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My 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
by sonnyblarney 8y ago
My 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.
- gdy 8y ago"If you're employing people to do something robots can't, you need to understand that the way to treat them is also different" And if you're employing people to do what robots can do, you can treat them as robots?
- gaius 8y agohey, design/build the thing, then fire those who designed it' type thing, which definitely happens That’s OK if you hire contractors and pay them premium contractors rates. It’s sleazy and underhanded to make people believe that job security is part of the “package” then bait-and-switch.