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At SpaceX, work was taken away from me in case I “might retire or die.”
- mlindner 4y agoThis is only one side of the story. Disgruntled employees often see things differently.
- nullfield 4y agoGod, if this was documented properly it’d be such a lawyer slam-dunk.
- darth_avocado 4y agoEven if it is, lawyers are expensive. $400-$800/hour expensive. The labor law isn’t strong enough and leaves out too many grey areas and even if it’s an open and shut case, the fines/ settlements are often too low to pursue. Unless you are rich and spiteful like…
- spoils19 4y agoLabor law in the US is actually one of the strongest and best in the world for workers It's why millions have come to the US, especially conservative states, to work and restart their life.
- inetknght 4y ago> Labor law in the US is actually one of the strongest and best in the world for workers The law itself might be one of the strongest and best in the world. Unfortunately it's very much Not Enforced Well.
- notfromhere 4y agoHave you ever worked in the United States? Because this comment is absolutely hilarious if you have. In the United States, you can be dismissed for any reason, with no recourse, and no obligation on part of the employer for compensation. You have no guaranteed benefits and hell, you aren't even entitled to vacation time. Unionization is scant and union busting is legal. Labor law enforcement is anemic at best. Especially in the southern, conservative states where labor laws and enforcement are even weaker than in the south.
- emkoemko 4y agoi find this hard to believe
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dboreham 4y agoI'm not sure about this specific case, but the government (Department of Labor) can take action against employers in relation to individual employees.
- nullfield 4y agoAnd, welllll… lol, that didn’t take long: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/30/spacex-age-discrimination-complaint-washington-state https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/30/spacex-age-d... https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/z93nuu/exengineer_files_age_discrimination_complaint https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/z93nuu/exengine...
- idlewords 4y agoJust be sure to hire a young lawyer who can see the case through.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jleyank 4y agoNot surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places. The results, unfortunately, seem secondary to the culture. Their call, their money - pay attention during interviews and how the companies perform. The sad thing is that everybody on the south side of this problem will cross over 30/35/40 and wonder what hit them.
- d23 4y ago> At SpaceX and now at Twitter, Musk requires employees to be “hardcore.” Contrary to stereotypes about older workers being less capable or unwilling to perform hard work, I was actually up for the challenge. My life has been spent working long days, nights, and weekends, putting in whatever effort was required to get the job done. My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore. Please read the article before commenting.
- jleyank 4y agoIf you refer to parent comment, I did read the article and saw what looked to me like ageism in practice. The quote you mention showed a willingness to sign up, yet it didn't ensure survival. What did I miss?
- d23 4y agoYou said: > Not surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places. This seemed to imply he was "turning off" after work or working a standard 40 hours instead of putting in extra hours.
- jleyank 4y agoNo, I was just including more people in the dead pile. Older folks, much of the time, have a wider range of interests that keep them from working...
- _qzu4 4y agoThis is a reminder to always figure out the game in an organization and play that game. Don't blindly assume that if you do a good job, you will be safe. You might not like politics, but politics is, unfortunately, a natural part of any organization.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y agoWhen in doubt, look at the flow of money
- d23 4y agoWhat politics would have been requisite to escape nepotism and age discrimination?
- viburnum 4y agoA union.
- xyzzyz 4y agoUnions are all about your position in the union and your tenure. They are discriminating by age through explicit design, and in favor of most powerful and least vulnerable actors on the job market.
- viburnum 4y agoIn America maybe but not so much elsewhere
- blululu 4y agoAge discrimination yes, but unions have a long history of establishing and protecting nepotism.
- pydry 4y agoI get the feeling reading this that it wasnt exclusively about age - there was probably an additional political component that happened behind his back. Maybe he didn't kiss the right ring or he inadvertently made someone powerful but incompetent look bad in a meeting or something.
- simple10 4y agoIt looks like John (author) hasn't yet found another gig after being pushed out of SpaceX. https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-johnson-0423/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-johnson-0423/ It'd be interesting to know what happens to people in his situation and where they end up. Maybe someone here can refer him to a good company.
- d23 4y agoWhat is your point?
