At SpaceX, Elon Musk’s Own Brand of Cancel Culture Is Thriving
When employees asked Musk to abide by his own policies, he had them fired, according to their lawsuit. Now he has regulators in retreat, too.
At SpaceX, sexual harassment became a joke a long time ago. Some years back, employees at the company holiday party were treated to a 10-minute parody video, one of those eye-rolling exercises where your bosses awkwardly try to land a few punch lines. Believe it or not, this particular video has its moments. Astronauts whose lives are riding on a SpaceX rocket might not be thrilled with the gags about the company’s engineers being young or stupid—at one point, little kids arrive to lecture the staff, who are depicted trying to solve every engineering problem by hitting things with hammers—but some bits land on the right side of dad joke.
The video’s sourest note plays a few minutes in, when a narrator chides a staffer who’s just grabbed her colleague Brian Bjelde’s butt. “We have a very strict sexual-harassment policy,” the voiceover intones, “and you’ve got to get it right.” Cut to the same woman practicing her harassment technique on Bjelde, who’s now SpaceX’s vice president for human resources. While he faces an office wall, hands over his head, she spanks him several more times, and another woman helps her refine her form, like a golfer. The eventual punch line is a freeze-frame of her hand on Bjelde’s bum accompanied by a chime and a green check mark, indicating that her harassment now meets with company approval.