5 ms·

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 re

by techie1980 4y ago

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.

deleted 4y ago
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trs8080 4y ago
> 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.
- deleted 4y ago
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- User23 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
    - quartesixte 4y ago
      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.
      - evandale 4y ago
        So did Shotwell terminate the employees or did Musk? If Shotwell runs the company then why is Musk getting the heat?
    - henriquez 4y ago
    - samhyde69 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
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- megaman821 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    Well, at the very least they might join a competitor and take with them the knowledge they had at SpaceX.
    - mwint 4y ago
      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?
- arghnoname 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
    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.
    - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
      Genuinely asking - any reading on the (scientific) understanding of organisations / collective action? (actually writing a book on software literacy and this is cropping up)
      - 4y ago
- dchichkov 4y ago
  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/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    There's no reason we cannot work on these in parallel.
  - mavhc 4y ago
    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.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      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.
      - evandale 4y ago
        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.
      - mavhc 4y ago
        How many tonnes of stuff will it take to be self sustaining? 1 million was estimated, which would cost $100 billion
- WalterBright 4y ago
  If the employees feel they can get to Mars without Musk, they're free to do so.
- meatsauce 4y ago
  For every engineer who got fired, there are 100 waiting to take their place. Nice try, but no. Employees don't feed employers.
  - trs8080 4y ago
    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.
- samhyde69 4y ago
- CodeSgt 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
    - CodeSgt 4y ago
      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.
      - trs8080 4y ago
        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?
ericd 4y ago
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.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

trs8080 4y ago

> 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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
User23 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    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.
    - evandale 4y ago
      So did Shotwell terminate the employees or did Musk? If Shotwell runs the company then why is Musk getting the heat?
  - henriquez 4y ago
  - samhyde69 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
megaman821 4y ago
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 4y ago
  Well, at the very least they might join a competitor and take with them the knowledge they had at SpaceX.
  - mwint 4y ago
    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?
arghnoname 4y ago
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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
  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.
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    Genuinely asking - any reading on the (scientific) understanding of organisations / collective action? (actually writing a book on software literacy and this is cropping up)
    - 4y ago
dchichkov 4y ago
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/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- WalterBright 4y ago
  There's no reason we cannot work on these in parallel.
- mavhc 4y ago
  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.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    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.
    - evandale 4y ago
      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.
    - mavhc 4y ago
      How many tonnes of stuff will it take to be self sustaining? 1 million was estimated, which would cost $100 billion
WalterBright 4y ago
If the employees feel they can get to Mars without Musk, they're free to do so.
meatsauce 4y ago
For every engineer who got fired, there are 100 waiting to take their place. Nice try, but no. Employees don't feed employers.
- trs8080 4y ago
  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.
samhyde69 4y ago
CodeSgt 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
  - CodeSgt 4y ago
    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.
    - trs8080 4y ago
      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?

ericd 4y ago

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.