- nnoitra 4y ago
- recursv_thnkng 4y agoHe was working 12+ hour days for 4 years straight and left in July. A couple months of unemployment is fine especially with such a niche profession. He might not even be looking.
- rsynnott 4y ago> in case I “might retire or die.” "Senior engineer wanted; must be immortal."
- PyWoody 4y agoRelevant KRAZAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSqexFg74F8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSqexFg74F8
- elischleifer 4y agoThis story is gross and not entirely surprising. It is unclear to me why anyone would stick around inside the other Musk co. @twitter that wasn't bound by H1B handcuffs. The upside in that company is really not there...at least at SpaceX you get to build the future.
- negamax 4y agoCould be the changing job market, Musk knows it. If this was the job market like a year or six months ago, Musk would had kept his mouth shut. Elon comes across extremely opportunistic, which is not surprising but he comes across opportunistic in a cruel way. Something that wider group of people should realize and take appropriate steps
- keneda7 4y agoCould you please elaborate a little more? Are you saying because of the flood of workers into the market Musk is able to act this way?
- negamax 4y agoI am saying job market is not as robust as it was a year or two ago. Feds tightening has beginning to affect well run companies and workers. There's talk about recession. If it was 2021, anyone from Twitter could have walked into Facebook and get a job
- keneda7 4y agoAh that makes complete sense. I never thought of it that way before but your logic follows. Musk sees what is going on and knows he can take advantage of it. Thank you for explaining.
- bcrosby95 4y agoThe problem they're going to run into is the best engineers have prospects elsewhere, regardless of the economy.
- flumpcakes 4y agoThis is disgusting behavior from SpaceX. It must be even worse for the majority of older people who are more likely to have well established families and "only" want to spend 40 hours of their lives a week working. The fact they had an expert working 10 hours a day 7 days a week apparently was not enough. They have to be in their twenties to get the real "techbro" badge. I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
- stuaxo 4y agoThe more we see of Musk and the culture in his companies, the worse it is.
- hermitcrab 4y ago"The higher a monkey climbs, the more of his arse you can see"
- jagged-chisel 4y agoAt some point it’s just a pixel in the distance. Still, watch for falling sh!t.
- genocidicbunny 4y agoWell, to put that another way -- at some point, the only thing you can see is the arse.
- pleb_nz 4y agoHe doesn't have keys and feet?
- kaiju0 4y agoThey are. The larger your reporting section the more important you are. Importance is described through resource allocation.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago> "yet I saw my work roles gradually transferred to younger engineers who fit the company’s “frat bro” mold." Oh, hell no. There is no room, whatsoever, for "frat bros" at a freaking rocket company. Edit: I am OK with young engineers in roles with oversight, but not with a "frat bro" culture. Also, I'm 21 years old, with no management experience, and even I know that's a horrible idea.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoNow you know why they're moving to South Padre.
- q1w2 4y agoThey are moving there because of the latitude.
- tiahura 4y agoThe average age of NASA engineers on Apollo 11 was 28 https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a4288/4318625/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a4288/4318625/ You could almost make the argument that as these engineers hit their 40's they began mailing it in. I wonder how Soviet engineer ages correlated to the the relative success of particular programs?
- d23 4y agoThank you for sharing. This is terrible. I'm already bracing myself for the apologism by people who didn't read the article. Edit -- case in point: > SpaceX is one one those sink or swim places filled with type A personalities. You need to be ‘useful’ > He should of been less concerned with his position and more of a team player. > This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations.
- nerdawson 4y agoI read the article and it's clear to me that he was mistreated. The last example you reference, however, is still true. > This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations. A company can't have so much knowledge critical to operations tied up in the mind of one individual. The "retire or die" comment was crass but it applies regardless of age. It's irresponsible to allow a situation to continue in which the departure of a single individual would completely derail a project for months.
- scarby2 4y agoTotally. I might die tomorrow, i'm 35. I might retire at the end of the week if my lottery ticket hits the jackpot. I might just leave the company.
- viburnum 4y agoThis stinks but there's not much one person can do about it. Workers need solidarity to protect themselves from this kind of abuse.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y agoGiven Musk's comparable age and erratic behavior, maybe someone ought to take work from him.
