The biggest difference between the two companies isn’t technology. It isn’t strategy. It’s leadership and culture.
At SpaceX, employees are working toward a clear mission. People know the goal, understand the direction, and believe they’re building something important. Here, the only mission we’re working on is RTO and presence reports.
At AT&T, many employees increasingly feel like they’re being blamed for problems they didn’t create.
One of the most common traits of failing leadership is scapegoating. When results disappoint, instead of asking whether the strategy is wrong, leaders look for someone else to blame. Employees become the problem. Feedback becomes the problem. Dissent becomes the problem.
That’s why the 8/1/25 email struck such a nerve and why everyone here is checked out. His message to the employee base was “You don’t matter”.
When employees raised concerns about morale, flexibility, retention, and RTO, the response wasn’t introspection. Employees were told “loyalty is dead” there “might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice.” Concerns were dismissed as “more outliers than we’d like.”
Many employees read that and saw a leader more interested in defending their bad decision than understanding why so many people opposed it.
Another hallmark of poor leadership is rigidity. Strong leaders adapt when the facts change. Weak leaders treat every challenge to their strategy as a challenge to their authority and it damages their ego. They double down, no matter how much evidence piles up around them that they made a mistake.
Then comes the most dangerous stage, isolation.
Because of the fear of retaliation for pushing back or telling the truth, leaders stop hearing bad news. Dissent gets dismissed. Feedback gets filtered. Executives surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. “Yes men”
A bubble forms, and Inside the bubble, everything is working.
Outside the bubble, morale is collapsing, talent is leaving, recruiting is harder, and competitors are pulling further ahead.
Employees aren’t asking for miracles. They’re asking for basic respect and leadership that listens, adapts, and accepts responsibility when something isn’t working.
Instead, many feel they’re being asked to sacrifice more, commute more, give up flexibility, and then accept blame when the outcomes don’t improve.
The most dangerous thing a CEO can do is become so convinced of his own correctness that he stops hearing what everyone else is telling him.
That’s the disconnect employees have been talking about all along and why another company will soon pass us by.