6 ms·

This 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"

This 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 ago
The 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 ago
    At some point it’s just a pixel in the distance. Still, watch for falling sh!t.
    - genocidicbunny 4y ago
      Well, to put that another way -- at some point, the only thing you can see is the arse.
      - pleb_nz 4y ago
        He doesn't have keys and feet?
kaiju0 4y ago
They are. The larger your reporting section the more important you are. Importance is described through resource allocation.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  This was one of the categories Graeber put respondents' my-job-is-bullshit reports into, in Bullshit Jobs.
smilebot 4y ago
Absolutely. This behavior is commonly known as “empire building”.
zozbot234 4y ago
Karoshi is a real thing, and something that gets exponentially more likely as people grow older. There's nothing unethical about setting adequate boundaries so that even the most committed and hard-working employee does not inadvertently burn out, or worse. Work smarter, not just harder.
- gscott 4y ago
  From reading the article he would have been fine if they assigned him as the manager to train them. But they took over his roles, required training and didn't report to him in any way.
  - tiahura 4y ago
    Maybe he isn't a good manager?
    - mbreese 4y ago
      Did they let him try? He was already training junior engineers.
  - bottlepalm 4y ago
    I'm guessing they probably worked on different teams with their own managers. There is a lot of overlap between purchasing, supply chain, manufacturing, design, etc.. We're talking about hundreds of people. He also wasn't a manager to begin with, that requires it's own set of training, but we are getting way way in the weeds here to even be talking about this all on one person's point of view. There are so many factors that go into org structures, interviews, cross team collaboration, etc.. It's easy to feel slighted when you don't have a full picture. What we do know is the work pace is so frantic that I wouldn't attribute these things to malice immediately. Just a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in a short amount of time.
trident5000 4y ago
SpaceX sends real people on rockets into space. If they dont do the job right, people could die. Ive had a back injury, I actually had an artificial disc placed at my L4/L5 (which by the way is a life-saver and my back is 100% now). But there is no way in hell I could do a demanding job or any job at all when I was going through that. Creating redundancy for his position is a no-brainer in this situation.
- SXX 4y ago
  Right. Making people work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week is exactly the way to avoid human error and accidents.
  - trident5000 4y ago
    Thats shifting the goalpost, I didnt comment on SpaceX overall work hours. I commented on a specific employee being disabled. That said, his rockets work - so what argument do you really have? for jmull below: "no relevant information" He needed back surgery and I have myself had back surgery. I have first hand experience on this topic. Your comment is really out of touch.
    - jmull 4y ago
      You've diagnosed a person's work capacity despite having none of the relevant information and no training to do so. Really, how can you possibly believe this judgement has any bearing on the situation?
    - SXX 4y ago
      I was referring to OP that you replied to. You basically stating that SpaceX have to be careful about letting him work after surgery. At the same time they're totally okay overworking engineers all the time which is known to inevitably lead to human errors. Fact that Musks' rockets work might be very well despite terrible work conditions.
      - SXX 4y ago
JBlue42 4y ago
>I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. Hasn't it always been this way at organizations, tech or not? Not even suck ups but people that don't cause a stir, keep their heads down, yes men to whatever the manager asks, etc. Personally, I've seen it in action in a workplace where everyone "loves" so and so. That person would put on a good face and tell them how "amazing" everything was in every interaction. Behind their backs, that definitely wouldn't be the dialogue. >You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. Or less. A name brand, prestige title, or industry. When I worked in visual effects, it's enough to get your name at the end of a movie to justify working 80-90 hour weeks. Video game peeps had it worse and you don't even see their names on a big screen. >It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords. This is pretty visible in transitions right? New manager comes in, people loyal to old ones start melting away to different groups or leave to either join old manager or go somewhere else. The new manager brings in people they know and trust. It's how we all benefit from weak ties.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Sucking up to some degree is team work. You need to know how to work with people to get what you need and move the company forward. Each person is different and part of working at a large company is learning how to interact with a multitude of personalities, many that you would not get along with outside of work. It is like high school, it is like politics, it is like any group of humans interacting. You skills are part of the equation, but your people skills are as well. It's the people who can go with the flow that stick around long term and actually have a meaningful impact on the success of the company. It's very easy to get caught up and think everyone is against you and burn out.
  - bumby 4y ago
    I think the distinction is it’s a very different to schmooze as a way of getting things done in service of a larger mission vs sucking up in a non-productive way of meeting purely selfish ends.
aeternum 4y ago
Having a single point of failure is a terrible idea for the health of the company. It is often unavoidable early on in a product, but if the product is successful, there is a strong need to eliminate the single point of failure. This can be very hard on engineers that were previous the go-to person for a key area. The person and product was successful so the ask to delegate and dilute ownership seems completely illogical. Some ICs don't want to give this up and so they switch from IC to management for the wrong reasons, leading to a manager that isn't really interested in management and is reluctant to delegate and enable the team. I've seen this occur many times and it's always painful. Starlink is now large enough that it's a huge risk to have a single key person responsible for optics.
- bathtub365 4y ago
  It sounds like the author was never given the chance to build organizational redundancy. It was done around and without them in a strangely secretive way.
  - q1w2 4y ago
    It's important to remember that we're only hearing one side of the story here. It's very clear the author has emotion about what's going on, and there are several emotionally toned segments in his account. That's understandable, but it also likely means that this is a biased account of what transpired. Fundamentally, it sounds like SpaceX is having other engineers shadow him because he's a single point of failure. That part alone is not remarkable.
  - flumpcakes 4y ago
    From the sounds of it, they were hiring inexperienced/incompetent yes-people into areas of his expertise. That's not really organisational redundancy in my book. Just more blood for the blood gods. I have been places where there's something very simple that a dozen people don't know how to do or the reason why it is there or that it even existed.
QuantumGood 4y ago
They don't also (I believe) take work away from younger workers because they are more likely to change jobs frequently—which is much more common. Pretty clearly ageism.