- bottlepalm 4y agoSpaceX is one one those sink or swim places filled with type A personalities. Teamwork is key, but also challenging if you’re not a people person. If you don’t know something, you need to dive in and learn it. If you know lots of things, you need to help others get up to speed. It doesn’t matter where in the organization they are. I have no doubt this guy could have been a force amplifier if he hadn’t been so territorial. And they are right, principle engineer is not a management track but a very high and respected title. He should of been less concerned with his position and more of a team player. Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to higher levels - that’s part of what a principal engineers does. This speaks volumes - “And as a result, I was having to mentor a roster of engineers who didn’t report to me and didn’t know what they didn’t know.” Maybe the guy came from a more traditional engineering company or something. It’s funny his title was pretty much already at the top. A principal that wants to do all the work themselves and not help others who are at the very bottom...
- d23 4y agoGross.
- JohnBooty 4y agoI feel as though you have some big-picture aspects correct, but you're missing out on small-picture concepts. Specifically, Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to higher levels - that’s part of what a principal engineers does. Yes. However: effective mentor/mentee relationships are absolutely not achieved by simply throwing unqualified and inexperienced mentees at a senior/principal engineer in a haphazard, unannounced way.
- bottlepalm 4y agoSatellites are being built, rockets are launching and the laser system is operational. Seems like they made it work, with or without the guy. Though I imagine it would of been a lot smoother if he had helped those engineers in their new roles. And yes you can build great relationships in a fast paced environment with very senior and very junior engineers thrown into the ring together.
- Animats 4y agoMaybe Musk is getting a little too old for his role. And he's spread too thin. And he has a drug history. Tesla stockholders might want to take a look at that.
- rsynnott 4y ago"Doesn't he look tired?"
- ted_dunning 4y agoAnd his judgement seems impaired lately. Should be monitored for stroke risk and be kept out of high-value decisions.
- MrRiddle 4y ago
- mabbo 4y agoDo we need some kind of industry certification for "this company isn't being run by psychopaths"? Wouldn't it be nice if you saw a job ad that said "Hey, we're 'Decent Employer' Level 1 Certified!" and you knew that meant: 95% of work weeks are under 45 hours; everyone gets at least 3 weeks vacation per year; Our hiring practices conform to standards to avoid age/gender/race/class biases; etc. How do I look at a company from the outside and know that they're not a frat-bro culture, so I can avoid even talking to their recruiters?
- ek750 4y agoBack when StackOverflow had job listings, they also had an optional Joel Score (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...) that employers could fill out. Too bad that's dead. But would be great to generalize and standardize across companies and industries. It'll never happen, but that's what you're looking for.
- rsynnott 4y agoFor very big companies, it's often well-documented. For smaller companies, kind of luck of the draw; unless you know someone who works there it's hard to find out too much, in general.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoI'm not sure what you mean by "frat-bro culture", but the overworking thing is generally pretty straightforward. If a company has any employees who talk about "seven days a week onsite... putting in 10-12 hours almost daily", it's a high-pressure overworking kind of company that's not going to give you much vacation time. SpaceX doesn't exactly keep this aspect a secret, and as the author says he was an enthusiastic participant in it. Discrimination is harder to avoid because it's not tremendously correlated with overworking or other observable qualities of a work environment. IBM is the epitome of a work-life balance company - didn't stop their executives from secretly plotting to get rid of the "dinobabies".
- mjmsmith 4y agoAvoid companies where the CEO has multiple families and doesn't spend time with any of them.
- black_13 4y ago
- snshn 4y agoI don't give a damn who dies and who retires, just get us to Mars.
- luch 4y agoThis may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations. There is a reason why the notion of "bus factor" exists and if you are senior enough, it is expected of you to mentor new recruits that ultimately will take your job. That being said, they way he has been treated is absolutely infuriating and probably illegal in numerous countries which are not the USA.
- dist1ll 4y agoTrue. Siloed knowledge is a liability.
- Arrath 4y agoCertainly, redundancy and spreading of responsibilities is a reasonable way to run important divisions like this. They way SpaceX went about this as outlined in TFA is absolutely not the way to do it. This guy had no input in the process at all, even from the outset or the hiring, and they didn't even report to him!
