This is disgusting behavior from SpaceX. It must be even worse for the majority of older people who are more likely to have well established families and "only" want to spend 40 hours of their lives a week working.
The fact they had an expert working 10 hours a day 7 days a week apparently was not enough. They have to be in their twenties to get the real "techbro" badge.
I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
Having a single point of failure is a terrible idea for the health of the company. It is often unavoidable early on in a product, but if the product is successful, there is a strong need to eliminate the single point of failure.
This can be very hard on engineers that were previous the go-to person for a key area. The person and product was successful so the ask to delegate and dilute ownership seems completely illogical. Some ICs don't want to give this up and so they switch from IC to management for the wrong reasons, leading to a manager that isn't really interested in management and is reluctant to delegate and enable the team.
I've seen this occur many times and it's always painful. Starlink is now large enough that it's a huge risk to have a single key person responsible for optics.
It sounds like the author was never given the chance to build organizational redundancy. It was done around and without them in a strangely secretive way.
It's important to remember that we're only hearing one side of the story here.
It's very clear the author has emotion about what's going on, and there are several emotionally toned segments in his account. That's understandable, but it also likely means that this is a biased account of what transpired.
Fundamentally, it sounds like SpaceX is having other engineers shadow him because he's a single point of failure. That part alone is not remarkable.
From the sounds of it, they were hiring inexperienced/incompetent yes-people into areas of his expertise. That's not really organisational redundancy in my book. Just more blood for the blood gods. I have been places where there's something very simple that a dozen people don't know how to do or the reason why it is there or that it even existed.
>I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps.
Hasn't it always been this way at organizations, tech or not? Not even suck ups but people that don't cause a stir, keep their heads down, yes men to whatever the manager asks, etc.
Personally, I've seen it in action in a workplace where everyone "loves" so and so. That person would put on a good face and tell them how "amazing" everything was in every interaction. Behind their backs, that definitely wouldn't be the dialogue.
>You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary.
Or less. A name brand, prestige title, or industry. When I worked in visual effects, it's enough to get your name at the end of a movie to justify working 80-90 hour weeks. Video game peeps had it worse and you don't even see their names on a big screen.
>It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
This is pretty visible in transitions right? New manager comes in, people loyal to old ones start melting away to different groups or leave to either join old manager or go somewhere else. The new manager brings in people they know and trust.
Sucking up to some degree is team work. You need to know how to work with people to get what you need and move the company forward. Each person is different and part of working at a large company is learning how to interact with a multitude of personalities, many that you would not get along with outside of work.
It is like high school, it is like politics, it is like any group of humans interacting. You skills are part of the equation, but your people skills are as well.
It's the people who can go with the flow that stick around long term and actually have a meaningful impact on the success of the company. It's very easy to get caught up and think everyone is against you and burn out.
I think the distinction is it’s a very different to schmooze as a way of getting things done in service of a larger mission vs sucking up in a non-productive way of meeting purely selfish ends.
They don't also (I believe) take work away from younger workers because they are more likely to change jobs frequently—which is much more common. Pretty clearly ageism.
Karoshi is a real thing, and something that gets exponentially more likely as people grow older. There's nothing unethical about setting adequate boundaries so that even the most committed and hard-working employee does not inadvertently burn out, or worse. Work smarter, not just harder.
From reading the article he would have been fine if they assigned him as the manager to train them. But they took over his roles, required training and didn't report to him in any way.
I'm guessing they probably worked on different teams with their own managers. There is a lot of overlap between purchasing, supply chain, manufacturing, design, etc.. We're talking about hundreds of people.
He also wasn't a manager to begin with, that requires it's own set of training, but we are getting way way in the weeds here to even be talking about this all on one person's point of view. There are so many factors that go into org structures, interviews, cross team collaboration, etc..
It's easy to feel slighted when you don't have a full picture. What we do know is the work pace is so frantic that I wouldn't attribute these things to malice immediately. Just a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in a short amount of time.
SpaceX sends real people on rockets into space. If they dont do the job right, people could die. Ive had a back injury, I actually had an artificial disc placed at my L4/L5 (which by the way is a life-saver and my back is 100% now). But there is no way in hell I could do a demanding job or any job at all when I was going through that. Creating redundancy for his position is a no-brainer in this situation.
Its OK for people to take time off for things like back surgury, and people should be able to expect they get their job back when they recuperate. The business processes' should be setup such that the business can accomidate this kind of thing, its the cost of doing business. Anything less is just lazy and cheap management and leadership.
Designing medical devices does not equivalate to having had a back issue and knowing what that entails. They run a lean team, they need their people now. Not in 6 months to a year after a back issue is resolved. Its not a union job. Thats what you sign up for.
for teh_klev below: You're taking a complete strangers begruntled story at face value. Again, I had back surgery, there is no way in hell he only missed a few days of work or was working anywhere close to capacity through this ordeal. Back injuries where you need surgery dont just disrupt your work, it disrupts your entire life and it takes time to put the pieces back together.
