
SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce - berbec
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-layoffs-20190111-story.html
======
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.

~~~
7e
The launch market is very small and it's always taken longer to build a
satellite than to provision the launch vehicle.

These layoffs are a direct result of SpaceX's recent failures to raise money.

~~~
icpmacdo
Can you link to the failure to raise money? I thought they just secured 500
million.

~~~
azernik
$500M was the size of the offering; as of 3 January, they had only managed to
raise $273M

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141219...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141219000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml)

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

~~~
garmaine
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.

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

------
roedog
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 about how they're
going to increase development while cutting staff. The big aero firms have
room for improvement on productivity. But SpaceX has been lean from the start.
I wonder how they'll get more out of an already highly productive team. That'd
be something to learn from.

~~~
consumer451
> 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](https://www.spacex.com/careers/list)

~~~
ricardobeat
At <5% of the employee count, those hires might barely cover churn.

~~~
consumer451
That’s a really good point.

------
syntaxing
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 you have to phase it out to maintain product
lifecycles for sustainable growth.

~~~
AdrianB1
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.

~~~
ecshafer
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, so one bad project doesn't ruin their
lives.

~~~
rmdashrfstar
I think it's less about building a career and more about accomplishing the
goals of the CEO and the company.

~~~
riffraff
Having a workforce that is unhappy and worried about their career and life is
not a recipe to achieve goals sustainably, maybe.

------
whatshisface
10% is a big fraction. How often do large, stable companies execute a layoff
like that? Sometimes layoffs can be not so bad, for example when that's the
company's way of clearing off the managers' firing wishlist without incurring
legal trouble. However at 10% of the workforce, this may be a change of
direction away from R&D and towards sitting on the falcon 9 and launching to
LEO.

~~~
stupidcar
Maybe, maybe not. Consider it in terms of your own workplace: if you worked on
a team of 10, and one person got laid off, would that seem so huge? I think
the question is whether this round of layoffs is in response to an acute cash
flow issue or just part of long-term financial prudency. They fact that they
waited until after Christmas and are providing 8 weeks of pay and benefits
makes me hopeful that it's the latter.

Also, given that Falcon 9 is now essentially "done", I expect there probably
is a fair bit of internal capacity that's accumulated during its development
which can be cut. For example, SpaceX is famous for building a lot of
components in house, but perhaps they'll move more to using subcontractors for
Falcon 9 parts. That might free up money to spend on R&D. The challenge will
be to become leaner and save money in the core launch business without
compromising standards. It'll only take a couple of accidents to trash their
reputation.

~~~
sonnyblarney
10% is huge by any measure.

~~~
fma
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...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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 option is better because you get to have more.

~~~
roenxi
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 benefits. In my view usually when they
don't it is because of government interference (eg, the pre-Uber situation in
taxis, or how regulation tends to entrench existing players).

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

~~~
FakeComments
I disagree.

As an example, someone who switches from working as a landscaper to running a
landscaping business has switched from a worker role to a capitalist role —
even though they likely spent less money doing so than a software engineer
worker owns. Being a “capitalist” is defined by capitalizing ventures, not the
mere volume of capital.

I would argue that the reason society has become so disequitable is that we’ve
made it difficult to transition between worker and small capitalist — that is
to say, that we’ve undermined small and lifestyle businesses.

------
swampthinker
This isn't the first time SpaceX has done a 10% layoff round [1]. It seems
like they do this at key inflection points where they're relatively sure they
can make the next tech leap, and need to retool their workforce.

[1]
[https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35254.0](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35254.0)

~~~
mellow-lake-day
Tesla also had one last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17295725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17295725)

------
ginko
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://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-elon-musks-spacex-
protecte...](https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-elon-musks-spacex-protected-
without-patents-cm231445)

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

~~~
nickthemagicman
Not easy to catch though.

~~~
dogma1138
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 an
example for the rest.

