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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

#431

Post by Spooky23 »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #430
Spooky23 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve pushed millions out of the workforce, partially with prisons, partially with welfare reform. There’s basically two Americas. In the other one, 40-60% of adults aren’t working.

The employment to population ratio is 79.7% for people 25-54. That has only been exceeded for less than 10 years in history. The only time it has ever been exceeded by more than a point was June 1997-May 2001 during the dot-com bubble.

For some demographic groups, labor force participation is significantly lower. This is what I’m referring to.

Unemployment only factors in labor force participants.

Data: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#432

Post by taurath »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #414

My gut says this is an aggressive Muskian decimation. 1) Maybe brought on themselves: 'hey, design/build the thing, then fire those who designed it' type thing, which definitely happens. It happens to companies in a crunch, or those who just put the outcome ahead of everything else. 2) A decimation: let's use this as an opportunity to drop anyone we feel is not cutting it - and teams that we created/hired we realize…

Presumably, one doesn’t want to prune a spaceflight organization quite as aggressively if it jeopardizes mission safety...

Could also be that they consider themselves “done” with major design phases of the heavy, while the people mover stuff is too far away to engage mid level designers with effectively?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#433

Post by btrask »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #414

My gut says this is an aggressive Muskian decimation. 1) Maybe brought on themselves: 'hey, design/build the thing, then fire those who designed it' type thing, which definitely happens. It happens to companies in a crunch, or those who just put the outcome ahead of everything else. 2) A decimation: let's use this as an opportunity to drop anyone we feel is not cutting it - and teams that we created/hired we realize…

> imagine they were 'robots'

No. Don't.

Edit to add: I understand you were using this as a thought experiment. Sorry for knee-jerking.

If you're employing people to do something robots can't, you need to understand that the way to treat them is also different. This goes double if your mission is to improve the world instead of outright capitalism.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#434

Post by njarboe »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #425
syntaxing wrote: post #410

It's not unsual to layoff 10% of your workforce in hardware companies but it is unusual for a "growing" company. To put in perspective Pratt and Whitney laid off about 10-15% a couple years ago when they were in between the phasing out of the old engine and ramping up the new engine. Sometimes companies are unlucky because there is a drought where the demand for the new stuff is lower than the demand of old stuff but…

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.

Probably would depend on who was in the 20% who left. Having the people in the management structure select the correct people to fire is probably not that common. Especially in big, old companies where management has evolved over a long time to select for people who don't get fired instead of people who work well together and do a good job.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#435

Post by jjoonathan »

pferde wrote: post #327
JKCalhoun wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must be great for morale.

It really is. After every such round, I think to myself "finally!". And things start getting done slightly faster afterwards. Edit: In any big corp, there are usually many employees who act as "barriers" to others. Either because they feel secure enough in their job and don't really care about performing, or because they lost sight of why things are being done, and are focusing on bureaucracy and "processes" for the…

The rounds of firing reliably identify the low productivity people? I'd have expected the opposite -- that they reliably identify those least able to swing the politics necessary to win high-visibility work, who in my experience are typically high-productivity individuals.

If the decimations have been going on for some time, I'd expect them to reliably hit low-performers, but only because the obvious low performers were hired as sacrificial lambs in the first place, which puts the whole exercise deep in "cobra effect" territory.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#436

Post by zorga »

Marsymars wrote: post #89
zorga wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A business has no responsibility to financially support an ex-employee. If it does so, it's a gift, not something that should be expected.

In many jurisdictions, such a responsibility does exist as mandated by law.

Not in this country.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#437

Post by Fronzie »

derekp7 wrote: post #146
raz32dust wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SpaceX is offering a minimum of eight weeks’ pay and other benefits to laid-off workers, according to Shotwell’s email. The company will also provide assistance with career coaching, resume help and job searches." - They are supporting them through it. I think this is as bad as any other way of lay off. Those 1:1s are farcical anyway. Only thing that could be better is to just send the mail only to the laid off empl…

Again, having gone through this a decade ago, that assistance gets outsourced to a company that specializes in it. Effectively it feels like you are attending a community college class on "how to find a job". It's not like they are going to call up a bunch of employers and try to match you to another position somewhere, you are still going to have to do a lot of legg work (home work) yourself. In my case it was somew…

The 6 month emergency fund is good for another reason, as f-you fund: in case working conditions get bad, you know you can just walk away. Somehow the knowing is enough, you never have to mention it, the confidence somehow shines through if you have a difficult chat with your manager.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#438

Post by MarcysVonEylau »

It all makes sense when you look at basic facts.

Rocket reuse became a normal occurance, probably earlier than the majority of the industry anticipated. Their competitive pricing took the market by storm, changing the equation of sending anything to space. There are less new payloads to launch in 2019, because it takes much longer to contract and build a satellite than to send it to space, and the market hasn't yet adapted to this new mechanic.

Their need for manufacturing new boosters scaled down greatly because of reusability. You cannot reasign all engineers to other projects, some must go.

On top of that SpaceX is moving to new risky projects like the Starship, and they need to cut any fat that poses risk to their long term plans.

Lastly, as few pointed out, it's a great opportunity to get rid of underperforming employees and restructure the company.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#439

Post by jamiek88 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #422
nickthemagicman wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not easy to catch though.

Define easy anyone who works on such technologies is on some FBI database somewhere and likely more than just one. SpaceX doesn’t hire non-US citizens due to how hard it is to get the security clearance needed for them if they try to go to China they will likely get caught maybe not everyone, but enough to prevent any real knowledge transfer and more importantly the first one that will get caught is going to be made…

They can and do hire approved permanent residents too.

It’s harder but they can work on ITAR information too.

However the point stands that those people are vetted and tracked. How effective that is once they are in China or Russia etc I don’t know.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#440

Post by ascar »

Cardinal_ wrote: post #386
the8472 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bolstering this point of view is that the USA has a 4% unemployment rate As a counterpoint, Germany has much stronger employee protection laws and unions and has a comparable unemployment rate. That said, resizing is still possible there, it just has some lag.

Kinda off topic but job protection in Germany is such a joke it's almost fake news. Got terminated recently after 12 months for no reason, filed for unfair dismissal, won the case. 3000 eur is what I got (lawyer fees 1500). You can be fired for very little cost, it's dangerous to think you're protected.

My aunt got laid off after ~40 years of employment, which meant a welcomed bit early retirement for her and a multiple year salary severance pay.

My mom got laid off after a bit over 15 years of employment and got about 2 years salary as severance pay.

On top of that stuff like healthinsurance isn't a "benefit", but a social security and taken care of even in unemployment.

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