SpaceX Fires Employees Behind Musk Open Letter

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SpaceX has designed it clear, in no unsure phrases, that criticism of founder and CEO Elon Musk will not be tolerated. Just times immediately after a team of workforce produced an open letter criticizing Musk, some of these included have discovered by themselves out of a career. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell despatched an e mail (that didn’t address the content material of the letter), expressing the writers produced other folks “uncomfortable” with the launch and violated the enterprise handbook by asking workforce to indication the statement.

The letter, unveiled in an inside Microsoft Groups chat with a lot more than 2,600 staff, requested the company to independent alone from Musk’s increasingly erratic on line persona. In the weeks given that claims of sexual misconduct surfaced, Musk has applied his Twitter account to talk out versus “wokeness,” very low birth rates, and Democrats. 

Shotwell’s letter, produced by The Verge, notes that this is a chaotic time for SpaceX. It has several launches coming up in the up coming week, and it has to aid the recently launched Dragon cargo mission. SpaceX is also transferring towards the first orbital start of Starship this summer months. The open letter claimed that Elon Musk’s on the net actions is a distraction to the staff, but Shotwell claims, no, it is the letter that was the distraction. 

Elon Musk has been locked in an increasingly strange community struggle to complete his obtain of Twitter, an effort he promises is about free of charge speech. Twitter has appear below hearth from conservatives for its choice to suppress COVID and election misinformation, as effectively as the banning of former president Trump. Irrespective of contacting himself a “free speech absolutist,” Musk has routinely cracked down on dissent at his providers — the most recent firings at SpaceX are just the most new instance. 

Totally free speech is crucial to a working democracy.

Do you consider Twitter rigorously adheres to this basic principle?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022

It’s unclear how quite a few workforce have gotten the axe following the letter’s launch, but the document originally claimed it was the merchandise of weeks of opinions from staff members across the organization at different concentrations of seniority. The team sought to have far more staff members indicator on, either by name or anonymously. Shotwell’s letter calls this an illustration of “overreaching activism.” At the very least 1 personnel, who is remaining nameless for evident good reasons, suggests Shotwell’s e mail is viewed as “tone deaf” by staff members. However, it is unlikely any person will say that out loud now.

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