31 ms·
SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce
- Rebelgecko 8y agoSounds like 90% of their employees will be working an extra 10% more hours per week
- amelius 8y agoNo, they'll keep firing people until there's only one guy left who's sole job it is to push a button to initiate a rocket-launch.
- bsmitty5000 8y agoTaken straight from the ULA playbook!
- Rebelgecko 8y agoFrom what I've heard from the SpaceX and ULA people I know (although there may be some sample bias because most of the SpaceX people I know quit due to the hours), that's not really the case. ULA is more of a 9-5 company, especially for union folks, whereas SpaceX is more of a 60-80 hours/week kind of place.
- bsmitty5000 8y agothat's true, but during & after their layoffs a couple years back they imposed a 'not mandatory but strongly encouraged' 20% overtime.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- seppin 8y agoand 5% of them will quit in the next 2 months
- decebalus1 8y agoThat's usually what happens basically everywhere. I 'survived' multiple rounds of layoffs and they always touch stuff that's deemed 'unnecessary' but needs to be kept alive and thus adding to the workload of already overworked employees.
- throwaway4DFe5 8y agoi've done a lot of contract work for spacex. imo i think part of the reason they work so much is because they have no formal methods group. everyone seems to solve similar problems in slightly different ways instead of having a vetted and documented 'right' way to approach certain things. i've literally been paid to write code that does the same thing for different groups in slightly different ways. having done a lot of aerospace contracting, this is atypical from what i've seen elsewhere. my point is that if they formed a methods group to formalize and standardize across the entire org they might be fine with a 10% cut if they're not duplicating efforts all over the place.
- tomp 8y agoCan you comment on this from the perspective of how the method works, as in the results it produces and why, as opposed to whether it's standard/common or not? To me, SpaceX is remarkable because they've done what the rest of the world failed to do for 20 years. That's of course a combination of factors - vision, drive, start-up mentality - but are their actual processes/development methods also in any way better than in traditional space companies?
- erikpukinskis 8y agoEmail elon@spacex.com and suggest it.
- buchanan 8y agoAppreciate if you can provide an anecdata: those you’ve worked with should have no problems landing another job? Just trying to get a feel of whether this will be a minor or major stress event for those fired.
- rabbitonrails 8y agoOr 10% of their employees were doing nothing.
- bredren 8y agoIt is a good thing SpaceX has kept private. This is a category that does not seem like the company would be better off public.
- Others 8y agoIs this a bad sign for SpaceX? Is ‘getting leaner’ why they’re really doing this?
- aesopsfable 8y agoit definitely feels like a bad (possibly financial) sign when it is about laying off some percent of workforce vs closing down a division...
- x2f10 8y agoNot that this necessarily disputes what you're alluding to, but this is not unusual for Elon: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-to-layoff-up-to-9-of-its-employees-2018-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-to-layoff-up-to-9-of-i...
- adventured 8y agoIt's because projections for large launch demand are softer for the next few years than had previously been expected. It was thought that that weakness would give way and demand would perk back up. This layoff is happening because that's no longer expected to happen and they're not going to need the staff to match a much greater launch rate. What does it mean? It more or less officially confirms that Starlink is the only way they can finance the plans for Mars and BFR. There isn't going to be a huge uptick in launches in the coming years, such that that will be enough to dent their capital requirements. Musk has been attempting to finance some of SpaceX's capital demands with debt recently to avoid further diluting his stake, because it risks pushing him below a controlling interest. It's very questionable whether he'll be able to hold the line on that if the launch rate is going to remain fairly stagnant versus 2018.
- Robotbeat 8y agoI suspect that Starlink is, in fact, a significant CAUSE of the softening of GTO launch demand. All this LEO megaconstellations will be providing many of the same services as these long-lived, expensive geosynchronous birds, so the business case for them becomes much less certain. If Starlink, OneWeb, etc were cancelled tomorrow, it's likely GTO launch demand would pick back up significantly. Starlink is both the cause of and solution to this problem.
- mpg33 8y agoHad no idea they had 6000 employees..
- arthurcolle 8y agoThe article cites "at least 7,000" actually.
- sabertoothed 8y agoYou sure?
- arthurcolle 8y agoLiterally from the article: > The company employed at least 7,000 people in late 2017 when COO Gwynne Shotwell last gave a number — which means around 700 will lose their jobs.
