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According 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_...
Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.
Is this a bad sign for SpaceX? Is ‘getting leaner’ why they’re really doing this?
It doesn’t help that there’s been little warning (though I guessing a lot of these employees had some warning that they are going ormtheir teams are getting thinned).
I hope for the best, the people leaving SpaceX have certainly got great resumes to recommend them to new employers!
Sounds like 90% of their employees will be working an extra 10% more hours per week
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.
They'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…
> 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. I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.
what is the less cruel way to lay off 10% of your workforce
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.
what is the less cruel way to lay off 10% of your workforce
FAR less 'cruel' to give them an opportunity to plan their exit and give them the psychological space to get used to the fact.
EDIT: In light of the 'read the article' responses and downvotes, I wanted to clarify that my comment here is directly addressing the question "what is a less cruel way of laying people off" against the purported scenario above of people being told on Friday to go home and check their emails to see if they still have a job on Monday.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah 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).
Not 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.
Stack ranking is a failed experiment, and by now I think all companies realize that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.
what is the less cruel way to lay off 10% of your workforce
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not 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.
Apparently some managers used to hire sacrificial lambs with the express purpose of culling them to spare the rest of the team.