stuaxo 4y ago

The 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 ago
  At some point it’s just a pixel in the distance. Still, watch for falling sh!t.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    Well, to put that another way -- at some point, the only thing you can see is the arse.
    - pleb_nz 4y ago
      He doesn't have keys and feet?

kaiju0 4y ago

They are. The larger your reporting section the more important you are. Importance is described through resource allocation.

yamtaddle 4y ago
This was one of the categories Graeber put respondents' my-job-is-bullshit reports into, in Bullshit Jobs.

smilebot 4y ago

Absolutely. This behavior is commonly known as “empire building”.

zozbot234 4y ago

Karoshi is a real thing, and something that gets exponentially more likely as people grow older. There's nothing unethical about setting adequate boundaries so that even the most committed and hard-working employee does not inadvertently burn out, or worse. Work smarter, not just harder.

gscott 4y ago
From reading the article he would have been fine if they assigned him as the manager to train them. But they took over his roles, required training and didn't report to him in any way.
- tiahura 4y ago
  Maybe he isn't a good manager?
  - mbreese 4y ago
    Did they let him try? He was already training junior engineers.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  I'm guessing they probably worked on different teams with their own managers. There is a lot of overlap between purchasing, supply chain, manufacturing, design, etc.. We're talking about hundreds of people. He also wasn't a manager to begin with, that requires it's own set of training, but we are getting way way in the weeds here to even be talking about this all on one person's point of view. There are so many factors that go into org structures, interviews, cross team collaboration, etc.. It's easy to feel slighted when you don't have a full picture. What we do know is the work pace is so frantic that I wouldn't attribute these things to malice immediately. Just a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in a short amount of time.

trident5000 4y ago

SpaceX sends real people on rockets into space. If they dont do the job right, people could die. Ive had a back injury, I actually had an artificial disc placed at my L4/L5 (which by the way is a life-saver and my back is 100% now). But there is no way in hell I could do a demanding job or any job at all when I was going through that. Creating redundancy for his position is a no-brainer in this situation.

