you work at SpaceX and don't like him, I think the options boil down to: a) suck it up, or b) find somewhere else to work ...

... or maybe c) leave and start your own SpaceX? We all know competition is good. Of course in that case you'll really have Skin In The Game[1] - and coincidentally that's the Taleb book I've been reading this afternoon.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Money [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_in_the_Game_(book)

I don't really get how musk's feelings on free speech apply here. SpaceX is not the government, and it's not a communications platform. I also think it's unfair to say "his feelings are hurt" - it seems perfectly logical to get rid of employees that so strongly disagree with the way the company is being run.

And I have to wonder, why even work there if that's how you feel? This just looks like another example of a group of people who have "problems" with their company but don't want to give up the pay that it provides them.

I principled person would at least quit before making a scene in the media, rather than spamming many people in the company.

This is look at me behaviour coupled with politics at its worse.

Real trade can happen without the speculation game. Some people may not get to build rocket engines in such a system but the species doesn’t owe a minority of first world engineers everything they want anymore than it owes an even smaller minority of billionaires.

The propaganda has worked really well; you seem to actually believe human agency is coupled only to the money making endeavors before us today.

Past technology is a joke relative to ours and so will these fancy things we make today seem to the future. Fleeing Earth on rockets is not the only path. It’s the only path we are allowed to speak to. Alternatives would cause the wrong people to lose privilege and power.

Of course they are. Concerted workplace activity to improve workplace conditions is protected under NLRB. It's literally the definition of protected activity.

I'm sure you can think of reasons other than "feelings getting hurt" for these firings...

I strongly hope the fired individuals do look into getting a labor lawyer representing them.

This is totally incorrect.

Free speech in this case is an opinion. The right to free speech is not freedom from consequences for voicing opinions.

Point me to the place he’s said you have a capital-R Right to not be banned from Twitter.

The most powerful response is to have a top level stakeholder meeting, identify changes from the letter which need to be made, then: fire everyone who wrote the letter, and make those changes.

This sends the message that management is responsive to worker complaints, and will also send you packing immediately if you defect on the company by making anything public which should be an internal matter.

If they do only one of these things, it's either demoralizing or mutiny. Neither of those outcomes is good, one is completely unacceptable. So this is what happens.

One could argue that those writing the letter should have known it would be leaked. But you could also say that about any kind of internal criticism. I'd counter that this argument has the 2nd-order effect of preventing any kind of internal criticism, constructive or otherwise, lest it be leaked at some point in the future.

Not to mention, the "demoralizing" label could also be applied to Musk's public behavior, which is the bulk of the point that the letter and its authors are making.

I assume they tried making it an internal matter before going public. Pushing your employees to have the feeling they need to go public instead of being able to solve this internally is a failure of the company.

"This should have been kept internal, where we could have fired you without publicity"

Insubordination also might be "Directly questioning or mocking management decisions". [1]

Another example: 5 insubordination in the workplace examples [2]

  1. Refusal to complete a task
  2. Refusal to come into work
  3. Refusal to remain at work
  4. Disrespecting authority figures
  5. Sabotaging team or organizational activities

[2] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/insu...

As for the 2nd example- which of those 5 points are the letter's authors guilty of? The only one of those 5 that looks even remotely relevant is #4, but even that's a stretch since there's a difference between "criticizing" and "disrespecting".

Musk might believe those two things are one and the same, but they are, in fact, quite different.

I never said they are, and that's not why they were fired. From the article: "The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views," Ms. Shotwell wrote.

Wouldn't it be ironic if a man who is "fighting to preserve free speech" fired employees for their speech he disagrees with? Oh, wait...

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Whether what they said is right or wrong it was still damaging to the owner of the company and the company's reputation as well.

Its like the Tesla guy who was fired a few months back. Yeah it was his own car. Yeah it was on his own time. But he, a tesla employee was making the company look bad by uploading videos of the car failing to self drive to Youtube.

You don't get to not be a representative of your company just because you are off the clock. If people know that you work for X company then anything you say or do may be seen through the lens of "An X company employee"

But that’s exactly the point that the letter’s authors are making about Musk himself, and his tweets. Either the same rule applies equally to both Musk and his employees, or there’s an unfair double standard which should be remedied.

Now we can discuss how we think it ought to work all day long. But that is how it does work today. It's not an even relationship and never has been. The guy signing the checks gets to decide if he wants to employee you. If people decide that he's a dick and don't want to work for him then he will find it hard to hire good talent.

> SpaceX has fired at least five employees who were involved with circulating a letter around the company that was critical of CEO Elon Musk…[1]

Further, if this link is to be believed, he is no longer a majority owner of SpaceX:

> According to filings that SpaceX has made with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Musk currently owns 43.61% of SpaceX's outstanding stock as of August 2021.[2]

1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/06/17/spacex-fires-employees-a...

2. https://wccftech.com/elon-musk-now-owns-less-than-half-of-sp...

...except when that free speech is a respectful letter crafted by his employees asking him to tone down his social media because it's reflecting poorly on their work.

But it smacks of "one rule for me, one rule for thee" from Mr "free speech absolutist" Musk, right?

    > "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."

1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/spacex-fired-emp...

Also, if the SpaceX president's statement is false, then the fired people probably have a lawsuit to file. Would the SpaceX president be that dumb? Maybe.

So a normal day in any business with more than a few hundred folks.

Their orders are to get to Mars.

Employees that are bikeshedding, sowing internal discord, engaging in mutiny, are not working toward the goal and in fact actively hindering it. That's all the reason needed to prune them from the otherwise focused and ambitious team.

Mhhh... I don't think so. We should consider also the possibility that his activity in Twitter could be beneficial for the company.

In fact it could accelerate the process of sending him to Mars as soon as possible.

Everybody is happy, so... keep tweeting? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Personally I don't. I also don't take offense at anything Chris Rock or Ricky Gervais says. Others do take offense to what they say. That's their choice, their opinion, and not one that can or should be enforced on others.

I'm not saying what they did is right or wrong but your outright dismissal of their (valid IMHO) concerns is missing lots of nuance.

1 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te...

https://web.archive.org/web/20211029205638/https://newsyndic...

So you're saying musk should step down?

Musk was a fool for bringing politics into this. But its also pretty dishonest for employees to claim to feel intimidated and bullied just because he's considering endorsing a different political party.

Clearly I was talking about the group who sent out the unsolicited internal letter in work channels.

However you do have to be in work channels, and this group of people sent the unsolicited letter in those channels.

And now we're all having to talk about the letter.

You can argue you don't have to follow Elon's twitter, but when you try to hire someone and they quote Elon's behavior as a reason why not to work for your company what do you expect?

I don't think anyone has accused the letter writers of not getting their job done. So far it seems this is all about the boss having a thin skin.

Without knowing the details of the situation, I'm not sure we can confidently know whether these employees were being jerks or management were being jerks.

Like firing people for being critical of one's Lord and Savior?

Sticks, stones and letters may break my bones.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496