> Back in the old days(!) one was expected to do one's job well, to treat others professionally - and to expect others to treat you well - but don't bring your private causes into the workplace and expect everyone to love you for it.

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

Also worth noting that in “the old days,” the sphere of “treating others professionally” didn’t encompass women, gays, blacks, Jews, and other ethnic, religious, or social minorities — and protesting that was considered “bringing your private causes into the workplace.”

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

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

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

> Intimidation isn't asking fellow employees if they agree with the content of an open letter [..]

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.

Like... send email circular asking people if they wanted to participate in a survey and maybe sign an open letter posted on SpaceX communication channels you mean?

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

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

Q: Are there (m)any COOs who think their companies should focus on activism and not, you know, actual work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

> Employees should sort of organise [..]

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...

2) context is everything.

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

I think that it's interesting that you cite "the most intolerant win" and assume that it applies to those trying to change the workplace today and not the de facto work place that you so cherished.

This isn't entirely applicable here - the minority group isn't being picky, they are alleging misconduct.

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

Isn't a group of 1 still a minority? Isn't Musk himself a loud minority of the company who wields lots of power? Isn't SpaceX in this case already a Dictatorship of the Small Minority?

This take seems to flip reality on its head. The tiny minority is Musk and his followers.

Funny you mention reality. I don't even consider Musk Republican, but let's assume that for the sake of argument. Latest generic congressional polling has Republicans leading by handful of points.

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

> The tiny minority is Musk

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)