~~~
jamiek88
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.

~~~
dogma1138
They can but I don’t think they do that Elon was asked several why don’t they
hire non citizens.

I’m sure some special cases do happen but the bulk of their workforce is US
citizens.

And again you assume that they won’t get caught going to Russia or China to
begin with or that they won’t be tasked with assets in country once they
arrive.

We’re talking about 500-600 people here out of them it’s not clear how many
would be really critical for technology transfer prevention but say it’s 25%
so what we have is about 150 people or so that need to be tracked say 10% out
of those will be contacted by a foreign entity that’s what 15 people?

It’s really not hard to track them at that point.

In fact I would guarantee you that this likely will be covered by their exit
interview, they might even get a “scary” federal agent explaining them the
do’s and don’ts and likely many of them already know them.

And again this isn’t a new thing, NASA and the defense industry have fired
people before it’s jot like it’s the first time that 500 people with security
clearances lose jobs.

~~~
lutorm
They don't care if you're a citizen or not, they care about whether you're
legally allowed to work on rockets. From an ITAR perspective, a green card
holder is the same as a US citizen, and from a recruiting perspective there is
no difference.

------
sonnyblarney
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 we don't
want/need.

3) General organizational shakeup.

4) A true and real opex cutback ahead of anticipated future needs.

The thing is - outside of human terms - it's a big cut but it might be highly
rational.

'Pruning' I think is a essential aspect of any healthy organization, forcing
entities to rethink, to shake them out of their settled positions, getting rid
of organizational cruft.

Of course, there are humans behind every decision which makes it quite
fundamentally something else.

But if you could imagine they were 'robots', as if to remove any issues of
compassion and concern for externalized outcomes, and this were simply a
simple dispassionate re-org ... then you can see where the economics might be
pointing.

We also don't know the terms of the layoff: maybe some of them are voluntary.
Maybe the payouts are huge. Sometimes these things work out well for a lot of
those involved, obviously it doesn't for others.

~~~
btrask
> 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.

~~~
gdy
"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?

------
killjoywashere
For comparison, DoD is reducing its medical workforce for 13%, 17,000 jobs.
Makes total sense to me. I only work 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, so
really, less than half-time.

[https://www.military.com/daily-
news/2019/01/10/more-17000-un...](https://www.military.com/daily-
news/2019/01/10/more-17000-uniformed-medical-jobs-eyed-elimination.html)

~~~
dmichulke
That's because the DoD is probably the most cash-strapped ministry of all
ministries of all nations /s

------
Deimorz
According to some comments from employees, the company had an all-hands
meeting where everyone was sent home and told to check their email over the
weekend to find out if they're being laid off or not:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_reduce_its_workforce_by_10_percent/edute2h/?context=2)

~~~
viraptor
Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just
unnecessarily cruel.

~~~
mulmen
What's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this
particularly egregious?

~~~
cyberferret
Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and
disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving
them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then
please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the
future.

To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job
come next working day is tantamount to playing Russian Roulette with them
using a gun with a 2 bullet chamber - one loaded. The psychological toll even
on the 'survivors' will be brutal.

~~~
zamadatix
"Fire by email" isn't a bad option for layoffs in the double digit percentage
as long as the delay between notification and sending the emails is low.
Meeting 1 on 1 only works in non targeted low scale layoffs, anywhere else and
it just creates hysteria.

Also fire by email doesn't mean there isn't a definitive exit path or no
financial support. The article itself states the email claimed a minimum of 8
weeks of pay for those laid off.

Also it's 90/10 not 50/50\. If you were firing 50% of your workforce there is
no avoiding a "brutal" psychological toll for the remaining.

~~~
SampleBourgeois
Elon Musk is sticking to the Roman definition of decimation

~~~
SEJeff
The roman definition involved beating 1 in 10 to death by the "coworkers", so
no, I don't think 8 weeks of severance and helping them write resumes plus get
new jobs elsewhere is a very good definition of decimation.

------
technotony
Some think you should do this annually. "Back when he was running GE, Jack
Welch famously argued that leaders should fire the bottom 10 percent of their
workforce each year, as part of an orderly continuous improvement process."
[https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-
your-...](https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-
employees-every-year.html)

~~~
MisterOctober
Yep, the warped logic of stack ranking still infects HR thought to this day,
in some quarters anyway. It's one of those notions that sounds brilliant at
first, but then when you think it all the way through, it reveals itself as
patently bizarre and misguided.

As noted, it creates a _really_ unhealthy intra-team sabotage mindset as
everybody competes to avoid being at the bottom of the stack. It puts managers
in a horrible spot, having to rank 'n' purge when maybe their team was humming
along wonderfully all year. It creates an atmosphere of awful fear and dread
that distracts from the work.

