The way employees were treated was beyond disgraceful. Really feel sorry for my younger self who believed that Musk truly cares about Humanity. Never ever hero worship a billionaire while thinking he will change the world. They are all ego manic pos hungry for more and more control. Small things you can do a) If you care about environment don't buy an over expensive electric car. Think about efforts to improve Public transport b) SpaceX is not about putting man on Mars. It is about elon wanting to control world's internet through Starlink. Whenever a small nation falls for the trap raise your voice.
Starlink's total bandwidth is about the same as a small regional ISP. There is no way it will ever "control the world's internet".
Starlink will serve many places where terrestrial wired or wireless access doesn't make sense, including oceans, very rural areas, uninhabited areas, airplanes, rockets, etc. It will never be able to serve 1% of a high density city. It will never control anything on the scale of the world's internet. This is an absurd conspiracy theory.
There's no source or confirmation that 1,300 units were actually down, and, if they were down - it looks like because the service wasn't being paid for?
Do you expect companies to provide services for free? The hypocrisy that Elon pointed out is that the military industrial complex is getting paid billions, but the ideological mob via captured MSM is smearing him for no longer wanting to provide free/subsidized services?
P.S. Their "withdrepw" typo in the article, doesn't bode well for overall quality.
Edit to add: Found another source confirming the units were down, oh - and look at that - it was due to non-payment. People demonizing Musk for war mongerers not paying their bills eh? Let the smear campaigns continue..
"Blackmail" is a strange word for "we decided to stop paying the monthly service fee and service ended as expected."
> Before the terminals went completely dark, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense made a request in early October to their British counterparts to pick up the $3.25 million monthly bill. The batch of terminals were also rotated out as concerns grew that service could be turned off, in order to minimize the impact, the source said.
> A British official said after discussions between the ministries "it was agreed there were higher priority military capabilities." Among many other channels of support, the UK has been flying thousands of Ukrainian troops to Britain for training before they head back to the frontlines.
It's possible for a perfectly reasonable person to justifiably strongly dislike Elon Musk, but what you're doing here is not that.
I think it's similar to small construction companies using their staff during the winter to work on the owner's new rental properties.
They can easily scale it up or down depending on how other projects/priorities are going and how many people don't have tasks to do. All of the deadlines and KPIs are internal and they don't expose themselves to lawsuits or financial penalties when they have to delay something.
In the case of spacex, it's even more beneficial because they need to launch rockets anyway for testing. Sending them to space empty is a wasted opportunity.
Starlink has massive DoD potential, like it or not. Also could be big for banking. Their client facing aspect of it will eventually just be piggybacking off of those two industries.
There are other billionaires out there doing good things, without needing to have a weekly news scandal:
Bill gates foundation has made tremendous progress with healthcare in developing countries. He’s probably made as much progress that can made in these countries as the walls he’s hitting seem to be corrupt/incompetent governments rather and money or technical.
Mark Cuban’s cost plus drugs company is making a life changing difference for Americans paying a lot per month in medicine, often saving their customers hundreds of dollars per month, and committed to expanding their selection of generic medicines.
"The way employees were treated was beyond disgraceful."
Sorry I may have missed this in the article–was it something beyond being laid off? Being laid off sucks (it's happened to me) but it's a normal part of business operations.
They are treated like disposable trash, tossed into the wind by a capricious ultra-rich jerk who bought the company on a whim. The consequences of that poorly thought out “decision” meant the purchase had to be a leveraged buyout which necessitated heavy cost cutting.
How is this not disgraceful? This not “normal business operations”, this is peoples lives being torn apart while the ultra rich play games with their livelihoods.
It goes both ways. Employees get to quit at a moments notice, leaving the company scrambling to find a replacement at potentially great costs. The internet is replete with stories of employees quitting, leaving their companies in shambles trying to figure out how to fill the void. I choose to care about my employer and my employer chooses to care about me. I could make a lot more money at a company that does not care, but I value that relationship more than money. Everyone should have the choice.
Most employees have to work in order to make an income. To assume that it's at all common for employees to just jump ship and leave a mess behind is inaccurate
> leaving the company scrambling to find a replacement at potentially great costs
And to this point, most employees are redundant. Other employees can pick up the slack. A well managed organization usually doesn't let the bus factor get too high. And if an org isn't well managed, it's not fair to blame employees for wanting to leave
> I choose to care about my employer and my employer chooses to care about me. I could make a lot more money at a company that does not care, but I value that relationship more than money. Everyone should have the choice.
I think this is closer to the mark. Employment is first a legal agreement, but also a social agreement. And this is the social agreement that Musk is destroying through his game of chicken with Twitter. He doesn't get a pass because "it goes both ways"
> And this is the social agreement that Musk is destroying through his game of chicken with Twitter. He doesn't get a pass because "it goes both ways"
It is a choice that is going to cost his company money. Talented potential employees are going to be well aware of the potential to be fired without a second thought(or severance) on the whim of Elon from now on. Twitter will have to increase compensation or settle for less talented individuals to balance that potential. That is where he does not "get a pass".
I agree of course from a human social standpoint that it would be moral and appropriate to give as much notice and severance as possible. However, there are many factors that come into play when making decisions of this nature. I do not know the full compensation package of the employees(were they already overcompensated?) or the total financial status of the company. The company could in theory be on the brink of failure. If Elon gave the fired employees a sweet parting deal and the company subsequently goes broke, leading to even more layoffs that would be terrible for the remaining employees. Furthermore, what of the employees that have to be fired or never hired in order to compensate the employees that are already leaving? I wonder how the vote would go from the employees if a company proposed the following:
"Would you rather we fire without severance pay 100 employees tomorrow or fire 150 with severance pay next month?" That's essentially the question that happens in management when a layoff is happening. Sadly many people fail to see that 50 jobs were saved in the first scenario when they read headlines about layoffs.
Either way we think, the complexities of human interactions in the markets and business is fascinating!
> "Would you rather we fire without severance pay 100 employees tomorrow or fire 150 with severance pay next month?"
that assumes management is acting in good faith towards the employees, more often than not that decision is tilted towards shareholders ie.. if they think they can cut 150 employees and make it work then it just becomes a choice between cutting 150 employees with or without severance as soon as possible. the amount of severence is essentially decided by local laws and prevailing standards but mind you the game is mostly give as little as needed.
How is it disgraceful to lay off a rich tech worker who isn't needed in the company anymore and can add more value elsewhere in the economy? This is a big part of economic prosperity that we all enjoy. Sometimes people need to get fired. It sucks, but if everyone was in a jobs protection racket, that would suck much much more.
I was one of those suckers though I kept it mostly to myself (& dont own tesla stock or a tesla). I still do feel Musk's contribution in accelerating EV adoption is invaluable and help markets get over a 'internal combustion local minima'. Also he didn't have to use his pile of money to land rockets and make space launch cheap so I give him credit for that. BUT thats where it ends for me, IMO we need a barely winning, underdog Elon much more than this flamboyant, impulsive, A*h0le billioniare.
what I worry about now is that musk fanbois are willing to bend the rules (in peacetime not covid panic or early days of EVs) for him will set a horrible pressident for workers in general.