- jrnichols 4y agoThing is, this is the way that many companies go about it and they have done so for years. "Aging out" has been a huge problem in the Silicon Valley for decades, for example. This is probably only making any news because it's SpaceX.
- Arrath 4y agoThat seems like such a terrible way to do it, rife to breed resentment and malicious compliance, and let things fall through the cracks. When I was involved in a bus problem situation, management came to me and said they were concerned about my workload, the hours I was putting in, and the lack of redundancy my position. What followed was a 6-month process where I was heavily involved in each step, from scoping out the initial additions to the org chart, writing up job descriptions and expectations, application review and interviews, down to onboarding and training of my new team members. In essence we stood up a new division of what had previously been my one-man show, and I now managed two engineers and an admin assistant to get all the work done. It was, all in all, a marvelous process and I am proud of the team I trained. I got my saturdays back, too.
- anonymousiam 4y agoIt's no secret that SpaceX likes young unmarried employees who can work obscene hours without compensation that matches the bigger companies. I may know this person and it sucks to be treated this way, but why share it with the world instead of consulting with an attorney about possible action?
- d23 4y agoHe mentions working obscene hours and enjoying it and being good at it. Read. The. Article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read it. It's right there. It's concise. It's well written. Read. It. Read it. Read the article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read. Read it. Read. Read the article. The link is above. Click it. Read it. Read the article. Read it.
- anonymousiam 4y agoYeah, I read the whole thing twice before I posted. I don't recognize his name, so if he posted using his real name then I don't know him.
- sokoloff 4y agoWe regularly talk about bus factor* in tech (and other disciplines). It sounds like SpaceX realized they had a too low bus factor in this one critical area; perhaps this realization struck as part of his prep for the short medical leave. Whether they handled solving that problem appropriately or not is up for debate, but having one person as the only person who understands mission-critical area X is an unacceptable situation at SpaceX's size. * - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
- alberth 4y agoCould this simply be SpaceX not wanting a "bus factor" of 1 (only this person)? Or SpaceX values having senior engineers work on new things and junior engineers to maintain existing mature services?
- jkelleyrtp 4y agoThen SpaceX should've given him headcount to build out his own team.
- alberth 4y agoNot every engineer wants to be a people manager. Which is why at some tech companies, they allow you to continue to advance your career as a distinguished individual contributor.
- notfromhere 4y agoDoesn't look like they asked him if he was interested. They just cut them out of the process entirely in what could look like constructive dismissal.
- trident5000 4y agoThis whole write-up comes off as ridiculous. Complaining that a company wants redundancy... they all do. Expecting that you carve out an area where you give yourself tremendous leverage at the detriment of the company is just foolish. And I don't buy the common "frat bro" culture accusation (which these days just means any young male with a hint of a personality).
- choeger 4y agoThis is not just disgusting and infuriating, but also simply stupid and bad management style. If course you should always strive to reduce the bus factor. But I don't see any reason to not turn such an experienced, and good at their job, employee into a formal leadership/mentorship/consultant role. Seriously, SpaceX, you can build rockets, but you can't make such obvious management decisions? What the eff?
- i_like_apis 4y agoThis is a very vague accusation of "age discrimination" with basically nothing backing it up. Someone who was supposed to be in a senior position didn't know how to delegate and felt threatened when it happened. He decided to see things through a lens of "age discrimination" instead of contributing anything useful. Drama instead of work. Unsurprisingly, he is no longer employed at the company. It isn't to say age discrimination isn't a problem everywhere. It is. But this looks like a disgruntled employee story.
- ted_dunning 4y agoThis isn't a matter of not being able to delegate. This is a matter of being cut out of the loop. Done right, these people would have reported to him or reported to a peer manager, but detailed to work with him to build a department. He would have been in on their interviews and selection. He would have been the key voice in structuring the department. Instead, these people reported to Starlink as opposed to SpaceX and he was forcefully cut out. Totally different dynamic.
