[justinph]

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.

[Justin_K]

Getting fired for insubordination isn't a protected class. The former employees don't have a case.

[babypuncher]

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.

[Justin_K]

The employees demanded that SpaceX condemn the CEOs statements on twitter. You don't think that's going to piss anybody off?

[denton-scratch]

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.

[kortilla]

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.

[oezi]

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?

[assttoasstmgr]

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.

[denton-scratch]

You're right; I looked it up.

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.

[hooloovoo_zoo]

Insubordination is more than refusal to obey a direct order, at least in America. See, for instance, the uniform code of military justice article 91.

[denton-scratch]

Thanks. My remarks were about normal employment; insubordination in the military is probably quite a different matter.

[babypuncher]

Pissing someone off and disobeying a direct order are two different things

[ss108]

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.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

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.

[temp_6_17_2022]

> There is no equivalency between

Sure there is, and trivially so- your employer decided to fire you in both cases, in neither did 20000 hyperonline strangers fire you.

[throwaway894345]

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.

[ss108]

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.

[teawrecks]

The employees are all likely shareholders. It is the shareholder's duty to themselves to demand that the CEO be held accountable.

[ameister14]

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.

[celdon25]

Did any of you even read the statement from the company's COO?

[daenz]

>insubordination isn't a protected class

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.

[Aeolun]

Maybe it’s more that they hold leadership to a higher standard than the playground bullies in elementary school?

[natch]

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.

[nvr219]

HN comments are not indicators of anything close to representing "people" in general.

[puglr]

To your point, comments in any internet community are not such indicators.

[nvr219]

Indeed.

[Justin_K]

My point is whether or not they have a legal case, not if their letter is true or false.

[stefan_]

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.

[TrinaryWorksToo]

To an extent it can be a protected class (and this may even be protected) https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...

[Justin_K]

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.

[btilly]

The letter itself is at the end of https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk....

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.

[Justin_K]

While they open the letter with statements about inclusion and diversity, their first demand / action item is as follows:

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.

[oarabbus_]

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.

[birdyrooster]

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.

[dmix]

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).

[lalaland1125]

Talking about workplace issues in the workplace is a protected class

[meatsauce]

Good thing he shed the woke-cancer. Those clowns ruin entire companies and destroy morale for the whole team.

[zozbot234]

> 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.

[chipotle_coyote]

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.

[btilly]

This is a good point. And it is verified by:

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.

[tamcap]

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.

[dmatech]

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.

[TheCoelacanth]

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.

[TrinaryWorksToo]

The document I linked describes protections specifically beyond unions, such as two or more employees talking about working conditions.

[micromacrofoot]

Saying a bad thing about your employer isn't insubordination.

That said, most places in the US are at-will employment, so you can fire your employees for no reason.

[thal3s]

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.

[Justin_K]

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.

[canadaduane]

Both employment and slavery are by degrees. I think they can be compared, but "employment = slavery" is obviously wrong.

[meatsauce]

That's like comparing rocket motors to lettuce.

[tablespoon]

>> 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.

[thetinguy]

And yet even if he had all the money in the world he won’t get anywhere without his employees.

[lostlogin]

I think he would be ok.

[samhyde69]

He doesn't need, or want, the woke ones. No one does.

[techie1980]

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.

[ericd]

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.

[trs8080]

> If you want to bite the hand that feeds you, then you need to be cognizant of the potential consequences.

SpaceX employees are the hand that's feeding Musk. Unless you think he can get to Mars by himself.

[megaman821]

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.

[Apocryphon]

Well, at the very least they might join a competitor and take with them the knowledge they had at SpaceX.

[CodeSgt]

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.

[trs8080]

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.

[assttoasstmgr]

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.

[WalterBright]

If the employees feel they can get to Mars without Musk, they're free to do so.

[User23]

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.

[trs8080]

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.

[meatsauce]

For every engineer who got fired, there are 100 waiting to take their place.

Nice try, but no. Employees don't feed employers.

[trs8080]

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.

[arghnoname]

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.

[WalterBright]

> monarchical

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.

[anigbrowl]

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.

[dchichkov]

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/

[meatsauce]

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.

[mavhc]

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.

[WalterBright]

There's no reason we cannot work on these in parallel.

[TameAntelope]

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).

[teawrecks]

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.

[arghnoname]

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.

[biohacker85]

> 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.

[meatsauce]

Bold strategy, we'll see how it turns out for him

This is common and has been common for hundreds of years.

Burn the boss, lose your job.

It isn't rocket science.

[WalterBright]

> We're not slaves anymore.

True. And you're not entitled to the job, either. The employer/employee relationship is a voluntary one, for both parties.

[LambdaComplex]

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.

[WalterBright]

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.)

[ghusbands]

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.)

[Tostino]

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.

[meatsauce]

Get another job.

[tiahura]

Should hot girls be forced to date ugly guys?

[throwaway894345]

You are free to express your thoughts and opinions, and your employer is free to stop employing you.

[tankenmate]

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).

[pfortuny]

Please: slaves could not even think of leaving their jobs.

We are not slaves, but our bosses are not our parents either.

[tomohawk]

If you want a guaranteed job where you can do whatever you want, including running down your boss, then get a job with the government.

Businesses that are trying to stay in business don't have time for you.

[meatsauce]

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.

[saagarjha]

This you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31783510?

Seriously, Hacker News is not the site for you to engage in this kind of low-quality culture war. Stop doing it.

[celticninja]

Caveat: IN THE USA

some countries have decent labour laws that won't crucify you for disagreeing with your employer

[ryan_j_naughton]

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.”

These employees clearly messed up in that regard.

[meatsauce]

Your general issue work-cancer employee is not a rational actor. The forethought ceases at "I'm offended"

[temp_6_17_2022]

What (legal) orders did they defy?

[buck4roo]

> insubordination isn't a protected class

Any bets on whether (CEO == assclown) is a protected class?

[aeternum]

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.

[cratermoon]

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.

[vxNsr]

The original verge article I saw on this implied that the author (of the article) was in direct contact with at least a few of the letter’s authors.

[waffleiron]

The Verge article I found says:

> 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.

[mlindner]

An internal letter sent to thousands of employees.

[TheCoelacanth]

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.

[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/our-enforc...

[elihu]

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.)