- sdinsn 8y agoI don't know what article you are reading, but that line isn't in it. This one is though: > SpaceX, citing a need to get “leaner,” said Friday it will lay off more than 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.
- arthurcolle 8y agoMy mistake. I somehow had another article on the same topic open, from TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off-hundreds-to-become-a-leaner-company/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off-hundre...
- jiveturkey 8y agoIt currently says: > SpaceX, citing a need to get “leaner,” said Friday it will lay off more than 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees. And no further mention of number of employees. Perhaps a previous edit had a typo.
- whatshisface 8y ago10% is a big fraction. How often do large, stable companies execute a layoff like that? Sometimes layoffs can be not so bad, for example when that's the company's way of clearing off the managers' firing wishlist without incurring legal trouble. However at 10% of the workforce, this may be a change of direction away from R&D and towards sitting on the falcon 9 and launching to LEO.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- inferiorhuman 8y agoIt's a big fraction but it's not necessarily unheard of. For example Autodesk laid off about 13% of its workforce at the end of 2017. Additionally, in California you've got to give plenty of advance notice and as a result the state tracks mass layoffs[1]. 1: https://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN.htm#ListingofWARNNotices https://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WAR...
- sova 8y agoThanks very much for the link. They only show how many layoffs, and not percentage of workforce. Still, good data.
- inferiorhuman 8y agoAh, this only tracks data for layoffs in California and the the ratio isn't necessarily very useful. OTOH it's a good list of companies engaging in mass layoffs that could be used to look for nationwide trends.
- stupidcar 8y agoMaybe, maybe not. Consider it in terms of your own workplace: if you worked on a team of 10, and one person got laid off, would that seem so huge? I think the question is whether this round of layoffs is in response to an acute cash flow issue or just part of long-term financial prudency. They fact that they waited until after Christmas and are providing 8 weeks of pay and benefits makes me hopeful that it's the latter. Also, given that Falcon 9 is now essentially "done", I expect there probably is a fair bit of internal capacity that's accumulated during its development which can be cut. For example, SpaceX is famous for building a lot of components in house, but perhaps they'll move more to using subcontractors for Falcon 9 parts. That might free up money to spend on R&D. The challenge will be to become leaner and save money in the core launch business without compromising standards. It'll only take a couple of accidents to trash their reputation.
- technotony 8y agoSome think you should do this annually. "Back when he was running GE, Jack Welch famously argued that leaders should fire the bottom 10 percent of their workforce each year, as part of an orderly continuous improvement process." https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-employees-every-year.html https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-...
- cbanek 8y agoAh the glory of the stack ranking. Microsoft did this as well, and it was much celebrated when they stopped, as the stack ranking had a lot of effects that had nothing to do with performance (like coworkers stonewalling each other, or infighting, and what do you do with an org of rockstars).
- sombremesa 8y agoNot to mention that eventually you end up firing some really smart people and find worse replacements (not in the least due to shitty reputation - but also because of regression to the mean and because people are biased towards hiring worse than themselves in this regime). Definitely so at 10% p.a. if you're in a remotely niche industry.
- jpatokal 8y agoApparently some managers used to hire sacrificial lambs with the express purpose of culling them to spare the rest of the team.
- duaoebg 8y agoCan confirm
- genericone 8y agoWere the sacrificial lambs at least told in secret that they were 'hired in order to be laid off' at the next round? I hope they were not just given rote tasks, but allowed to explore their skills while they are in limbo so that they can train-up or look for jobs... Nah that's just wishful thinking.
- niciliketo 8y agoSorry for the people that are affected. Space X has achieved some incredible things. Redundancy can give you the freedom to try something new.
- awake 8y agoThey've proven that they can make reusable rocket. In the early days they had around 6 launches per year requiring six separate rockets. Now they're hitting 20-25 launches per year and can carry an even larger payload on each launch. But they claim to be able to fly each rocket ten times before needing to make a new one. So you're going from 6 new rockets per year to 2 new rockets per year. Also rockets are not like your software programs that get rewritten every time a manager feels like it. You stick with what works. I think this is entirely expected.
- ajmurmann 8y agoWhile everything you say is true they are also building the BFR. Maybe that's different staff though?