- borissk 4y agoOne can argue it was OP's mistake to not hire a few people himself, train them and delegate part of his responsibilities to them. This way he would have the management position he desired, he wouldn't have to work such long hours, taking a medical leave would not be a big problem, etc. Instead he left the responsibly to build a team to someone else and not that surprisingly was left out of the loop.
- i_like_apis 4y agoEither way - does it seem like a clear cut case of age discrimination? The same thing happens to young people regularly. I see your point. Though I would say delegation doesn't always have to imply senior-junior reporting structure. Giving work that had "your name on it" to your peers is something we have to be comfortable with. But if you do it well it tends to turn into that by nature.
- notfromhere 4y agoThat's the thing about discrimination. It happens in small moments like this that add together toward career sabotage. It's always hard to prove on an individual basis because nobody writes down a plan to discriminate against specific employees and the initial response is always to blame the person experiencing it.
- mik1998 4y agoFrom what the article describes, a senior engineer singlehandedly managed a significant part of operations, and after he had encountered medical problems, his duties were partially dispersed to several younger engineers. This seems like a sensible move to decrease the bus factor.
- Justin_K 4y agoIf any other org did this it would be a no brainer. Anybody managing ops knows that you responsibility must be distributed and knowledge shared.
- erosenbe0 4y agoAll true, but you cannot initiate this on the basis of age or disability status -- it must be universal policy that engineers delegate in order to manage risk. 30 year-old must be treated same as 50 or 60 year-old. If you should ever have to engage in anything that could be viewed as a demotion on the basis of medical disability or age you should it get your HR people involved for due diligence.
- doe88 4y agoI'm maybe cynical but, as I see it, the final result was written right at the start, they only recruited this personn to acquire their knowledge, not finding someone younger at first. I would be ashamed to be involved in this kind of thing, this is despicable.
- stickfigure 4y agoThis is like listening to just one side in a divorce. As an outsider, I don't think it's fair to judge unless you hear the other side, and we almost certainly won't hear that (for legal reasons). Maybe if there is an ongoing stream of these sorts of letters we could infer something. But as far as I am aware, there isn't. I get that it's popular to hate on Musk right now but it's still inappropriate to get worked up over what's basically a nasty breakup.
- GenericPoster 4y agoAgreed. Especially after reading the below snippet. My sympathy went out of the window. > My life has been spent working long days, nights, and weekends, putting in whatever effort was required to get the job done. My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore. I'm not denying that there is age discrimination happening but I wonder how much of this story is distorted by his perception of it. If he wants to pursue legal action that's his right but I think Spacex did him a favor.
- gaoshan 4y ago"At what age will he be when this predominantly young staff become concerned that he might “retire or die”?" As an older tech person myself I hate to say it but it won't matter because he's "special". I sincerely believe that people in a top role like that simply do not relate to the rest of us. They've lost the ability to do that. It's a rare person that reaches such levels of power and privilege and is still able to remain grounded in the reality that the people around them exist within.
- kube-system 4y agoIt seems obvious to me that this is the way a company with a 70-80 hour work week operates. That demand is incompatible with any lifestyle that includes self care and family responsibilities. Companies can gain a lot of efficiencies by bulldozing any inconveniences, rather than dealing with them. It may get them rich quick, but it also will get them on the front page of the newspaper for all the wrong reasons.
- aero-glide2 4y agoAs a counter example, William H. Gerstenmaier is 68 years old and joined SpaceX when he was 65. He is the Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability.
- m0llusk 4y agoReminds me of an interview I had at a company that works closely with SpaceX and is staffed mostly by ex-SpaceX engineers: To get ready for the interview I made myself familiar with the technologies they were using. In the interview I was asked basic questions about data structures and interviewers were clearly unimpressed with my answers. Then the manager involved asked a bunch of questions about ability to follow instructions. Giving them examples of me convincing coworkers to go along with management instructions they disagreed with failed to impress. The whole situation seemed strange, out of place for the context, and even hostile. The position appeared interesting at first, but talking to the people involved it seems I dodged a bullet. Ageism may be involved, but there also seem to be some very strong but brittle beliefs about what tools and approaches work. All that combines with a readiness, even eagerness, to say no to applicants. Which was really strange in this case as I have decades of coding experience and seemed more familiar with the specific technologies being used than the existing team. Maybe that was part of the problem?
