Nuked It took less than a day and a half for SpaceX employees to sign onto an open letter criticizing CEO Elon Musk. It was posted and shared by some of their co-workers in an internal chat.
The open letter first went live on an internal landing page at noon Eastern. It was shared by a handful of employees to roughly 10 chat rooms in Microsoft teams as well as one email list.
Employees were given the option to sign onto the document by taking a survey or scanning a QR code. An employee who helped craft the letter said’a large number of employees across a bunch of demographic and roles and levels helped write the letter’.
The largest teams channel where the letter was shared had roughly 2,600 members, mostly filled with engineers. 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.
In 2017, Tesla fired an employee for distributing leaflets encouraging employees to unionize. In May of this year, Tesla tweeted that Tesla would be forming a’hardcore litigation Department’ to’directly initiate and execute lawsuits’.
Spacex management fired at least five employees for their involvement with the letter. Spacex president Gwynne Shotwell then sent out an email to the company, denouncing the document and informed the company of the terminations.
Spacex has a busy schedule in the days and weeks ahead ahead, says Shotwell. She claims the letter, not Musk’s behavior, was a source of distraction for SpaceX.
Spacex did not respond to a request for comment by the verge in time for publication. Spacex did n’t respond to the request in time to publication.
Two of those involved with writing the letter, speaking on the condition of anonymity, dispute that claim. They say they simply posted the letter to the teams channels, pointing people to it and asking for support.
‘the open letter either stands on its own or it does n’t,’ one employee who helped craft the letter said.
The news of the employees’ firings has spread throughout the company. A few current employees have expressed their dismay at the actions the company took.
