SpaceX launched a few employees onto the unemployment line this week after they unwisely issued a letter criticizing CEO Elon Musk’s ‘embarrassing’ and ‘distracting‘ tweets.
The letter was posted to the company’s internal communications system Wednesday, hours after Musk revealed publicly that he had voted for a Republican candidate for the first time by voting for Mayra Flores in South Texas.In the letter, the unnamed workers gave the company’s directors ‘one month’ to ‘swiftly and explicitly separate’ from ‘Elon’s personal brand’.They demanded that the company become more ‘inclusive’, and said its ‘zero asshole’ policy was not enforced clearly.It’s unclear exactly how many people signed it or which employees instigated it but it slammed Musk for his unfiltered comments on Twitter, his new company, and called them unprofessional.
Reports indicate that some of the employees were bullied into signing the slam against Musk.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that SpaceX had fired employees associated with the letter, citing three employees with knowledge of the situation. It had not detailed the number of employees who had been dismissed.SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell sent an email saying the company had investigated and “terminated a number of employees involved” with the letter, the New York Times said.The newspaper said Shotwell’s email said employees involved with circulating the letter had been fired for making other staff feel “uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views”.
Shotwell’s best line, which should be emblazoned upon the walls of every place of employment, was this: “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.”
Given that bullying people into submission is a leftist tactic, the report is not surprising. It is good that Musk took steps to prevent these employees from continuing to harass other productive and talented workers at SpaceX.
Meanwhile, Musk did a town hall with Twitter employees in which he informed them of his expectations for their professional behavior.
At a town hall with Twitter workers on Thursday, Elon Musk — who submitted a bid to buy the social media company for $44 billion but has publicly wavered over the issue of spambots — answered questions about how he would run the business, from layoffs to product management.One major thing: He really prefers in-person work, Insider reported”You want to aspire to do things in person,” he said at the meeting, per a recording an attendee shared with Insider.Leslie Berland, who serves as Twitter’s head of people and CMO, said at the town hall 1,500 “tweeps” (aka Twitter employees) are completely remote. The rest, about 6,000, are hybrid, by and large.Musk said he thinks only high-power employees should be able to skip the office, generally speaking.”If somebody is exceptional at their job, then it’s possible for them to be effective, even working remotely,” he said.
Musk knows how to get results. SpaceX just launched one of its Falcon 9 rockets for the 13th time, setting a new reuse record.
The two-stage Falcon 9 lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT), carrying 53 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites to orbit. It was the first of three rocket launches in three days from three different pads that SpaceX plans to pull off.The 53 satellites were deployed into low Earth orbit about 15.5 minutes after launch, as planned. But there was action before then as well: About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage came down to Earth for a vertical landing on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
It appears the era of catering to woke employees is nearing its welcome end.
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