- jason-phillips 4y ago> I have decades of coding experience and seemed more familiar with the specific technologies being used than the existing team. Maybe that was part of the problem? I interviewed at SpaceX and their questions were illuminating. One question was, "If you supported a set of capable engineers and they were running python scripts in a shared environment, but they were running into performance issues, what would you do?" My first thought was, "Holy hell, you're letting non-developers run arbitrary code in some sort of Wild West environment and you're wondering why you have issues? Why would you ever do that?" I did not respond in this way to the interviewer, but my impression of them was somewhat diminished as a result of my discovery and due diligence during the interview.
- q1w2 4y agoHow did you actually answer?
- jason-phillips 4y ago
- w0mbat 4y agoSadly, every big company mistreats people like this frequently. There is nothing unique about SpaceX or other Musk companies in this story. I have seen this happen all over the place. It’s awful that companies get away with it, but they do. This story is getting more traction than most because it fits the trend of negative press directed at Musk right now, with a market desperate for material to fuel their confirmation bias.
- guelo 4y agoNo. I have not heard of other tech ceos demanding "hardcore" work
- w0mbat 4y agoYou are lucky. It happens on many Apple teams, Facebook at various times, every game company, the movie CGI industry, etc. These days I am careful not to get suckered into a work situation like that, I’m too old for that crap.
- rsynnott 4y agoOutside of maybe the games industry, and small poorly-run startups, this is not typical.
- borissk 4y agoTaking a job at SpaceX was an irrational move by OP - the job ending in a way he desired was extremely unlikely. Getting up the management ladder in any large organization is a matter of making personal connections with the current leaders - like it or not it's just human nature. The guy expected to be promoted only based on the work he did :) For someone with so much experience in a niche technical area starting a consulting company is obviously a better choice. You have far better pay, you don't have to play all the HR games and if they want to get rid of you it's nobody's problem - you just get an extra bonus.
- stephc_int13 4y agoThe right move, for this fellow, would have been to create a small company and offer his valuable services as a consultant, not as an employee. Given his age and expertise I think that would have made sense, and this arrangement can help to shield oneself from ageism.
- chester_the_dog 4y agoI recently worked for a startup where I consistently out-performed software engineers who were decades younger than me. I was often asked to finish other engineer’s assignments when they got stuck, and to find and fix difficult bugs from other teams. After several years working there, during a favorable performance review, I suggested to the director of software that I could help the company more if he would give me more authority. His response : “You are too old for me to promote”. I quit shortly after. A couple of months after I left my boss was fired, because he didn’t accomplish one task after I left.
- crmd 4y agoOne of the most un-intuitive rules of leadership is that you have to make yourself replaceable. My bosses all know because I always tell them, “if I get hit by a bus, put A in charge of X, promote B to Y, give C to Z”. On every major project you need at least one ambitious junior engineer who’s been identified as having leadership potential shadowing you and learning the business inside out, who aspires to your job. If you’re doing cool work these assignments are more valuable than gold to the young people, and they earn you a lifetime of friendship, loyalty and appreciation from them and their managers. This is how you get to retire in old age as a beloved, valued individual contributor. If you ignore the leadership part of being a principal engineer and don’t do this, others will do it for you at the worst possible time and you will get fucked.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago> One of the most un-intuitive rules of leadership is that you have to make yourself replaceable. It's called succession planning. You can't go anywhere unless you have people who can do your job when you leave.
- lostlogin 4y ago> You can't go anywhere unless you have people who can do your job when you leave. Or when you want a 5 week holiday. It’s all very well having a nice leave allocation, but you have to be able to use it.