- whatshisface 8y ago>So you're going from 6 new rockets per year to 2 new rockets per year. Also rockets are not like your software programs that get rewritten every time a manager feels like it. You stick with what works. Last year, SpaceX had big plans for new rocket designs, a satellite constellation, and more. Unlike a ravioli canning plant, SpaceX has an option other than cutting down to maintnence staff once cash flow positive. If the worst possible interpretation of this news turns out to be true, they will end up managed like a ravioli canning plant and the hockey stick growth projections will go out the window.
- jcims 8y agoWhy the doom and gloom posts making rather wild assumptions about who is getting laid off or what it signals?
- awake 8y agoUnless they're cutting the satellite constellation I think this fits in with what people expected for SpaceX's growth. The problem is even as costs for rocket launches go down we aren't seeking hockey stick growth in the demand for rocket launches. The number of rocket launches per year has remained steady since 2015. SpaceX is getting an increasing number of those launches but even if they got all of them they would only have 40 launches. I'm not sure what else they've publicly advertised which would assume hockey stick growth.
- w-m 8y agoOh, the LA Times seem to finally have taken down their GDPR wall. This is the first article on their domain that I’m able to read since last May, from Europe.
- ChrisSD 8y agoI always assumed they were just making a point. I'm not sure what that point was but I guess they consider it made.
- phendrenad2 8y agoThey probably realized that they'll still get GDPR requests from EU citizens living abroad, so the block was fairly pointless.
- azernik 8y agoThis is a false reading of GDPR - it applies only when either the person or the business involved is physically in the EU, not on the citizenship of the person involved. See Article 3: Territorial Scope (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/). Useful terms: "data subject" is a natural person to whom the data relates, "processor" refers to an entity that works with the data, "controller" to an entity that "owns" the data. e.g. you would be a data subject, the LA Times would be the controller, and Google Analytics would be a data processor. ================================== 1. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not. 2. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union. 3. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law.
- Deimorz 8y agoAccording to some comments from employees, the company had an all-hands meeting where everyone was sent home and told to check their email over the weekend to find out if they're being laid off or not: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_reduce_its_workforce_by_10_percent/edute2h/?context=2 https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_...
- viraptor 8y agoWhatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel The right way to lay off varies culture to culture. I worked on a trading desk. 1:1 personal lay-offs followed by security cleaning out your desk seemed unnecessarily cruel. An e-mail out of hours—and an offer to schedule a phone call—seemed far more gentle. In other cultures, the human touch matters. Given SpaceX’s results-oriented culture, their approach seems appropriate. The goal was to prevent those not getting laid off from seeking new jobs while keeping those being laid off from panicking those staying. Letting everyone go home, finish their after-work schenanigans, and then—before recruiters have a chance to nip—deliver the news is a good balance for the relevant parameters.
- jcroll 8y agowhat is the less cruel way to lay off 10% of your workforce
- viraptor 8y agoTell the affected ones immediately. Don't tell the other 90% that they're potentially getting fired tomorrow. Treat people with respect and be transparent when you hold power over them.
- cyberferret 8y ago
- kepano 8y agoIf you are affected by the layoffs in Los Angeles, working in software engineering (esp. on ERP and internal tools), UI/UX, or supply chain — my company, Lumi is hiring https://www.lumi.com/jobs https://www.lumi.com/jobs
- dclowd9901 8y agoPretty impressive. You guys are like Zendesk for shipping.
- kevinlou 8y agoCan confirm, Lumi is an awesome company run by solid founders.
- abcd_f 8y agoYou are not on the list - https://www.lumi.com/team https://www.lumi.com/team
- swampthinker 8y agoDo you guys have any plans for magnetic closure boxes by chance?
- kepano 8y agoYes, we have factories in our network that manufacture them if you meet the Growth plan or above. Take a look at lumi.com/plans
- kemitchell 8y agoI'm a random lawyer who'd never heard of Lumi, and I support this message. Don't @ me.
- TimesOldRoman 8y agoChecking in. Spent 6 years at X and this sounds interesting.
- joecool1029 8y agoTo get around paywall: https://outline.com/Ewv9xM https://outline.com/Ewv9xM
- vonseel 8y agoShould be top comment!!!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dorkwood 8y agoHow many more 10% layoffs until they’re down to just 1 employee?
- pulkitanand 8y agoMathematically, never. :)
- choonway 8y agomaybe this has something to do with abandoning carbon fibre / heat resistant tiles with stainless steel?
- killjoywashere 8y agoFor comparison, DoD is reducing its medical workforce for 13%, 17,000 jobs. Makes total sense to me. I only work 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, so really, less than half-time. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/01/10/more-17000-uniformed-medical-jobs-eyed-elimination.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/01/10/more-17000-un...
