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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

#301

Post by Klover »

vasco wrote: post #270
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…

What about when people get comfortable and stop performing at initial levels. Or if you realize you have too much middle management?

If your employees are performing worse than initially, then what are you paying them training for? And getting more comfortable in their position should usually reduce friction around their job and have more experience, so they can do their job better..

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#302

Post by thefounder »

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…

Unless the said companies are funded by government I don't understand why there would be a problem. As a CEO your job is to maximize the profit not to create a socialist enterprise. Why should I pay you if I no longer need your services? That being said I believe things could be done to make the transition easier for workers without hurting the company. For example announcing the layoffs in advance(i.e give a 4 months notice at least). This should be enough so that the workers can find another job.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#303

Post by nothrabannosir »

techsin101 wrote: post #296
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…

Doing that would make hiring very risky. And interviews would be a year long

Technically isn’t that what probation is? A very long interview?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#304

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

pavelrub wrote: post #299
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…

What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't…

Why would it "stifle innovation"? Having to run a company sustainably should promote innovation.

It may stifle impractical get-rich-quick strategies and customer scamming, but that's not a bad thing.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#305

Post by Retric »

pavelrub wrote: post #299
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…

What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't…

SpaceX could quickly shrink by 10% via attrition and not highering new people. They can get rid of dead weight by firing people.

This kind of small scale lay-off is mostly a stunt, or just sign of incompetence.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#306

Post by [deleted] »

consumer451 wrote: post #285
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…

> 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 about how they're going to increase development while cutting staff. The oddness diminishes when you look at their open jobs listing [1], as it looks that they have >300 open positions. [1] https://www.spacex.com/careers/list

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#307

Post by thefounder »

pavelrub wrote: post #299
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…

What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't…

>> Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs...

Such world exists and can be found in most socialist countries. It's not bad per see but not that exciting either. I personally believe the workers should be given more opportunities(i.e advance notice so that they can find another job in a timely manner) rather than social care.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#308

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #305
pavelrub wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't…

SpaceX could quickly shrink by 10% via attrition and not highering new people. They can get rid of dead weight by firing people. This kind of small scale lay-off is mostly a stunt, or just sign of incompetence.

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#309

Post by erikb »

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…

Well, naturally every company has talent drain. The rockstars will not work long in one company and jump from one gig to the next. But if you have bad luck and hired some slackers, which will happen with the tightest of hiring schemes, then they will certainly stick around.

Thus over time you still have to re-hire people you really need, but get a bigger and bigger amount of people who are just there for the social benefits.

So what can you do to achieve your ambitious goals? Reduce the workforce and try to find a cutting point where you get rid of mostly parasites while keeping your ambitious work bees around.

Usually at the same time of the cut, some of the work bees also get raises and promotions, because then there's some free budget. So if you are an ambitious work bee, then "cutting staff" is actually also good news.

Finding the right cutting point is really the important point and hardest part. For instance you don't want to lay off people who really are performers but for some reason or another (e.g. they just got a baby) they don't perform right now. So at least in the companies I could look inside until now the cutting point is usually well inside the slackers group, so that the people who would recover and then start performing again have a chance to continue.

In the end, even the most tyranical ass-hole leader wants to have as many people as possible work as hard as possible to achieve his goals for him, in exchange for an amount of money that in most cases is peanuts for him. And not all leaders are even tyranical ass-holes.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#310

Post by TheSwordsman »

Retric wrote: post #305
pavelrub wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the rationale behind that? This clearly places limitations on a company's ability to optimize for achieving its goals, and ultimately stifles innovation. At the very least the long term impact of those downsides needs to be incorporated into any sort of social calculus. Would you prefer to live in a world without Teslas or SpaceXs, as long as employees are "taken care" of by their companies? This isn't…

SpaceX could quickly shrink by 10% via attrition and not highering new people. They can get rid of dead weight by firing people. This kind of small scale lay-off is mostly a stunt, or just sign of incompetence.

What's the current SpaceX attrition rate like, and how does that change across different organizations? It could be a response to their attempt to gain additional funding, and something they heard or agreed to for said funding. Speculation, but wouldn't surprise me.
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