As one of my buddies said back when MS was still using this accursed system --
"If they'd used stack-ranking at Los Alamos, hell, Oppenheimer would probably
have had to fire Feynman!" {obviously not reflective of the historical
reality, but I think pithy nonetheless}

~~~
erikpukinskis
Sounds like all of the issues could be solved by just not being committed to
10%, moving to 5% or 2.5% as your workforce gets stronger. And spread the
responsibility of choosing who to fire beyond single individuals, so a team of
people is responsible for figuring out who is not contributing.

~~~
cryptonector
That would help, but even so, stack ranking is social and cultural poison. You
can do it one random year, but do it every year and watch cooperation within
and between teams die out because it's a dog eat dog world you've built.

At what point will business schools please start teaching that stack ranking
is a bad idea?

------
awake
They've proven that they can make reusable rocket. In the early days they had
around 6 launches per year requiring six separate rockets. Now they're hitting
20-25 launches per year and can carry an even larger payload on each launch.
But they claim to be able to fly each rocket ten times before needing to make
a new one. So you're going from 6 new rockets per year to 2 new rockets per
year. Also rockets are not like your software programs that get rewritten
every time a manager feels like it. You stick with what works. I think this is
entirely expected.

~~~
whatshisface
> _So you 're going from 6 new rockets per year to 2 new rockets per year.
> Also rockets are not like your software programs that get rewritten every
> time a manager feels like it. You stick with what works._

Last year, SpaceX had big plans for new rocket designs, a satellite
constellation, and more. Unlike a ravioli canning plant, SpaceX has an option
other than cutting down to maintnence staff once cash flow positive. If the
worst possible interpretation of this news turns out to be true, they will end
up managed like a ravioli canning plant and the hockey stick growth
projections will go out the window.

~~~
awake
Unless they're cutting the satellite constellation I think this fits in with
what people expected for SpaceX's growth. The problem is even as costs for
rocket launches go down we aren't seeking hockey stick growth in the demand
for rocket launches. The number of rocket launches per year has remained
steady since 2015. SpaceX is getting an increasing number of those launches
but even if they got all of them they would only have 40 launches. I'm not
sure what else they've publicly advertised which would assume hockey stick
growth.

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
There have been plenty of satellite price flexibility studies that show there
is a marked lag between supply and demand.

This is because high launch costs demand extraordinary levels of design and
Q&A: there may never be a second chance. Unfortunately, these supply chains
have flexibility baked out for some time, perhaps predating the Apollo era.

Lowered launch costs and increased launch opportunities offer increasing
failure tolerance to an increasing number of projects which can now afford
second chances and backup plans. However, these corporate cultures take time
to adapt, they've been built around single-shot opportunities for decades.

TLDR: satellite markets are anything but nimble at this point, due to
historical reasons. This will change, given time.

~~~
shaklee3
I don't think it has anything to do with launch costs. Satellites take a very
long time to develop, and they're hundreds of millions of dollars. You have
one shot to get it right, and lowering launch costs doesn't really make a big
dent in that.

~~~
vidarh
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.

~~~
shaklee3
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 after all is said and done, the launch
cost is still between 5 to 10% of the total costs.

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

------
kepano
If you are affected by the layoffs in Los Angeles, working in software
engineering (esp. on ERP and internal tools), UI/UX, or supply chain — my
company, Lumi is hiring [https://www.lumi.com/jobs](https://www.lumi.com/jobs)

~~~
TimesOldRoman
Checking in. Spent 6 years at X and this sounds interesting.

~~~
kepano
If you are curious you can read more about us here:

[https://medium.com/fuzzy-sharp/custom-manufacturing-
should-b...](https://medium.com/fuzzy-sharp/custom-manufacturing-should-be-as-
scalable-as-the-web-964aaa6f5a37)

If you don't find something that fits in our job listings you can also name
your own job:

[https://www.lumi.com/jobs/name-your-job](https://www.lumi.com/jobs/name-your-
job)

~~~
theNJR
Oh my gosh. You solved one of the two most painful parts of selling a physical
product. I’m frustrated right now just thinking about how frustrating
packaging was for me as CMO of a fast growing CPG startup.

Now do this for contracat manufacturing.

------
antpls
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 decisions in
the long-run.