- dmichulke 8y agoThat's because the DoD is probably the most cash-strapped ministry of all ministries of all nations /s
- viraptor 8y ago> We had an all hands meeting and were told to go home and wait for an email that basically says we stay or go. (from reddit post) I'm surprised about that idea. At that size I expected them to follow "your account is locked immediately before you're told" policy. Guaranteeing people have access to company emails over the weekend and are told they're fired, sounds like a bad idea for IT to deal with.
- rhizome 8y agoMaybe it's doing double duty to sniff out exfiltrators.
- Proven 8y agoToo bad the remaining 90% will continue to live off the US taxpayer and enjoy government largesse for the foreseeable future.
- cvakang 8y agoIMHO, If I could guess announcing it all employees tells that you all are expendable. If you are doing that is not important for the company. You could be sent home forever. Gives a sense to everyone to pull up their shocks. Two days to think about your short commings
- rabbitonrails 8y agoThis should be great for the share price. No joke -- cut the fat.
- swampthinker 8y agoThis isn't the first time SpaceX has done a 10% layoff round [1]. It seems like they do this at key inflection points where they're relatively sure they can make the next tech leap, and need to retool their workforce. [1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35254.0 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35254.0
- mellow-lake-day 8y agoTesla also had one last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17295725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17295725
- jameslk 8y agoSpaceX is not a tech company. Aerospace/defense contractor companies have frequent layoffs. Usually this occurs when one of these companies don't win a contract or new regulations cut back on defense/space programs.
- reasonablemann 8y agoReminiscent of Goldman's annual 'culling' https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+staf+culling https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+staf+culling
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- datahipster 8y agoIf you're affected by this and would love to work on a dedicated team developing spacecraft orbit simulation software, my company is hiring. Please send me an e-mail at stefan.novak@ai-solutions.com.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 33a 8y agoI'm just glad they did this before all those people were on mars.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- roedog 8y agoThe SoCal aerospace job market is hot right now. The driver is multiple large program starts at multiple contractors who are competing for people. This should make it possible for everyone to land on their feet. (I've reached out to my former colleagues who left to join Space X) What's odd is why SpaceX is cutting staff with the new development underway on the larger rockets and the satellite business. I'm curious about how they're going to increase development while cutting staff. The big aero firms have room for improvement on productivity. But SpaceX has been lean from the start. I wonder how they'll get more out of an already highly productive team. That'd be something to learn from.
- kemitchell 8y ago> I've reached out to my former colleagues who left to join Space X. Good on ya.
- Robotbeat 8y agoSpaceX has like 7000 employees, about twice as many as ULA (their domestic competitor). There are reasons why (Dragon, BFR, Starlink, in-house engines, higher flightrate, more in-house everything), but that's a lot of people. What I hope is we'll see new startups form out of these folk. What I'd like to see is an ESOP/co-op newspace company bent on similar goals. A lot of these employees have vested stock (or likely will vest soon) that might help capitalize such an effort.
- roedog 8y agoWell, Space X costs less than half than a ULA launch. I suspect that ULA spends that additional money on large sub-contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for the Delta and Atlas vehicles. This makes me think that when we add up the employees on the subcontracts the space X staffing number will be much more impressive in it's leanness. I hope they all join my company, we've got a lot of work they would find interesting. With the retirement rate increasing it's the time to change things for the better. I want their experience at Space X on how to do things faster and better. But perhaps that's wishful thinking...
- TimesOldRoman 8y agoChecking in. I'll be back with a refreshed resume in the morning.
- antpls 8y agoI don't understand how anyone in the world accept such social contract of being laid off anytime for arbitrary reasons. If you create a company, you take care of it and all of its members. If you have to cut expenses because the company needs to be "leaner" then you cut the salaries starting from the top executives. Eventually you fire management, because the state of the company is in part the result of their decisions in the long-run. Will the 10% of the employees be the ones who are already in the less comfortable financial and social situation in their private life ?
- vasco 8y agoWhat about when people get comfortable and stop performing at initial levels. Or if you realize you have too much middle management?
- _ph_ 8y agoIf single employees fail to perform, they should eventually be let go - idealy after given the opportunity to fix their performance. The cancellation of a major project also might make a whole department obsolete. But a blanket lay-off of 10% of the work force for a company which claims to be healthy, that is quite employee-unfriendly.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- skrebbel 8y agoYeah, comfortable employees, we shouldn't have that. At my company I ensure that everyone is always borderline burned out!
