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SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

latimes.com

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Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#231

Post by shaklee3 »

FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #78
awake wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless 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…

There have been plenty of satellite price flexibility studies that show there is a marked lag between supply and demand. This is because high launch costs demand extraordinary levels of design and Q&A: there may never be a second chance. Unfortunately, these supply chains have flexibility baked out for some time, perhaps predating the Apollo era. Lowered launch costs and increased launch opportunities offer increasin…

I don't think it has anything to do with launch costs. Satellites take a very long time to develop, and they're hundreds of millions of dollars. You have one shot to get it right, and lowering launch costs doesn't really make a big dent in that.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#232

Post by Robotbeat »

roedog wrote: post #208

The 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 ab…

SpaceX 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.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#233

Post by berbec »

m0zg wrote: post #102
viraptor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.

I disagree. What would be more cruel is to keep people guessing for weeks, or to do several smaller layoffs. That's how it's usually done, and it utterly decimates the morale, and causes the best people to leave. The best way to do a layoff is to cut once, cut deep, and do it quickly. And of course to not be an asshole and offer severance compensation to folks who were laid off.

I agree with you. Uncertainty and fear brings a horrible toll on the employees.

I was a teenager in the 90s and my mother worked for IBM. My parents were divorced and I lived with mom. She came home every day exhausted and scared, not knowing when the axe would drop. It went on for years. No one knew the logic of which departments were next; solid performance reviews didn't protect you, seniority, skillet, being management: nothing made you safe. Everyone we knew went to work not knowing if they would make it to lunch.

It was horrible. I'm sure everyone would have much rather the SpaceX method than months or years of agonizing waiting.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#234

Post by megablast »

cyberferret wrote: post #57
mulmen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this particularly egregious?

Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future. To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is t…

> To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is tantamount to playing Russian Roulet

How is it 50/50? It is 10%.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#235

Post by shaklee3 »

manicdee wrote: post #42
Others wrote: post #4

Is this a bad sign for SpaceX? Is ‘getting leaner’ why they’re really doing this?

They recently switched from composite hull to metal hill for BFR/Starship, so it might be a case of terminating those employees whose primary focus was designing the composite hull and whose skills were not transferable. There will likely be talent pools that get thinned out too, welders who won’t be so necessary now that Block 5 is in production and Falcon Heavy is “operational” (meaning fewer expendable launches, l…

Falcon heavy is anything but operational. It has yet to prove itself and launch real payloads.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#236

Post by sitkack »

yholio wrote: post #65
whatshisface wrote: post #6

10% 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.

> towards sitting on the falcon 9 and launching to LEO. That would still leave them with many thousands of redundant employees. Falcon 9 is done and the production is dropping due to reusability. Recently, they had a 3rd re-flight of the same core, which, coupled with the slowdown of the global launch market, means that in the next years they will need to produce a third to a half of the number of cores they used in…

> they can't justify keeping those people around

I would have put them on other Musk projects to keep them from going to the competition. SpaceX doesn't have a monopoly on low cost launch. The next place to figure out how to 3d print a tungsten titanium copper nickel chromium iron one piece rocket nozzle will also have that advantage.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#237

Post by SECProto »

cyberferret wrote: post #57
mulmen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this particularly egregious?

Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future. To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is t…

I've been laid off twice, once in a one-on-one meeting with a manager, and once via an email. The email was much preferable. (Both were in short-term positions, so not really a fair comparison)

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#239

Post by sitkack »

adrianN wrote: post #227
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First we need a self-sufficient Antarctic colony. Any takers?

When we establish a Mars colony it will probably take centuries before it's truly self-sufficient. I don't see the point of starting with a self sufficient colony on Earth, especially if the challenges are quite different from Mars.

Take Mars, I am heading to Mercury.
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