Elon Musk is ‘on fire’ lately. Is this caused by his ongoing deal to buy Twitter and he is doubtful about losing the $44 billion? Or maybe because he simply is bored and doesn’t have what to do? Whatever it is, he is constantly active on social media and constantly posts about rather ‘sensitive’ topics. It’s like he is purposely looking to be in constant conflict with someone. And he is choosing people on his ‘level’, celebrities, politicians and fellow billionaires.
Employees of Elon’s SpaceX Company are starting a discussion in an internal chat application regarding the matter. They are encouraging themselves to stand up to the billionaire and tell him that it is enough. Each claim, or post that he makes indirectly affects the company. Furthermore, with that, affects them, their jobs, and their reputation. The composed letter is to be delivered to the president of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell.
The Verge publishes a review of the letter. In it, the employees state that Elon Musk’s actions, controversies, and allegations are affecting the company in a negative way. The employees state that the letter is a collective thought on Elon’s behavior at the moment. All genders that work in the company, all ethnicities, age groups, and company roles stand behind it. The author of the letter is not revealed, however, the majority of the employees do agree with what is written.
SpaceX Employees Separate Themselves From Elon Musk’s Personal Brand – They Address An Open Letter To The Billionaire
“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is the face of SpaceX. Every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work. It doesn’t reflect our mission, nor our values.” – The letter says.
As we said, he is mocking people important to the US economy. We are all aware of the feud going on between the billionaires, Elon and Bill Gates. There are numerous skirmishes between these two where they insult or degrade each other. However, we must give it to Elon this time that he wins with the insults. Among the other things, he even publicly accused Gates of putting microchips in the vaccines. Earlier in April, he posted an emoji of a pregnant man and a photo of Bill Gates. Furthermore, to clear out what he thinks, he wrote – ‘In case you need to lose a boner fast’. This is not the way you’d expect a billionaire and a successful businessman to behave.
All of Musk’s companies have adopted a ‘no-asshole’ policy and zero-tolerance for sexual harassment. The CEO, Elon Musk is the first to introduce this himself. However, almost 3000 employees are witnessing a shift and a constant but stabile distancing from the initial path. The open letter continues with statements regarding the public behavior of the company’s CEO. They are mostly concerned about the actions of Musk’s Twitter account. They call for reconsidering and re-formulating the previously mentioned policies. At the moment they are not sure of their meaning and their implementation in everyone’s work ethics, including Elon’s.
Along with the letter to all employees, the ‘creator’ included a QR code for scanning. You scan the QR code to ‘sign’ yourself in the list of employees that agree with it. Once this gains a considerable amount of ‘signings’, the employees decide to forward the letter to The Verge.
One of the rumors that gains the most attention is the one that starts with the publication of the Insider’s report. Elon allegedly sexually harassed a flight attendant. The report states that Elon asked the flight attendant to ‘touch his penis’. After the event, he offered her a $250 000 settlement for her not to go public with the story.
“If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light.” – Musk comments on the story.
Many people attack Musk for this and feel disgust with the nature of the event. However, there are people that jump to Musk’s defense as well. One of these people is SpaceX’s director, Shotwell. She sends an email company-wide defending him from the accusations.
“Personally, I believe the allegations to be false; not because I work for Elon, but because I have worked closely with him for 20 years. I’ve never seen nor heard anything resembling these allegations. Anyone who knows Elon as I do knows he would never conduct or condone this alleged inappropriate behavior.”
Seems that these sexual harassment accusations are a regular thing at SpaceX. It is not long ago when another employee went public with such a story. She claimed that HR doesn’t do its work when sexual harassment is in question. The story is again. Covered by The Verge. However, this one does not reach so much attention as the one affecting the CEO himself.
“HR has been soliciting feedback from groups across the company to ensure the process is effective. HR will also conduct an internal audit, followed by a third-party audit.” – Shotwell adds in the letter.
So having all this in mind, it might be a good idea for Elon Musk to filter his Tweets. Not everything he thinks of is a sharing material. His pool of followers does enjoy his tweets, but in a humoristic way. They do look at them as meme material, and pure fun posts. But after what we’ve seen and read, you don’t want to be in Elon’s ‘enemies’ list.
He should stick to his innovative ideas and focus on business. The world strives to be a better place even without his ‘warnings’ and thoughts on the matter.