- NikolaNovak 4y agoMy long-time mentor had a spin on the idea: "The day you start a new role/job/position, look for and start training your replacement". The core notion is similar: it's not good for you OR your team/company/client, if you are a single-point-of-failure, irreplaceable contributor. And my mentor's spin puts a "selfish" take on it which allows some people to ingest it better - you'll never be able to take the next opportunity, if you have not left behind a working system for your current role. note: none of this is to say that ageism doesn't exist or that toxic / misguided work cultures don't exist. By all accounts, I would not personally want to work in an Elon Musk company, though I understand those that do. But if I have a super-high performer who is THE ONLY person who can move the needle on a number of high-value projects and is working 70hrs a week to accomplish that... that is a MASSIVE risk to the team and company, and needs to be addressed somehow.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adalacelove 4y ago> I told my boss that I was perceiving age discrimination, and he reported this to HR. For me that would signal the boss knew perfectly what was going on
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> I thought it was a strange question; having spent my career in age-diverse companies, I hadn’t even considered that this could be an issue. This was my initial reaction to encountering the new "tech bro" culture. I had been in a "silo," where advanced age was actually a positive thing, for a long time. During that time, the tech industry changed. > Contrary to stereotypes about older workers being less capable or unwilling to perform hard work, I was actually up for the challenge. Check out my GH activity graph[0]. That's not gamed. There's something wrong with me. I'm 60. Today, I was working on adding some thread resilience to one of my SDKs[1]. It had been giving me weird crashes, the last few days. Thread collisions are a bitch to debug. > But nothing was done to remedy my situation One thing that I learned, very early on, was to think very carefully, before moving to involve HR. They are there only to protect the C-suite. Despite their frequent declamations that they were "on our side," I never saw them actually do anything that did not benefit the executives. > but asked that I keep my concerns between her, myself, and the head of HR. That's typical. It means that it becomes a "He said, she said," gaslighting contest. It really pains me to read this, because I know that experienced, steady, hands were responsible for some of the amazing work that SpaceX has done. Of course, like all of these types of things, we are only hearing one side of the story. There are many factors, like people being difficult to work with (but that, too is not always a bad thing. I worked for a Quality-first corporation, and we were all "difficult to work with," as we did not suffer fools or sloppy work). [0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff [1] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_MeetingSDK https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_MeetingSDK
- destitude 4y agoI think this is more socially engrained in the USA than people realize and not SpaceX specific. I’ve personally seen numerous cases where relatives/children/“friends” pressure and/or believe it is best to stick “old” people in nursing homes even when they are perfectly capable of being on their own and contribute to society. They believe it is “too much of a hassle” dealing with “old” people even if it is their own parent(s).
- thepasswordis 4y agoThere is a strange trend I’m seeing where it seems like people think they are entitled to a job at SpaceX, or Facebook/twitter/etc. Here are the job requirements: * Work 80 hrs a week * Have no life outside of work * Be the smartest or nearly the smartest person in your field If you satisfy these requirements, then you will be working at these companies. If you don’t, then there are a nearly infinite number of other companies that will hire you. I just don’t get why anybody is upset at the requirements being what they are. If you don’t like what the company is asking for, then don’t sell them your labor.
- solarkraft 4y agoI find it amazing that they still find people with these requirements.
- thepasswordis 4y agoIt is a tiny tiny minority of people for sure.
- guelo 4y agoI guess you did not read the article where he said he was meeting all the "hardcore" work requirements but was pushed out because of what he suspects was ageism
- d23 4y agoThere's a strange trend I've noticed where people post hot air comments about articles they didn't read. He outlines clearly that he was spending most of his waking life working for the company, had singlehandedly built out the majority of the most significant infrastructure for their optics systems, and was the foremost expert at the company in the field. > I just don’t get why anybody is upset at the requirements being what they are. I'm not upset about a company having requirements like the ones you lay out. Neither is anyone in this entire comment section nor the author of the post. Right now, in this moment, I'm upset specifically at people like you.
- 4y ago
- anonreeeeplor 4y agothis is going to get more and more common. There is a massive demographic cliff of retiring boomers with advanced technology skills that can’t be readily replaced. My recommendation if you are older than 40 is to be working at high quality small to medium sized enterprises. And work for people who are around your same age. Big companies are a terrible place to be. They can afford not to care. They will just hire more minions to swarm your area and replace you. The nastiest political wars are among middle managers. I would guess Spacex has a general strategy internally around this exact scenario. Or a playbook for doing this. If someone is flagged as boomer, they pack juniors and shadows on them to drain wherever expertise they can. I don’t know what to say - more and more boomers will retire and companies are going to treat them like outgoing tumors. Technology industry does not have any graceful ways to see aging workers out other than to strip them for spare parts pre emptively. This is ugly stuff but I have seen it play out and been on the receiving end of it myself. The good news is with demographic issues maybe companies have to get better at this.
