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Comment by kerblang | Hacker News Reader

One of the demands from the letter:

    > Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently.

That's exactly the problem with companies that like to brag about their "we-don't-allow-jerks-here" culture: It's arbitrary. If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.

Given as much, if this is really about Mr Musk's political endorsements, folks need to get over it. But inasmuch as he embraces dishonesty (one example: the "pedo" incident from way back) then I'd agree that the company should discipline him.

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> If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.

I dunno, jerk is arbitrarily defined by society. There’s no objective way to define it - which is why most companies that do end up on “whatever behavior makes us the most money”, ie acquiescing to power.

I’d go further, a lot of people obsessed with “facts” and “honest” is a recipe for jerks. “I’m just being honest” is a common justification for being a jerk. A no-jerks culture is one where you know how to pick your battles and where you can let other people be wrong when it keeps the peace and doesn’t actually matter.

> If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.

Are you speaking from experience? As a consultant, I occasionally run into companies that have an asshole problem (it’s pretty rare, fortunately), and your comment seems like wishful thinking to the point of naivety. In fact, overly blunt and “honest” communication is one of the ways assholes express themselves.

The other thing about assholes in companies is that they’ve made themselves indispensable—often raising themselves up by pushing the people around them down—because the ones who don’t, don’t survive.

For every company I’ve been in that had an asshole problem, management was aware that they had an asshole problem, but felt they couldn’t resolve it because the asshole was a “star performer.” (They weren’t really. Overall performance typically increases when they leave, because previously-suppressed people are now able to step up and grow.)

Objectivity, honesty, and facts do nothing to fix this problem, except in a fantasy world where everything is measured and the impact of people’s actions is perfectly visible. That world doesn’t exist.

Yes, from 30 years of professional experience in fact; in federal govt, state govt, startups, megacorps and then some.

If you must insist that objectivity & facts are a fantasy world, and that people should be attacked for being honest, then there is nothing anyone can do to help you.

> If you must insist that objectivity & facts are a fantasy world, and that people should be attacked for being honest, then there is nothing anyone can do to help you.

That’s not what I said.

I’d ask for you to elaborate on how you’ve seen assholes successfully dealt with, in your 30 years of experience, but you’re coming across as being more interested in “winning” than having a conversation in good faith. (Ironically, I don’t trust your response to be objective and honest.)

My experience is that the more you try to spell these things out, the more scope you give for bad actors to engage in language lawyering and make the problem worse.

Therefore as an employee I prefer these things to be vague and arbitrary, as long as I have some trust in the people making the decisions.

Of course in time they become formalized and problematic. Which is one of the disadvantages of working at a big company.

>If you focus on creating a culture of objectivity, facts and honesty, you'll solve most of your jerk problems without having to figure out what "jerk" means.

And this is how you get the modern Google, where there is lots of nepotism, politics, and a shift from being a company that makes cool innovative shit to one that hires AI "ethics" "engineers" that lose their marbles.

When people say "culture of objectivity, facts and honesty", what they really mean is "ability to inject my moral code into any conversation and have it be heard and accepted". In a company as high strung as Space X, there is absolutely no place for that.

Isn't a "no asshole" policy better than a "define all forms of unacceptable behavior" policy, so long as you have confidence in leadership? And if you don't have confidence, you should leave regardless.

How can you even define all forms of unacceptable behavior? If someone doesn't put "pooping on coworkers desk" in the document, does that mean I won't be punished for it now?

Pulling out one’s dick uninvited is fairly easy to classify as “jerk behavior”, or you know, “sexual harassment”, or you know, “criminal”.

It doesn't help that the CEO on Twitter has multiple times presented the exact behavior mentioned.

Well I'd like to see examples of the dishonest tweets you're talking about... But that leads into a more important issue: These employees insisted that Musk's personal Twitter account is his de facto business Twitter account. Confusing this business/personal boundary is part of the problem. I don't think it's fair for them to say, "You're a public figure, so you're not allowed to have a personal life," but perhaps Mr Musk does need to clarify his boundaries.

My comment is a response to this quote:

> Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s “no-asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies and enforce them consistently.

I wasn't keying in on a word "dishonest" (though I believe he knows exactly what he's doing with his crypto/dogecoin musings). I was keying in on "no-asshole" which while subjective, started with tweets like his famous "pedo" comment surrounding the youth soccer team stuck in a cave during floodwater.

> Musk's personal Twitter account

If your tweets impact the market substantially and the majority of your wealth is tied to those stocks, it cannot be considered a personal account. At best a hybrid account of some kind.

Being a public figure is hard, and you lose privileges. Lets not act naive and pretend this is not a well understood phenomenon.

One man's jerk is another man's shitposter.

> But inasmuch as he embraces dishonesty (one example: the "pedo" incident from way back)

That wasn't dishonesty, he genuinely thought the guy was a pedo (the con artist he hired to investigate also (falsely) reafirmed this).

But he utterly & completely failed at objectivity.

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