- unethical_ban 8y agoI think you're missing the point, with or without intention. "Comfortable" doesn't mean that they have a nice house and are happy with their life at work. Comfortable in this context means they no longer have any concern about their own job performance, knowing they have a "sure thing" and underperform in their duties.
- moajday 8y agoDownsizing is a norm. All the 10% will find 100% better jobs. Good luck!
- azatris 8y agoIf what SpaceX is doing aligns with my values very well, but I live in Europe as a software engineer, how could I help the goals of this private company? Is it even possible?
- bsaul 8y agoSince there seems to be various personal preferences on the best way to fire people i wonder if any companies ask « if we should fire you, how would you like it to be done ? » at hiring time.
- joelthelion 8y agoTo me the main question is, can they maintain a high level of quality while laying off people? I've seen this first hand in my own company since they started laying off people on a regular basis. People try hard to keep things working, but quality inevitably degrades over time. In most areas, it's not necessarily obvious. In rocket engineering, on the other hand...
- Reason077 8y agoTesla did roughly the same thing in June 2018. Then went on to have a blockbuster quarter in Q4. https://electrek.co/2018/06/12/tesla-layoffs-workforce-restructure/ https://electrek.co/2018/06/12/tesla-layoffs-workforce-restr...
- ginko 8y agoNot sure if this is still the case but didn't SpaceX make a point to stick to trade secrets instead of patents[1] for fear of Chinese rocket agencies copying them anyways? If they lay off 10% of their workforce, how do they ensure that their trade secrets are kept safe? Lay off only low-risk employees? NDAs? It was my understanding that the degree to which those can be enforced in California is limited. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-elon-musks-spacex-protected-without-patents-cm231445 https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-elon-musks-spacex-protecte...
- late2part 8y agoIn general, in USA and California, NDAs are extremely enforceable.
- Fuckyourself 8y agoAlso, i assume with a workforce of 7K not every single one of them is actually working with classified information every day.
- wcoenen 8y agoIf those employees go to China with trade secrets, they might be violating ITAR. ITAR is enforced with big fines and prison time.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoNot easy to catch though.
- gruez 8y agoso is espionage and treason
- dogma1138 8y agoDefine easy anyone who works on such technologies is on some FBI database somewhere and likely more than just one. SpaceX doesn’t hire non-US citizens due to how hard it is to get the security clearance needed for them if they try to go to China they will likely get caught maybe not everyone, but enough to prevent any real knowledge transfer and more importantly the first one that will get caught is going to be made an example for the rest.
- jpgvm 8y agoUnpopular opinion but I'm a fan of this. In the Tesla case they mostly cut deadweight from the Solarcity acquisition and the resultant company has performed better for it. If you don't have a firing heavy culture sometimes this is the only reasonable way to lean teams up again and ensure your best team members are not dragged down by mediocrity.
- syntaxing 8y agoIt's not unsual to layoff 10% of your workforce in hardware companies but it is unusual for a "growing" company. To put in perspective Pratt and Whitney laid off about 10-15% a couple years ago when they were in between the phasing out of the old engine and ramping up the new engine. Sometimes companies are unlucky because there is a drought where the demand for the new stuff is lower than the demand of old stuff but you have to phase it out to maintain product lifecycles for sustainable growth.
- AdrianB1 8y agoIt is normal to layoff about 5% per year, you trim the one in the 20 that is the weakest and it has positive, not negative effects. Going to 10% is a bit stretch, but still workable. In the last companies I worked, if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.
- njarboe 8y agoProbably would depend on who was in the 20% who left. Having the people in the management structure select the correct people to fire is probably not that common. Especially in big, old companies where management has evolved over a long time to select for people who don't get fired instead of people who work well together and do a good job.
- ecshafer 8y ago5% is insane, I would never work for a company that regularly laid off that many people. Firing under performers is one thing, but to systematically clear house is toxic. How are you supposed to build a career if one of your coworkers/friends is canned every year, so everyone is wondering what year is theirs? So people overwork themselves to make sure it doesn't happen to them. You need to show your employees safety, so one bad project doesn't ruin their lives.
