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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

#361

Post by SamReidHughes »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #351
SamReidHughes wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's a reason America has a higher standard of living than Europe.

People in USA [I assume you mean] are happier and more fulfilled than those living in Europe?

The median American is richer than the median European (in basically any large country).

The SpaceX employees that got laid off are going to get other jobs and continue making more money and having more money to spend than their European counterparts.

Edit: A few reasons. One is that, since it's easier to switch jobs, good employees have more leverage. Another is that, since it's easier to fire bad employees, the expected value of a new employee is higher and you can afford to pay them more.

I think a big part of American prosperity is a result of companies being able to fire people. It's probably the most important bit of employment non-regulation that this country has, and it's a big aspect in which America is more worker-friendly than European countries. Other missing regulations, like working hours limits, vacation time regulations, don't benefit workers as much (or at all).

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#362

Post by someperson »

azernik wrote: post #323
Robotbeat wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that Starlink is, in fact, a significant CAUSE of the softening of GTO launch demand. All this LEO megaconstellations will be providing many of the same services as these long-lived, expensive geosynchronous birds, so the business case for them becomes much less certain. If Starlink, OneWeb, etc were cancelled tomorrow, it's likely GTO launch demand would pick back up significantly. Starlink is both the cau…

It's a game theory problem - even if Starlink wasn't happening, OneWeb would be going ahead anyway. So if the GEO satellite operators are going to be running scared anyway, SpaceX might as well get its own entrant into the market.

I don't think this argument holds up to analysis. According to the OneWeb and Starlink Wikipedia pages:

1. May 2014: OneWeb (formerly 'WorldVu') receives its initial $500 million in funding [1]

2. January 2015: SpaceX's satellite constellation is announced. [2]

3. December 2016: OneWeb receives an extra $1.2 billion from SoftBank and existing investors [3]

4. March 2017: Blue Origin signs OneWeb as a customer [4]

If SpaceX was a neutral transport provider, there's little reason that OneWeb would have chosen Blue Origin over SpaceX. Blue Origin is probably offering very low prices, but SpaceX arguably could match them.

[1] https://spacenews.com/40736google-backed-global-broadband-ve...

[2] http://old.seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/20254807...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/12/19/softbank-oneweb/

[4] https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-gets-oneweb-as-second-new-...

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#363

Post by dwd »

drieddust wrote: post #286
nullifidian wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you create a company, you take care of it and all of its members. Companies are not created to take care of their employees. They are created to make profit and/or accomplish a societal goal. If a company is non-profit then it's just the latter. As someone from a post-communist state, it's plainly obvious to me that people on average don't work as well as they could if the threat of termination does not exist. My…

Termination due to non-performance on the job is entirely different from at will termination which can hit a performer and non performer alike. You seems to imply employees are the resources to be used to achieve goals. I do not see an issue in this arrangement if Employees have the same negotiation power as the employer.

Equal negotiating power generally implies employees unionising or having some form of collective bargaining that allows to right to strike.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#364

Post by wongarsu »

jononor wrote: post #343
mkio wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you see things like a single person having to do all jobs at once at a Pizza Hut or only three people working at the same time in a supermarket. A lot of customer-facing businesses are insanely understaffed. If your employer doesn't hire enough coworkers for whatever reason, your life will be miserable.

Isnt there a maximum average hours of work around 40 a week in Germany?

Yes, with a few exceptions it's restricted to a maximum of 8 hours a day on average (and 10 hours max), with 5 days a week.

However, how much stress you can be exposed to in those 8 hours isn't mandated. You can run many businesses understaffed with fairly little impact if you are willing to regularly replace employees suffering from burnout [1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#365

Post by antientropic »

candiodari wrote: post #340
unethical_ban wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So cut from the top down, period? Cut the people with the vision and strategy of the company, until nothing but the assemblers and forklift drivers are left? I believe in worker rights, and the ability of a person to live in relative economic security. But should a company not EVER be able to restructure when it realizes it has too many workers, or too broad a mission? Is 2 months pay and medical not a decent send-of…

It's funny how you assume there'a choice. Unemployment in Europe as a whole (including Eastern Europe) is ~20%. Depends on what/when exactly of course but it is. Government (non-productive by definition, by which I mean they don't add value, not that they're not useful) is easily half of the remainder. So Europe has 40% value-adding employees among the working age population, which is about half the total population,…

> Unemployment in Europe as a whole (including Eastern Europe) is ~20%.

According to [1] unemployment in the EU-28 is actually 6.7% as of November 2018. Of course, there are some European countries that are not in the EU, but I doubt that including them will cause the figure to rise to 20%.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

> So for doing everything we do today, and for guaranteeing the future, we need around 25% of the human race. Everyone else is economically useless.

