Accustomed to controversies on Twitter with regular virulent, sometimes cryptic, sometimes insulting messages, the boss of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk annoys, including his employees. But you don’t openly criticize your boss. Several SpaceX employees paid the costs and were simply fired. According to the website The Verge, a small group of employees of the space exploration company were preparing an open letter in which these employees criticized the behavior of Elon Musk in the public sphere, as well as recent accusations of sexual harassment to against him, as ” a frequent source of distraction and shame for us “.
” As boss and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX – every tweet he sends is seen as a de facto public statement coming from the company, especially in recent weeks. “, was it written in this letter, which was to be given to the president of SpaceX.
The rebellious employees notably called on the company to ” publicly condemn » the way of tweeting of the sulphurous and extremely wealthy boss of Tesla and SpaceX.
“Disproportionate activism”
But we do not openly criticize Elon Musk in this way. Especially since the authors of this letter had sent this letter to all their colleagues asking for their possible signature and their participation in a survey. Some felt uncomfortable and intimidated and/or angry because the letter urged them to sign something that did not reflect their opinion or because the letter interfered with their ability to concentrate on their work “, according to an email from Gwynne Shotwell, director of operations of the space exploration company, sent Thursday at the end of the day to all staff. Gold, ” we have too much essential work to do and don’t need this kind of over-the-top activism “. After conducting an investigation, the company therefore ” dismissed a number of employees involved “Says the manager, without specifying how much.
The richest man in the world does not only annoy employees of SpaceX, his space exploration company. On Thursday, the billionaire boss of Tesla and SpaceX, who was meeting Twitter employees for the first time, did not reassure them: nor about the economic model he intends to put in place for the social network in order to make him earn more 700 million additional users, nor on his political ulterior motives.
While the multi-billionaire businessman was nearby two weeks ago, to cancel its takeover of Twitter, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX spoke for the first time to employees of the social network, Thursday, June 16. Without however succeeding in reassuring them about his intentions, when he announced in April that it wanted to buy the social network.
Claimed Libertarian
The character is sulphurous. A claimed libertarian – even anarchist for some observers -, the entrepreneur is a fervent militant of total freedom of expression, that is to say subject to moderation as little as possible. Elon Musk’s conception of freedom of expression is therefore close to the libertarians of Silicon Valley – like Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, who left at the end of 2021 – and above all, in the United States, to Donald Trump and of the Republican Party’s most right-wing aide. It is therefore far from being politically neutral or moderate, contrary to the assertions of Elon Musk.
In tweets, old and recent, the billionaire does not hide his closeness to the Republican Party and criticizes “leftwhich he regularly qualifies as extremist and dangerous, thus taking up the arguments of the Republicans most to the right of the American political spectrum. As recently as Wednesday, he tweeted his support for Florida’s ultra-conservative Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 presidential election. His lack of neutrality obviously raises questions about his intentions regarding Twitter’s future role in the debate. public, especially a few months before the American midterm elections.
(With AFP)