SpaceX workers call Elon Musk an ‘embarrassment’ in letter

Authored by sfgate.com and submitted by benfelix1
image for SpaceX workers call Elon Musk an ‘embarrassment’ in letter

Workers at SpaceX did not mince words about the company's founder and CEO Elon Musk in a recently leaked open letter to the space tech company's executives.

The Verge reported Thursday that the open letter shared in the company’s internal chat room said Musk's “behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us.”

The letter, posted by the Verge, argues that Musk’s public-facing persona undermines the work that SpaceX employees have done to “make the company a more inclusive space” and violates the company’s so-called “no asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies.

“It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values,” the letter adds.

Musk’s Twitter presence — the social media platform that he is still in the process of buying out — has been littered with memes, pro right-wing sentiment and attacks on YouTube and other tech platforms, a smorgasbord of terminally online dispatches from a multibillionaire.

His other company, Tesla, has also been the subject of multiple lawsuits alleging racist and sexist misconduct at the company's factories. Musk, himself, was the subject of a sexual misconduct lawsuit involving a flight attendant, which he denied as “utterly untrue,” after which he proceeded to make crude jokes on Twitter about the case.

Employees called on SpaceX to “publicly address and condemn” Musk’s Twitter behavior, “hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone” and “define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior."

The letter was shared to a SpaceX Microsoft Teams chat with more than 2,500 employees, the Verge reported, with a vast majority of staff reportedly endorsing the contents of the letter.

francohab on June 17th, 2022 at 12:45 UTC »

When Musk started to spread his bullshit on Twitter, I immediately thought about how the high-profile engineers working for Tesla, SpaceX, etc, would feel about that. I work in a tech company composed of 90% engineers, although not that high-profile, still if our CEO would publicly voice all that crap, I’m sure many of us would seriously consider resigning. In the end, it’s not that difficult to find another job.

If I were a tech company recruiter now, I would 100% go shopping for musk companies’ employees right now…

cash_kami on June 17th, 2022 at 06:19 UTC »

Funny all he had to do was be quiet, pop out once in awhile and wave.