- rmdashrfstar 8y agoI think it's less about building a career and more about accomplishing the goals of the CEO and the company.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoMy gut says this is an aggressive Muskian decimation. 1) Maybe brought on themselves: 'hey, design/build the thing, then fire those who designed it' type thing, which definitely happens. It happens to companies in a crunch, or those who just put the outcome ahead of everything else. 2) A decimation: let's use this as an opportunity to drop anyone we feel is not cutting it - and teams that we created/hired we realize we don't want/need. 3) General organizational shakeup. 4) A true and real opex cutback ahead of anticipated future needs. The thing is - outside of human terms - it's a big cut but it might be highly rational. 'Pruning' I think is a essential aspect of any healthy organization, forcing entities to rethink, to shake them out of their settled positions, getting rid of organizational cruft. Of course, there are humans behind every decision which makes it quite fundamentally something else. But if you could imagine they were 'robots', as if to remove any issues of compassion and concern for externalized outcomes, and this were simply a simple dispassionate re-org ... then you can see where the economics might be pointing. We also don't know the terms of the layoff: maybe some of them are voluntary. Maybe the payouts are huge. Sometimes these things work out well for a lot of those involved, obviously it doesn't for others.
- aviv 8y agoYep, pruning is essential. It's the HR equivalent of code refactoring.
- taurath 8y agoPresumably, one doesn’t want to prune a spaceflight organization quite as aggressively if it jeopardizes mission safety... Could also be that they consider themselves “done” with major design phases of the heavy, while the people mover stuff is too far away to engage mid level designers with effectively?
- btrask 8y ago> imagine they were 'robots' No. Don't. Edit to add: I understand you were using this as a thought experiment. Sorry for knee-jerking. If you're employing people to do something robots can't, you need to understand that the way to treat them is also different. This goes double if your mission is to improve the world instead of outright capitalism.
- pokerwe1 8y agoSurprise just for you http://wishmindr.com/list/4dvh#.XDB3syS-FEo http://wishmindr.com/list/4dvh#.XDB3syS-FEo WA. +855978543082
- carlio 8y agoAlternative source for those without access to the LA Times. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/tech/spacex-layoffs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/tech/spacex-layoffs/index.htm... I'm still skeptical of Starlink but I hope this all works out.
- MarcysVonEylau 8y agoIt all makes sense when you look at basic facts. Rocket reuse became a normal occurance, probably earlier than the majority of the industry anticipated. Their competitive pricing took the market by storm, changing the equation of sending anything to space. There are less new payloads to launch in 2019, because it takes much longer to contract and build a satellite than to send it to space, and the market hasn't yet adapted to this new mechanic. Their need for manufacturing new boosters scaled down greatly because of reusability. You cannot reasign all engineers to other projects, some must go. On top of that SpaceX is moving to new risky projects like the Starship, and they need to cut any fat that poses risk to their long term plans. Lastly, as few pointed out, it's a great opportunity to get rid of underperforming employees and restructure the company.
- 7e 8y agoThe launch market is very small and it's always taken longer to build a satellite than to provision the launch vehicle. These layoffs are a direct result of SpaceX's recent failures to raise money.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoThe key I think is that the launch rate has increased, but the market has a years long delay due to build times. The result is that the existing supply of launchable satellites has been consumed, so fewer launches are available to pay the bills.
- icpmacdo 8y agoCan you link to the failure to raise money? I thought they just secured 500 million.
- azernik 8y ago$500M was the size of the offering; as of 3 January, they had only managed to raise $273M https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141219000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141219...
- hackbinary 8y agoSeems to me they have plenty of vacancies[1]. It seems to me that these announcements can just be smoke and mirrors. [1] https://www.spacex.com/careers/list https://www.spacex.com/careers/list
- NoblePublius 8y agoThis is what any good big company does every two or three years. Rank order. Dismiss bottom decile. Thank you, Jack Welch.
- GeorgeTirebiter 8y agoWhen you lay people off en-mass, that's a Management Error. I'm surprised nobody here has yet mentioned this fact yet. Laying off (firing) individuals; or, if a change in strategic direction, laying off entire groups -- that's business. But 'doing a Jack Welsh' -- that's Poor Management. I can only imagine that Bezos and Branson and ULA will be able to pick up some great employees. And as for 'cutting the low performers' -- in my many years in industry, I've only seen this happen once. Every other person was 'let go' due to 'political' reasons. My major point: This move signifies a colossal management fail. I'm looking at you, Elon.