> I had back surgery, there is no way in hell he only missed a few days of work or was working anywhere close to capacity through this ordeal.
I'm sorry, are you a doctor? A friend of mine just had back surgery a month ago. Something with his spinal fluid. He was fine & pain free after three days. They sent him home from hospital after four at which point he went back to work.
There are so many reasons why someone may have back surgery.
You seem to deduce something from /your/ back surgery. A specific case and a sample size of one ...
Isn't this at odds with your previous comment about redundancy being a no-brainer?
He was a principle engineer in an optics lab. Having worked in both optics labs and aerospace, I can say there is very little reason to think that a "bad back" in those roles puts astronauts at additional risk.
You're all turned around here, let me try to help.
First, I want to thank you for sharing your medical challenges. Coincidentally I've also had quite a bit of back issues my whole life, and it seems to he getting worse. I'm at the age now that I'm expecting some sort of surgury is in my future if I want to stay active for another 20-30 years. Congratulations on your 100% pain reduction after recovery. Having designed quite a few products in that space (surgical navigation systems, bone drills, taps and screws, etc) I know from personal experience that that orthopedics is a pretty brutal thing, that's why they cannot Ortho surgeons "mechanics". So thanks for that. Here's to you and your continued health, and hopefully when the time comes for me I have a similar result. You've given me hope, that's one of the greatest things one can give another - thank you.
On to getting you turned around.
1 - I mentioned my career in medical devices because you menrioned in your comment the seriousness of OPs work and that if they mess something up people could die. I've designed high volume disposibles that are made in quantities of hundreds of thousands, also capital equipment that has a typical life span of 5-10 years. If a mistake I made gets all the way to the patient hundreds, likely thousands of people could be harmed or killed. (See the Phillips ventilator stuff currently in the news). That being said, in highly regulated spaces like medical, aerospace, cars, etc. if such a mistake made it all the way to the customer, it's not typically viewed as a failure of the engineer that made the mistake, but as a failure of the company process'. There are tons of checks and balances built into the system (by law) such they there has to be a real systemic problem with the company, it's culture and processes, for a mistake to result in harm. Again, see the ongoing phillips thing.
2 - I have also spent much of my career in small teams, often less than 10. Still, in these cases, people get to take care of themselves without fearing for their jobs.
3 - Precisely because of the importance of the work is why you want a veteran engineer like OP. In one hour of work they could identify and resolve an issue that may take less experienced engineers a month for find and solve. I know because I am that guy, and do it weekly.
4 - Space X is not a small team, they have thousands of engineers, they shouldn't operate this way, and your analogy to your small team doesn't hold in OPs case.
5- IMO you in your situation should run a slightly less lean team that allows for your employees their humanity. If you can't, you don't have a viable business plan and should get anothe r that affords your employees their humanity.
Thanks again for the hope, I wish you the best with your health moving forward.
This (OPs situation with space x) is simply bad management. Criminally so.
Thats shifting the goalpost, I didnt comment on SpaceX overall work hours. I commented on a specific employee being disabled. That said, his rockets work - so what argument do you really have?
for jmull below: "no relevant information" He needed back surgery and I have myself had back surgery. I have first hand experience on this topic. Your comment is really out of touch.
You basically stating that SpaceX have to be careful about letting him work after surgery. At the same time they're totally okay overworking engineers all the time which is known to inevitably lead to human errors.
Fact that Musks' rockets work might be very well despite terrible work conditions.
Yes, redundancy is a good thing. On the other hand, addressing it for an older employee after an injury makes their motivations sound suspect. Would they have treated a younger employee in similar circumstances the same way (because, yes, younger people do get injured)? For that matter, why didn't they have redundancy built into an important role from the outset (making it policy would reduce the likelihood of ageist behaviour)?
Because stakeholders revenue and all that very important stuff on the yearly reports which loses relevance the next year. Because both bonus and dividends are calculated on yearly basis, I'm not sure there's much motivation on the decision makers to put enough weight on the long-term plans. Lip service aside, yeah the most obvious things will be made redundant, all the rest getting pushed aside as "cost of doing business". And they're not even completely wrong.
If that was all they'd done, it would've been fine. However, according to this story, that was just the turning point and even his manager didn't know what was happening.
This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations. There is a reason why the notion of "bus factor" exists and if you are senior enough, it is expected of you to mentor new recruits that ultimately will take your job.
That being said, they way he has been treated is absolutely infuriating and probably illegal in numerous countries which are not the USA.
Certainly, redundancy and spreading of responsibilities is a reasonable way to run important divisions like this.
