SpaceX Fires Employees Behind Musk Open Letter

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SpaceX has made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that criticism of founder and CEO Elon Musk will not be tolerated. Just days after a group of staff members produced an open up letter criticizing Musk, some of individuals concerned have located them selves out of a job. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell sent an electronic mail (that didn’t address the information of the letter), expressing the writers manufactured others “uncomfortable” with the release and violated the corporation handbook by asking personnel to sign the statement.

The letter, unveiled in an interior Microsoft Teams chat with much more than 2,600 personnel, questioned the enterprise to different itself from Musk’s significantly erratic online persona. In the months since statements of sexual misconduct surfaced, Musk has applied his Twitter account to speak out from “wokeness,” low beginning charges, and Democrats. 

Shotwell’s letter, launched by The Verge, notes that this is a chaotic time for SpaceX. It has numerous launches coming up in the next 7 days, and it has to aid the a short while ago launched Dragon cargo mission. SpaceX is also moving toward the 1st orbital start of Starship this summer season. The open letter claimed that Elon Musk’s on the internet behavior is a distraction to the team, but Shotwell claims, no, it’s the letter that was the distraction. 

Elon Musk has been locked in an more and more strange general public struggle to comprehensive his acquire of Twitter, an energy he promises is about totally free speech. Twitter has arrive below hearth from conservatives for its choice to suppress COVID and election misinformation, as perfectly as the banning of previous president Trump. Regardless of contacting himself a “free speech absolutist,” Musk has routinely cracked down on dissent at his organizations — the most recent firings at SpaceX are just the most current instance. 

Totally free speech is important to a functioning democracy.

Do you believe that Twitter rigorously adheres to this theory?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022

It is unclear how a lot of staff have gotten the axe subsequent the letter’s launch, but the document initially explained it was the merchandise of weeks of feed-back from workers across the business at various ranges of seniority. The team sought to have additional workers sign on, both by title or anonymously. Shotwell’s letter phone calls this an case in point of “overreaching activism.” At minimum one employee, who is remaining nameless for clear explanations, says Shotwell’s email is witnessed as “tone deaf” by employees. Even so, it is not likely anybody will say that out loud now.

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