Business, Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space

“Are You Guys F**cking High?”

61 Comments

On the latest kerfuffle at SpaceX.

[Saturday-morning update]

[Bumped]

[Update Tuesday morning]

Cheers to Elon Musk for finally saying “no” to whiny, entitled millennial babies.

Though to be fair, I don’t think that Felicia Sonmez is a millennial.

[Bumped again]

61 thoughts on ““Are You Guys F**cking High?””

  1. Duh. See ‘Paranoid’ thread comment.
    Go woke, go broke. …And another “Read the fine print”

  2. Dear Woketards, you are fucking with a man who in a Tweet asks the question: “What’s best in life?”

    If you don’t understand the significance of the one and only correct answer, I suggest you find out sooner rather than later.

  3. SpaceX is not a publishing house and certainly not a public commons. You are not paid to circulate documents disparaging your boss. I know people fired from NASA for just making disparaging remarks about coworkers.

  6. I wonder if the idiots were telling each other “Elon Musk has no right to run our company this way!”

    There is one and only one reason SpaceX exists, and that reason is Elon Musk and his quirky, brilliant nature.

    1. Comment in 1928 Canadian newspaper: “The cemeteries are full of people who thought the world couldn’t get along without them.”
      –https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/21/graveyards-full/

      1. …and, no, I was talking about the wokesters believing that anyone actually cared what they thought. Elon Musk broke the existing paradigm about reusability and that goes down in the history books.

  7. The letter says that Musk is discrediting “their” company. Pretty sure Musk thinks of it as his company. Bad mistake, good luck on your next job.

    2. What is it about the Wokesters who assume because they are hired to do a job, that then allows them to set company policy?
      I put it down to the “Princess” upbringing, and the failure to adapt to a world where they aren’t the most important person.
      Managements most important job is to identify these idiots and sack them.

      1. Managements most important job is to identify these idiots and sack them.

        You may use this pink slip of paper to redeem your De-Participation Trophy .

  8. I looked at comments on theverge so you don’t have to. The general consensus there is that Elon is going down, he will be sued into oblivion and rightly so, and besides, his horrible behavior lately (like defending free speech) is going to destroy SpaceX anyway.

    1. I think most of us here, back in elementary school, sometimes wondered what went on in Special Ed class, and have since wondered how those kids turned out. Nice to know they’re commenting at The Verge.

        1. I assume his HR department and legal staff approved these firings. That’s kind of one of the reasons you have those.

        1. The Ars comment sections have been cesspits for several years now; I never comment there on controversial threads. And the site in general has gone way, way downhill into a slightly less ridiculous version of its Condé Nast stablemate Wired. Eric Berger is about the only semi-sane person there.

          1. cthulhu, agree with you, it’s vicious there. I never go to the main site, my shortcut takes me to Berger’s author page. I wish he’d move elsewhere but I believe he agrees with much of the editorial slant at Ars (especially regarding climate change). The fact his pieces are usually pretty straight (with the occasional very well done ironic twist) is remarkable.

          2. “High fossil fuel prices are good for the planet – here’s how to keep it that way” – Neil McCulloch 6/20/2022

            They’re just full-on dropping the mask at this point, aren’t they? There’s over 1,000 comments, but I don’t want to give them the click to wade through them to see how the opinion of the commentariat is breaking on this idea.

  9. Well, OK then: They wanted to disassociate themselves from Musk…

    And they are.

    So, what are they whinging about now?

    1. Flight-ER-Doc: Obviously, because they deserve to have great jobs because they are wonderful people, while the world-changing genius who pays their salaries deserves to be—nay, absolutely must be—cancelled and destroyed because he is not a flaming Marxist. Frankly, Doc, I am not only disappointed, but truly appalled, at your inability to comprehend simple logic.

  10. All the Twitter employees that were disparaging Musk during the open meeting must not feel all that secure in their employment right now.

    1. It will be interesting to see of the rest of the employees at his companies (and soon, Twitter) learn anything from the message that was just sent (something about “encouraging the others”…) I will not be surprised if they didn’t, and these weren’t the last to have to be escorted out.

      1. Sounds like he already put Tesla on notice.

        Musk demands a lot but putting effort into your job and adhering to some minimal standards for conduct shouldn’t be the big deal it is. He isn’t asking anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do but that is still asking a lot.

        1. Well so much for being a “free speech absolutist” guess he just a standard free speecher , ‘free speech if I like the opinion’ now.

          Musk demands a lot but putting effort into your job and adhering to some minimal standards for conduct shouldn’t be the big deal it is. He isn’t asking anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do but that is still asking a lot.