Will the 10% of the employees be the ones who are already in the less
comfortable financial and social situation in their private life ?

~~~
pavelrub
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 necessarily even a false dilemma - it's entirely
conceivable that certain ventures would require some kind of a layoffs
strategy in order to be successful. Nor is it indicative of anything being
wrong with "the state of the company" as you claim, unless you define it as
such.

I find it entirely unconvincing that optimizing for "employee care" is overall
more beneficial to humanity, including for the long term well being of the
exact same employees and their families, than the alternative.

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
ben_w
Downsizing via attrition means your losses are focused on those with both
desire and ability to work elsewhere, and so you keep those who can’t or don’t
want to.

“Don’t want to leave” is good, “can’t get hired anywhere else” is bad, and the
presence of the latter makes it more desirable to leave even places which used
to be fun.

~~~
Retric
That’s another way of saying incompetence.

If you want to roll the dice on a new employee then fire the old one. This
kind of 10% cut results in losing your best who don’t wait around and just
start looking on day one. Worse, they often leave after your round of cuts as
getting an offer is outside of your timeframe.

------
jameslk
SpaceX is not a tech company. Aerospace/defense contractor companies have
frequent layoffs. Usually this occurs when one of these companies don't win a
contract or new regulations cut back on defense/space programs.

------
viraptor
> We had an all hands meeting and were told to go home and wait for an email
> that basically says we stay or go. (from reddit post)

I'm surprised about that idea. At that size I expected them to follow "your
account is locked immediately before you're told" policy. Guaranteeing people
have access to company emails over the weekend and are told they're fired,
sounds like a bad idea for IT to deal with.

~~~
rhizome
Maybe it's doing double duty to sniff out exfiltrators.

------
Rebelgecko
Sounds like 90% of their employees will be working an extra 10% more hours per
week

~~~
throwaway4DFe5
i've done a lot of contract work for spacex. imo i think part of the reason
they work so much is because they have no formal methods group. everyone seems
to solve similar problems in slightly different ways instead of having a
vetted and documented 'right' way to approach certain things. i've literally
been paid to write code that does the same thing for different groups in
slightly different ways. having done a lot of aerospace contracting, this is
atypical from what i've seen elsewhere. my point is that if they formed a
methods group to formalize and standardize across the entire org they might be
fine with a 10% cut if they're not duplicating efforts all over the place.

~~~
tomp
Can you comment on this from the perspective of how the method works, as in
the results it produces and why, as opposed to whether it's standard/common or
not? To me, SpaceX is remarkable because they've done what the rest of the
world failed to do for 20 years. That's of course a combination of factors -
vision, drive, start-up mentality - but are their actual processes/development
methods also in any way better than in traditional space companies?

------
cvakang
IMHO, If I could guess announcing it all employees tells that you all are
expendable. If you are doing that is not important for the company. You could
be sent home forever. Gives a sense to everyone to pull up their shocks. Two
days to think about your short commings

------
bredren
It is a good thing SpaceX has kept private. This is a category that does not
seem like the company would be better off public.

------
Others
Is this a bad sign for SpaceX? Is ‘getting leaner’ why they’re really doing
this?

~~~
manicdee
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, less demand for welders to build new
rockets).

It doesn’t help that there’s been little warning (though I guessing a lot of
these employees had some warning that they are going ormtheir teams are
getting thinned).

I hope for the best, the people leaving SpaceX have certainly got great
resumes to recommend them to new employers!

~~~
shaklee3
Falcon heavy is anything but operational. It has yet to prove itself and
launch real payloads.

~~~
manicdee
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.

------
GeorgeTirebiter
When you lay people off en-mass, that's a Management Error. I'm surprised
nobody here has yet mentioned this fact yet.

Laying off (firing) individuals; or, if a change in strategic direction,
laying off entire groups -- that's business.

But 'doing a Jack Welsh' \-- that's Poor Management. I can only imagine that
Bezos and Branson and ULA will be able to pick up some great employees.

And as for 'cutting the low performers' \-- in my many years in industry, I've
only seen this happen once. Every other person was 'let go' due to 'political'
reasons.

My major point: This move signifies a colossal management fail. I'm looking at
you, Elon.

------
mpg33
Had no idea they had 6000 employees..

~~~
arthurcolle
The article cites "at least 7,000" actually.

