SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce • Hacker News Board

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#461

Post by syncmaster913n » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

roedog wrote: post #455

Robotbeat wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, Space X costs less than half than a ULA launch. I suspect that ULA spends that additional money on large sub-contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for the Delta and Atlas vehicles. This makes me think that when we add up the employees on the subcontracts the space X staffing number will be much more impressive in it's leanness. I hope they all join my company, we've got a lot of work they would find interesting. Wit…

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

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#462

Post by gdy » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

btrask wrote: post #433

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.

"If you're employing people to do something robots can't, you need to understand that the way to treat them is also different"

And if you're employing people to do what robots can do, you can treat them as robots?

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#463

Post by onetimemanytime » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #402

wcoenen wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those employees go to China with trade secrets, they might be violating ITAR. ITAR is enforced with big fines and prison time.

Not easy to catch though.

zaktly, and one is enough. No doubt in my mind that China has at least a few spies in all major US companies. It's hard to catch, especially if you have a nation state teaching you how to.

But then a job is nothing compared to what China can pay them for a thumb-drive full of Tesla's secrets so even highly paid employees might do it for money. (Tesla is opening a factory in China though...so they might be ready to have some secrets stolen /priced in)

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#464

Post by onetimemanytime » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #407

ginko wrote: post #330

Not sure if this is still the case but didn't SpaceX make a point to stick to trade secrets instead of patents[1] for fear of Chinese rocket agencies copying them anyways? If they lay off 10% of their workforce, how do they ensure that their trade secrets are kept safe? Lay off only low-risk employees? NDAs? It was my understanding that the degree to which those can be enforced in California is limited. [1] https://w…

>It was my understanding that the degree to which those can be enforced in California is limited. California limits non-compete agreements and anti-moonlighting clauses however, as far as I know, does not limit NDAs.

Ok, but they might know classified information. Maybe when they worked or accessed it they agreed to keep it secret forever. That trumps usual NDAs.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#465

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #350

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And your usage of sadistic is hyperbolic. Obviously. It's still a shitty thing to do. > We don’t know the details, employees may have known before walking out the door. Huh? We have multiple SpaceX employees on Reddit saying they were told to go home and wait for emails. Some took hours, some are still waiting.

Source: reddit is not compelling, ever.

That's your comeback? "Literally every single person who posts on Reddit ever is a liar"?

You can just admit that you didn't read the top-level comment that we're discussing, you know. It wouldn't look as silly as this.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#466

Post by pferde » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #435

pferde wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Of course, it's not 100% accurate, but so far, it looks like there's some good observation behind the firing decisions.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#467

Post by johnchristopher » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #334

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…

Employees can also leave at anytime for arbitrary reasons.

Employees rarely leave for "arbitrary" reasons.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#468

Post by HeavyStorm » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

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.

That's, of course, totally dependant on your line of business.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#469

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #372

fma wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for GM (for now). 15% layoffs were announced before Christmas... No one knows when the ax will drop. Rumor is Monday or Tuesday. Moral is low and the office has been pretty damn quiet. Meanwhile we just raises earnings forecast today...

Which is kinda just how capitalism "works". In certain circumstances, once the means of production are created [most of] the workers are no longer needed, but the means being privately held (by a narrow group of owners) means they alone can benefit going forward. You can make a feast together and share it; or you can make a feast together, kick out most of the helpers and gorge yourself. Capitalism says the second op…

>>but the means being privately held (by a narrow group of owners) means they alone can benefit going forward.

No, capital expanding has social benefits in reducing consumer prices, which increases purchasing power.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#470

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #456

roenxi wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking, Capitalism says that the Capitalists get to choose which option they go with. In a system with healthy incentives, we might expect Option 1 to be the sensible capitalist equilibrium, because capital needs to be maintained and the builders/maintainers become the same people. Don't forget that, in theory, the workers can become capitalists themselves if they aren't getting a good share of the benefit…

You don't "become" capitalist, a capitalist has capital, and if you don't have any capital, you're not a capitalist.

Anyone saving/investing a portion of their income is becoming a capitalist.