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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

#541

Post by screye »

ecshafer wrote: post #442
AdrianB1 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is normal to layoff about 5% per year, you trim the one in the 20 that is the weakest and it has positive, not negative effects. Going to 10% is a bit stretch, but still workable. In the last companies I worked, if up to 20% of the people left one day it would have an immediate positive impact on the performance, less complexity to deal with and more focus to work on real stuff.

5% is insane, I would never work for a company that regularly laid off that many people. Firing under performers is one thing, but to systematically clear house is toxic. How are you supposed to build a career if one of your coworkers/friends is canned every year, so everyone is wondering what year is theirs? So people overwork themselves to make sure it doesn't happen to them. You need to show your employees safety,…

Wasn't that a big reason for Microsoft under-performing in the Ballmer era ?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#542

Post by Traster »

roedog wrote: post #484
syncmaster913n wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Launch price does not necessarily tell us anything because we do not know what profit margins SpaceX has.

hmm. So they could be losing money on each launch? But, why would they would they choose to sell at a loss when they could beat the competition at twice the price?

I don't beleive this, but it's possible that SpaceX are selling launches at below cost to drive demand so that they can get up to a scale where they're economical and in order to establish a dynamic in the industry where known low cost launches enable new projects that will cause higher demand in the future.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#543

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

shaklee3 wrote: post #449
vidarh wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satellites are that expensive in large part because if you're spending hundreds of millions on a launch anyway, you can't afford to launch ten cheaper satellites. To be a bit hyperbolic: if launches were cheap enough you'd have amateurs launching stuff hacked together in the garage, knowing if they fail it doesn't matter - they can just try again.

I would agree with this if the launch cost was a substantial portion of the satellite. There are a lot more things that play though, especially for Geo satellites. Things like orbital slots are finite, so you really want to make as large of a satellite as possible, which also translates to more expensive. Even if SpaceX gets the launch costs cut in half, that's still not a large portion of the total costs. I believe…

Do you have any substantiated data to go with your pricing assumptions?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#544

Post by m0zg »

Too wrote: post #281
m0zg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't when you're dealing with 6000+ people. Likely even the managers didn't know so as to avoid feeding the rumor mill. They'll now need to make up their minds about their reports whom they wouldn't mind losing.

Are you saying top executives selected 10% out of all 6000 employees without consulting their direct managers who to fire? That would be a random 10% sample at best. Obviously managers would be involved in deciding who is worth to keep or not.

No, I'm suggesting that managers might have been made to select them on the spot. I worked as a manager. This is usually a very easy question to answer unless your team consists entirely of rockstars, which I haven't experienced in practice. As a manager you are acutely aware of who's producing and who's dragging their feet.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#545

Post by dwd »

mulmen wrote: post #428
dwd wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yep, too late and too many beers to be commenting on HN.

I did find it amusing, as the first thing I did seeing the SQL was also run it through my head.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#546

Post by manicdee »

shaklee3 wrote: post #235
manicdee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has flown actual hardware and launched a functional payload, making it operational.

Just because you don’t consider a 2t payload launched to a Mars-crossing orbit to be “real” doesn’t mean the payload wasn’t launched.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#547

Post by theptip »

kurthr wrote: post #529
theptip wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren't used for the same thing The old BFR design had a large carbon-fiber hull, the new one has a stainless steel hull. Unless I'm missing your point, that's a major piece of the rocket that's no longer made with carbon fiber. (The giant molds that they were building for the BFR hull, for example, are now redundant.)

It's not for production, it's for testing and looking cool.

Wat. Sources please to back up this wild assertion?

The stainless steel hull is a viable design (though obviously given how many times it has changed it might not be final).

Scott Manley did a deep dive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVgEKBwE2RM

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#548

Post by aey »

garmaine wrote: post #523
aey wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should open it to the public with a reg d/s. I would love to be able to invest into SpaceX.

That would endanger the long term plan of Martian colonization, which is not the most financially responsible thing to do. Elon is keeping SpaceX private so as to have some control over who invests, to make sure they’re onboard.

Reg d or s is still private. But there are limits to number of investors.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#549

Post by phendrenad2 »

azernik wrote: post #328
phendrenad2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably realized that they'll still get GDPR requests from EU citizens living abroad, so the block was fairly pointless.

This is a false reading of GDPR - it applies only when either the person or the business involved is physically in the EU, not on the citizenship of the person involved. See Article 3: Territorial Scope ( https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ ). Useful terms: "data subject" is a natural person to whom the data relates, "processor" refers to an entity that works with the data, "controller" to an entity that "owns" the data…

Ah, thanks, I must have gotten that in the early days of the GDPR, when there was a lot of misinformation.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#550

Post by rhizome »

mulmen wrote: post #536
rhizome wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dehumanizing in the strictest sense of the word: communicated by text on a screen rather than in-person.

That’s a superficial focus on human interaction that ignores he reality of business dealings.

You're at the "contradiction" level of PG's pyramid of disagreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer)#Graha...
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