~~~
sabertoothed
You sure?

~~~
arthurcolle
Literally from the article:

> The company employed at least 7,000 people in late 2017 when COO Gwynne
> Shotwell last gave a number — which means around 700 will lose their jobs.

~~~
sdinsn
I don't know what article you are reading, but that line isn't in it. This one
is though:

> SpaceX, citing a need to get “leaner,” said Friday it will lay off more than
> 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.

~~~
arthurcolle
My mistake.

I somehow had another article on the same topic open, from TechCrunch.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off-
hundre...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off-hundreds-to-
become-a-leaner-company/)

------
niciliketo
Sorry for the people that are affected. Space X has achieved some incredible
things. Redundancy can give you the freedom to try something new.

------
joecool1029
To get around paywall:
[https://outline.com/Ewv9xM](https://outline.com/Ewv9xM)

~~~
vonseel
Should be top comment!!!

------
reasonablemann
Reminiscent of Goldman's annual 'culling'
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+staf+culling](https://www.google.com/search?q=Goldman+Sachs+staf+culling)

------
joelthelion
To me the main question is, can they maintain a high level of quality while
laying off people?

I've seen this first hand in my own company since they started laying off
people on a regular basis. People try hard to keep things working, but quality
inevitably degrades over time. In most areas, it's not necessarily obvious. In
rocket engineering, on the other hand...

------
carlio
Alternative source for those without access to the LA Times.
[https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/tech/spacex-
layoffs/index.htm...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/tech/spacex-
layoffs/index.html)

I'm still skeptical of Starlink but I hope this all works out.

------
datahipster
If you're affected by this and would love to work on a dedicated team
developing spacecraft orbit simulation software, my company is hiring. Please
send me an e-mail at stefan.novak@ai-solutions.com.

------
bsaul
Since there seems to be various personal preferences on the best way to fire
people i wonder if any companies ask « if we should fire you, how would you
like it to be done ? » at hiring time.

------
azatris
If what SpaceX is doing aligns with my values very well, but I live in Europe
as a software engineer, how could I help the goals of this private company? Is
it even possible?

------
w-m
Oh, the LA Times seem to finally have taken down their GDPR wall. This is the
first article on their domain that I’m able to read since last May, from
Europe.

~~~
phendrenad2
They probably realized that they'll still get GDPR requests from EU citizens
living abroad, so the block was fairly pointless.

~~~
azernik
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/](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. e.g. you would be a data subject, the LA Times would be the controller,
and Google Analytics would be a data processor.

==================================

1\. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context
of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the
Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.

2\. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data
subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in
the Union, where the processing activities are related to: a) the offering of
goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is
required, to such data subjects in the Union; or b) the monitoring of their
behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.

3\. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller
not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by
virtue of public international law.

~~~
phendrenad2
Ah, thanks, I must have gotten that in the early days of the GDPR, when there
was a lot of misinformation.

------
NoblePublius
This is what any good big company does every two or three years. Rank order.
Dismiss bottom decile. Thank you, Jack Welch.

------
Reason077
Tesla did roughly the same thing in June 2018. Then went on to have a
blockbuster quarter in Q4.

[https://electrek.co/2018/06/12/tesla-layoffs-workforce-
restr...](https://electrek.co/2018/06/12/tesla-layoffs-workforce-restructure/)

------
moajday
Downsizing is a norm. All the 10% will find 100% better jobs. Good luck!

------
TimesOldRoman
Checking in. I'll be back with a refreshed resume in the morning.

------
hackbinary
Seems to me they have plenty of vacancies[1]. It seems to me that these
announcements can just be smoke and mirrors.

[1] [https://www.spacex.com/careers/list](https://www.spacex.com/careers/list)

------
dorkwood
How many more 10% layoffs until they’re down to just 1 employee?

~~~
pulkitanand
Mathematically, never. :)

------
rabbitonrails
This should be great for the share price. No joke -- cut the fat.

------
choonway
maybe this has something to do with abandoning carbon fibre / heat resistant
tiles with stainless steel?

------
33a
I'm just glad they did this before all those people were on mars.

------
jpgvm
Unpopular opinion but I'm a fan of this. In the Tesla case they mostly cut
deadweight from the Solarcity acquisition and the resultant company has
performed better for it.

If you don't have a firing heavy culture sometimes this is the only reasonable
way to lean teams up again and ensure your best team members are not dragged
down by mediocrity.