          Yea and he also pays at 90% of the going rate for the talent does he compensate himself the same? He sells it to them as being part of the grand vision. Now these people who bought into this grand vision and working long hours at 90% then see the boss compromising the grand vision they bought into, while also not joining the joint sacrifice (in compensation) for this grand vision. Since they are buying the vision crap they speak out instead of just leaving.

          Um Musk asking for minimal standard of conduct he wouldn’t do himself? How many different jobs does Musk have? Tesla, Spacex, Boring Company, Monkey torture company, Dancers in robot suits company, ransacking twitter data company (not that he actually completing the purchase) , and finally being a full time twitter edgelord troll and meme king on Twitter. How does he get any work done?

          Though guessing these high individuals now have a great item on there resume being ‘canceled’ by worlds most powerful man. Guessing they will land on there feet.

          2. Yea I just saw your update and Reading through it after I posted. Though where is the whole letter assuming the twitter account is just posting pieces.

          4. Engineer:

            1. The complete petition text was published by Loren Grush at The Verge a few days ago. Link: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior

            2. I’m not sure what you were expecting with your free speech complaint here. On Twitter and the usual comboxes and subreddits, it gets tossed out just for the thrill of pretending to tag Elon Musk as a hypocrite. But since there’s the possibility that you might actually believe it . . .

            If you really think workplaces are or should be free speech zones, try writing a petition like this directed at your company’s CEO or Owner and distribute it globally. See what happens!

            The only time for complaint will be if Elon closes the sale on Twitter and bans the fired employees from tweeting there. But I strongly tend to assume they’ll be free to bash Elon as much as they want, barring violations of any still-binding NDA’s. Certainly, they’ll have the free time to do so!

          5. A free speech test for Musk is if he lets the guy who tweets Musk’s movements is allowed to stay on. Think it is an airplane tracker.

          6. Well so much for being a “free speech absolutist” guess he just a standard free speecher , ‘free speech if I like the opinion’ now.

            Reminds me of the more ridiculous whataboutisms where an imaginary slight is claimed to be comparable to a serious evil. SpaceX is not a platform for your speech. Twitter is.

    2. How about a new Twitter group for those let go after Musk acquires the company? I’ll propose a name for it: in addition to @libsoftiktok we now have @twitsoftwitter.

  12. They wanted Democrat party commissars installed at SpaceX’s expense to “learn through failure” as they rapidly implement and iterate DIE.

    Why wouldn’t they expect this to work when it has been so successful at taking g over other companies and institutions? Sue and settle worked for taking over government too.

  13. Loren Grush has a new story up, by the way, with a supposed unnamed SpaceX employee who claims they had 404 signatures (out of a workforce of about 12,000) on the petition before the hammer dropped. “The largest Teams channel where the document was shared had roughly 2,600 members, largely filled with engineers, while the other Teams channels were relatively small. The writers also had plans to distribute a stack of physical copies of the letter, which also had QR codes for people to scan, around production and food service areas. But no one was brave enough to hand those out before firings began, according to one of the people involved.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172913/spacex-complaint-letter-firing-elon-musk

    There is no way to know if that’s true, of course – you’d expect the best possible spin from the organizers. I suppose, given that you are talking about a workforce consisting mostly of 20- and 30- something elite American STEM grads, you probably are looking at a 70 D/30 R makeup, and a sizable number of the D’s being flat out woke. It’s not impossible.

    I am open to an argument that Elon’s taking some risks with companies through his high profile activities of late. SpaceX may have a hammerlock on launch contracts at the moment, but there’s the possibility that regulators and legislators can make life difficult for SpaceX and Tesla in all sorts of ways. But the idea that a petition like this, worded like this, demanding the things it did, would actually accomplish any good, is just mind-boggling. This ain’t a New York publishing house, guys.

    1. Yeah, it’s hard to see how SpaceX dissociates itself from “Elon’s brand”…

      Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.

      If the company even did that, how could those that promote the above quote be satisfied by that and continue the hypocritical action of being technical sycophants following Elon’s technical direction and lead? If that’s not enabling, tell me what is. It’s not just impracticable, it’s highly naive. No, this was a call to fire the boss.

      Many companies manage to achieve great things whose employees might consider the founder to be a jerk. General Electric comes to mind. But they stayed on because what the company as a team accomplished could make them all proud of their achievements regardless.

      And besides, you can always quit and start a new company. You might get sued, so you’d be wise not to go head-to-head with your former employer, at least until you’ve established your own technology as a non-derivative of your former employ.

      I’m reminded of the tale of the Traitorous 8

      1. I’m waiting for the woke to introduce a bill in Congress entitled the “Space Precautionary Act”. I’m pretty sure some of the commenters on this thread would support it.