SXX 4y ago
Right. Making people work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week is exactly the way to avoid human error and accidents.
- trident5000 4y ago
  Thats shifting the goalpost, I didnt comment on SpaceX overall work hours. I commented on a specific employee being disabled. That said, his rockets work - so what argument do you really have? for jmull below: "no relevant information" He needed back surgery and I have myself had back surgery. I have first hand experience on this topic. Your comment is really out of touch.
  - jmull 4y ago
    You've diagnosed a person's work capacity despite having none of the relevant information and no training to do so. Really, how can you possibly believe this judgement has any bearing on the situation?
  - SXX 4y ago
    I was referring to OP that you replied to. You basically stating that SpaceX have to be careful about letting him work after surgery. At the same time they're totally okay overworking engineers all the time which is known to inevitably lead to human errors. Fact that Musks' rockets work might be very well despite terrible work conditions.
    - SXX 4y ago

JBlue42 4y ago

>I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. Hasn't it always been this way at organizations, tech or not? Not even suck ups but people that don't cause a stir, keep their heads down, yes men to whatever the manager asks, etc. Personally, I've seen it in action in a workplace where everyone "loves" so and so. That person would put on a good face and tell them how "amazing" everything was in every interaction. Behind their backs, that definitely wouldn't be the dialogue. >You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. Or less. A name brand, prestige title, or industry. When I worked in visual effects, it's enough to get your name at the end of a movie to justify working 80-90 hour weeks. Video game peeps had it worse and you don't even see their names on a big screen. >It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords. This is pretty visible in transitions right? New manager comes in, people loyal to old ones start melting away to different groups or leave to either join old manager or go somewhere else. The new manager brings in people they know and trust. It's how we all benefit from weak ties.

bottlepalm 4y ago
Sucking up to some degree is team work. You need to know how to work with people to get what you need and move the company forward. Each person is different and part of working at a large company is learning how to interact with a multitude of personalities, many that you would not get along with outside of work. It is like high school, it is like politics, it is like any group of humans interacting. You skills are part of the equation, but your people skills are as well. It's the people who can go with the flow that stick around long term and actually have a meaningful impact on the success of the company. It's very easy to get caught up and think everyone is against you and burn out.
- bumby 4y ago
  I think the distinction is it’s a very different to schmooze as a way of getting things done in service of a larger mission vs sucking up in a non-productive way of meeting purely selfish ends.

aeternum 4y ago

Having a single point of failure is a terrible idea for the health of the company. It is often unavoidable early on in a product, but if the product is successful, there is a strong need to eliminate the single point of failure. This can be very hard on engineers that were previous the go-to person for a key area. The person and product was successful so the ask to delegate and dilute ownership seems completely illogical. Some ICs don't want to give this up and so they switch from IC to management for the wrong reasons, leading to a manager that isn't really interested in management and is reluctant to delegate and enable the team. I've seen this occur many times and it's always painful. Starlink is now large enough that it's a huge risk to have a single key person responsible for optics.

bathtub365 4y ago
It sounds like the author was never given the chance to build organizational redundancy. It was done around and without them in a strangely secretive way.
- q1w2 4y ago
  It's important to remember that we're only hearing one side of the story here. It's very clear the author has emotion about what's going on, and there are several emotionally toned segments in his account. That's understandable, but it also likely means that this is a biased account of what transpired. Fundamentally, it sounds like SpaceX is having other engineers shadow him because he's a single point of failure. That part alone is not remarkable.
- flumpcakes 4y ago
  From the sounds of it, they were hiring inexperienced/incompetent yes-people into areas of his expertise. That's not really organisational redundancy in my book. Just more blood for the blood gods. I have been places where there's something very simple that a dozen people don't know how to do or the reason why it is there or that it even existed.

QuantumGood 4y ago

They don't also (I believe) take work away from younger workers because they are more likely to change jobs frequently—which is much more common. Pretty clearly ageism.