- trollerator23 4y agoThis is so sad.
- guelo 4y agoIt is time for us to unionize. Elon is attempting an explicit attack of capital against tech labor, plus he wields a massive propaganda machine and has already turned half the country against us, calling us entitled, woke, spoiled, etc. We have no power against capital unless we band together.
- tzekid 4y agoI don't understand unions. Why not, I don't know ... just look for another job if you don't like the current one? If you are as valuable as you think, then you should find a better job in no time. If the firm is in the wrong, people will follow suit and the company will fail and competitors which treat people better will thrive, no?
- mzs 4y ago180 days https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination
- SpaceManNabs 4y agoWhat did you expect from musk companies? They've had this reputation as early as 2013. If you want to work at Musk companies because the work excites you, then you have to know you are accepting the company culture too.
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- jgerrish 4y agoI don't know the whole story here. I hope he doesnt have a lot of baggage my generation has with over work. It may just be a bus-factor issue. I don't have the whole story. I remember a story my Dad told about cultural clashes with overseas employees. I'm ironically constrained by those stories. I dont think I'll escape them. It's work trying.
- CottonMcKnight 4y agoI'm an aging elder millenial, I've spent my entire career in tech, and these stories scare me. Lately, I have started to think about starting my own business so that I do not suddenly find myself unemployed and unemployable in five to ten years.
- rsynnott 4y agoI mean, I don't think this is typical; these companies aren't exactly known for being great places to work. I'm also an early millennial, and know lots of people considerably older than me still happily (or at least no more grumpily than everyone else) working in tech jobs.
- rheffern 4y agoAs an optics person, I just want to say : Woah! John is a crazy good optical engineer if even 10% of what he says is true. You want a 10x optical engineer, you've found him. Getting a full metrology lab up and running from scratch in under 7 years would make most R1 professors proud. To do so in under 2 years at a commercial lab is actually amazing. To then build the relationships up with Thorlabs/Edmunds/Ziess is also pretty amazing. I've tried working with all three of their sales reps before. It's like pulling teeth! And that's with bio-optics. Let alone all the crazy regs and laws that would go along with space-based optics at scale. This is very seriously very impressive! The bit about having a 20-something shadow him for 2 weeks to 'learn metrology' actually made me laugh out loud. To give the SWEs here an idea, it would be like having an 8 year old try to 'learn Linux' in 2 weeks. Whoever told the kid to try to do that is also so out of their depth that they should be fired too. Metrology, especially optical metrology, is a lifetime of learning and work. Even then, you're still mostly winging it into your 60s. Optics is Captial-H Hard. It's one of the three domains of physics that smart people never touch, and only fools try to make a living out of (the other two being acoustics and fluids). You can spend a lifetime trying to get alignment on a set of elements or you can get lucky and do it in a few hours. I cannot stress enough how difficult non-theoreticl optics is. Also, take a note here. By the end, SpaceX is trying to get 5-6 people to do the job of just one somewhat older person. Like, even they think the guy is at least a 5x engineer. Like, this guy is amazing at optics. Hire him
- greyhair 4y agoI read the whole piece. My key observation, is the author's assumption that HR was 'there for the employees'. HR doesn't exist for you, HR exists for the corporation, for the protection of the corporation. It astounds me, in this day and age, that employees think HR is there to protect them. I understand the misconception from young people at their first job, but the author is 60 (+/-) over the time of this story. In my 38 years of working at medium to large corporations, I have had exactly one time when HR was useful to me, and that was on my way out the door in my prior job.
- dlqx 4y agoIt's terrible and sad. But I read also a lot of I. And you did everything by yourself, didn't you? 12 hours on 7 days you did all tasks by yourself. It doesn't sound you looked for people to help you, to share your knowledge and experience. To be honest I think that work was taken away from you because you haven't been a team player!