      2. “Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.”
        This kinda undercuts any argument that there’s any free speech angle. It sounds like they didn’t just want SpaceX to do the typical clarify what’s the CEO’s personal opinion and what’s corporate opinion, they wanted it to go against what Elon says on Twitter. Well, IMHO, that’s a dick move in any corporation and really not gonna work well if the guy you want publicly repudiated is the boss.

  15. The thing that stood out to me the most from the letter was that they want to “clarify” exactly what’s meant by the company’s “no asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies.

    That’s rather glaring, given that they didn’t bother to specify what, exactly, they found objectionable about Elon’s “Harmful twitter behavior.”

    Therefor, they are against ambiguity, and also highly ambiguous when making their objections.

    Typical hypocritical woke BS. I was neutral on this issue until I read the letter, but now I very much support their firing. The last thing SpaceX, or any company, needs is foaming-at-the-mouth idiots.

    1. It would appear to me the “no asshole” policy is not only still in effect, but effectively enforced.

  16. This was a soft coup attempt, straight up. The letter was a weak attempt to parlay some vaguely-offensive-when-deliberately-taken-out-of-context tweets into evidence of a general atmosphere of isms that require a massive overhaul of corporate structure. The dead giveaway is the recommendations that go way beyond the context of the complaint – denounce the founder, chairman, CEO, and holder of majority voting rights, and install an unaccountable woke parallel political apparatus with veto power over personnel decisions. I mean, kudos for the ambition but maybe next time don’t go all-in on your first hand, eh?

  17. I’ve worked for many different companies as a designer over the course of the last 40 years or so, doing 90 day to 1 year plus assignments, along with a long stint at one company in upstate NY. Some of the companies on my resume are known pits, at least to the more experienced recruiters.
    They’ll ask me how it was working for Inferno Corp, and I will tell them about the technical side of it, nothing more more. I won’t say anything about the time one of the managers came back from a drunken lunch and started throwing chairs around the CAD area. I was hit by a chair and had to go to an ER for my injuries.
    The only people who I’ve told about this were my parents and of course my wife, along with the medical people and the attorney I retained to get reimbursed for both the treatment and the missed time. (Inferno Corp paid before the trial was set to start).
    It is simply unprofessional to go publicly grousing about one’s employer or client. I told my wife and our cats everything, and before my parents died I discussed almost everything. That’s it.
    Now that I’m writing, one of the series I’m working on is about a contract designer/adventurer in a sort of D&D world with some modern touches. Some of the incidents in these stories come from my past, but I’m careful to play them for laughs. Only someone who knows the contract industry very well AND has my 9 page resume will be able to make a reasonable guess as to which client is which incident.

  18. Though to be fair, I don’t think that Felicia Sonmez is a millennial.
    I did a little estimation based on her graduation date from Harvard. She’s just a little too old to be a millennial and too young to be a Gen X’r. So I classify her as Gen Y.

    1. I’d like to point out that it isn’t clear who approved the decision to fire these people at SpaceX. It’s looking to me that if it did go this high up the chain, it was Gwynne not Elon. But it may not have gone that high. Gwynne is the only one who has been claimed to comment about it, supposedly via internal email.

    2. So I classify her as Gen Y.
      Oops, according to Wikipedia, which of course is the final word on all things cultural, says Gen Y IS a millennial. She definitely fits Gen Y criteria so yes, she is by definition a millennial. I had millennials confused with Gen Z’ers.

  19. “Cheers to Elon Mush …”

    I don’t think that’s quite the sentiment you’re trying to convey.

  20. Freedom of choice speech
    Is what you got
    Freedom from choice
    Is what you want

    – Almost Devo

  21. Though to be fair, I don’t think that Felicia Sonmez is a millennial.

    Born in 1983 – so, a Millennial, just an early end one.

    Toxic, either way.

  22. Since Starship is throttleable – each engine and number of engines used.
    Doesn’t make Starship blast off safer?
    And couldn’t you say using solid rockets more inherently dangerous at lift off?
    Starship has a complicated release of rocket but it’s
    that mitigated by throttle control. Or it seems Starship
    could hover for 1/4 of second and any problem of release, could give option to shutdown rockets.
    Also it seems rocket power could in first 1/2 second barely lift off, and within a second go to max thrust.

    Anyways, it seems Starship should have test of getting first stage off the pad and then re-landing on the pad with chopsticks. Lift off just the first stage with 1/6th of rocket fuel load and re-land on the pad

    1. And couldn’t you say using solid rockets more inherently dangerous at lift off?

      Solid fuel rockets are way more dangerous before lift off. You don’t have to worry about losing the VAB to an accidental lighting of a liquid fuel stage that won’t be fueled until the rocket is on the pad.

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