No, that does not follow. For example, a stay-at-home spouse who takes care of the kids may be "economically useless" in a very shallow sense (i.e. they do not appear in GDP figures), but that does not make them useless.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#366

Post by dwd »

mulmen wrote: post #346
rightbyte wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is acctually probably how they do it.

Typically higher scores are better. If SpaceX used this query they would fire their 600 best employees. Or they use bad column names. On top of the lame SQL reference this diminishes the true severity of firing 600 real people. We have no reason to think the firing was this nonchalant. This diminishes the work and humanity of everyone involved. It appears to be a weak reference to stack ranking. Do you have any reaso…

Default ordering would be ascending order, smallest to largest. You would need to specify DESC to order the higher numbers first.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#367

Post by keerthiko »

candiodari wrote: post #340
unethical_ban wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So cut from the top down, period? Cut the people with the vision and strategy of the company, until nothing but the assemblers and forklift drivers are left? I believe in worker rights, and the ability of a person to live in relative economic security. But should a company not EVER be able to restructure when it realizes it has too many workers, or too broad a mission? Is 2 months pay and medical not a decent send-of…

It's funny how you assume there'a choice. Unemployment in Europe as a whole (including Eastern Europe) is ~20%. Depends on what/when exactly of course but it is. Government (non-productive by definition, by which I mean they don't add value, not that they're not useful) is easily half of the remainder. So Europe has 40% value-adding employees among the working age population, which is about half the total population,…

Yeah I think you're forgetting that consumers are a very important part of functioning local, national and global economies. If the only businessman in a farming town runs a grocery store selling the potatoes from one farmer and you killed everyone else off besides that farmer and store owner, that town's GDP will drop to 0 within their lifespan. This can basically be extrapolated to the global level?

Also why should we artificially extend forcing most humans into agency-less drudgery for 60% of their sentient healthy waking hours? I think the sooner we embrace having 15% of the population producing the net economic output and providing the rest of the society with what they need, the faster we can figure out a significantly better and fulfilling society for everyone.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#368

Post by azernik »

someperson wrote: post #362
azernik wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a game theory problem - even if Starlink wasn't happening, OneWeb would be going ahead anyway. So if the GEO satellite operators are going to be running scared anyway, SpaceX might as well get its own entrant into the market.

I don't think this argument holds up to analysis. According to the OneWeb and Starlink Wikipedia pages: 1. May 2014: OneWeb (formerly 'WorldVu') receives its initial $500 million in funding [1] 2. January 2015: SpaceX's satellite constellation is announced. [2] 3. December 2016: OneWeb receives an extra $1.2 billion from SoftBank and existing investors [3] 4. March 2017: Blue Origin signs OneWeb as a customer [4] If…

I meant - no reason not to get that market share in the small-comsat market.

As to why do it themselves as opposed to just be a provider to OneWeb, I think this is a sneaky way to do some price discrimination - SpaceX, like everyone else, may have some spare launch capacity, so having an internal (hopefully-profitable) project to soak up that demand rather than cratering launch prices may be worth it.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#369

Post by aristophenes »

antpls wrote: post #265

I don't understand how anyone in the world accept such social contract of being laid off anytime for arbitrary reasons. If you create a company, you take care of it and all of its members. If you have to cut expenses because the company needs to be "leaner" then you cut the salaries starting from the top executives. Eventually you fire management, because the state of the company is in part the result of their decisi…

Two points in rebuttal. First, companies can expand more confidently if they know they can reduce more easily if they need to. It is more efficient for companies to be able to right-size themselves. Bolstering this point of view is that the USA has a 4% unemployment rate, which is about as low as you can get without things starting to break down. The US economy has been outperforming almost everyone too, creating more prosperity for more people, compared to countries with more restrictive controls over employment.

Second, specific to SpaceX, they actually succeeded in making reusable rockets. They used to need to build a new rocket for every launch. Then they needed to build their reusable fleet up. Now they don’t need to build hardly any rockets. I think this is what success looks like for them right now. From this point of view a 10% reduction is pretty low, and is only so low because they still have even bigger plans.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#370

Post by wildmusings »

antpls wrote: post #265

I don't understand how anyone in the world accept such social contract of being laid off anytime for arbitrary reasons. If you create a company, you take care of it and all of its members. If you have to cut expenses because the company needs to be "leaner" then you cut the salaries starting from the top executives. Eventually you fire management, because the state of the company is in part the result of their decisi…

Freedom to fire enhances the willingness to hire. There’s a balance to be found, but if you make it impossible to get rid of employees you no longer want, you end up with an anemic labor market, like Europe’s.

Barriers to firing also make it harder to justify hiring higher-risk candidates (e.g. former felons, high school dropouts).

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