They way SpaceX went about this as outlined in TFA is absolutely not the way to do it. This guy had no input in the process at all, even from the outset or the hiring, and they didn't even report to him!
That seems like such a terrible way to do it, rife to breed resentment and malicious compliance, and let things fall through the cracks.
When I was involved in a bus problem situation, management came to me and said they were concerned about my workload, the hours I was putting in, and the lack of redundancy my position.
What followed was a 6-month process where I was heavily involved in each step, from scoping out the initial additions to the org chart, writing up job descriptions and expectations, application review and interviews, down to onboarding and training of my new team members. In essence we stood up a new division of what had previously been my one-man show, and I now managed two engineers and an admin assistant to get all the work done. It was, all in all, a marvelous process and I am proud of the team I trained. I got my saturdays back, too.
> This is probably only making any news because it's SpaceX.
Agreed - This is just getting upvoted for the anti-Musk trendiness.
It's also important to note that we're only getting one side of the story here. It's entirely possible that they directly asked him to train other people on what he's doing and that he was uncooperative. Who knows - one-sided stories are one-sided.
Probably because principal engineer is an independent contributor type role. Also sounds like he wasn't part of the hiring team to begin with - which is a lot of overhead if you're already a busy engineer.
>> I hadn’t even been told that people were being hired, nor was I invited to sit in on interviews—though I was the most qualified to discern candidates’ qualifications and experience.
This has become one of my favorite things to do with my experience, and I've helped hire some great people. To keep him out of this process was a terrible decision.
I don't think it was age discrimination so much as politics and empire building.
There is also a tech-bro factor at play here. I saw this while working at a supplier to another Elon company. They get these 23 year-olds that think they can do anything (them getting hired by XYZ Corp is proof right?) and then they do silly things or don't understand the basics. Hey but when they eventually figure stuff out they can claim a few miles range improvement on that car as their own fabulous innovation!
I too don't understand it. Even reading just his side of the story it seems obvious that he got caught in a power struggle between SpaceX and Starlink. A struggle he lost and apparently a struggle he never knew he was in.
I also don't think he has the right attitude for a principle engineer. Junior engineers don't "take over" your roles. They take on the easy parts of projects so that you can focus on the hard stuff. Part of being a senior engineer is training and enabling more junior engineers. A huge part of his job is to eliminate the "bus factor".
That was my original thought as well. But as the article went on, it was made clear that he wasn't part of the process of creating a team where he can delegate. He was later told he wasn't in a management-track position, which seems at odds with the idea that they wanted him to be leading a team of junior engineers.
He has a right attitude. Top management is clearly failing at the job of being respectful and reasonable manager for him, so he should fire that management. And let them fail.
> probably illegal in numerous countries which are not the USA.
As described, it’s probably illegal in the US too. Hence mentioning the notifications to HR.
There is a difference between increasing your bus factor (which is a thing) and age discrimination. Yes, you mentor new recruits, but you’re also part of hiring them. You’re running the team, not getting parts of your job reassigned until there is nothing left.
Yes, this could have happened ultimately been a person caught between a warring Starlink vs SpaceX — but from an employment point of view, I’m not sure it matters.
The right solution is to hire some more people, with input from the critical employee, and have them gradually learn the ropes. And keep the key employees!
One of the most un-intuitive rules of leadership is that you have to make yourself replaceable.
My bosses all know because I always tell them, “if I get hit by a bus, put A in charge of X, promote B to Y, give C to Z”.
On every major project you need at least one ambitious junior engineer who’s been identified as having leadership potential shadowing you and learning the business inside out, who aspires to your job.
If you’re doing cool work these assignments are more valuable than gold to the young people, and they earn you a lifetime of friendship, loyalty and appreciation from them and their managers.
This is how you get to retire in old age as a beloved, valued individual contributor.
If you ignore the leadership part of being a principal engineer and don’t do this, others will do it for you at the worst possible time and you will get fucked.
I think the sticky wicket here is that the author did not feel like they were part of the succession planning and were somewhat blindsided by it.
I agree he probably should have been proactive in making sure someone can step in his role. But also his management should have kept him in the loop and, ideally, playing a fundamental role in selecting his successors. None of that seemed to happen, so it seemed like bad leadership all around.
Maybe. I always take these stories with a grain of salt. The author demonstrates a lot of emotion in his post, so it's hard to know the truth with only one side of the story.
My long-time mentor had a spin on the idea: "The day you start a new role/job/position, look for and start training your replacement".
The core notion is similar: it's not good for you OR your team/company/client, if you are a single-point-of-failure, irreplaceable contributor. And my mentor's spin puts a "selfish" take on it which allows some people to ingest it better - you'll never be able to take the next opportunity, if you have not left behind a working system for your current role.
note: none of this is to say that ageism doesn't exist or that toxic / misguided work cultures don't exist. By all accounts, I would not personally want to work in an Elon Musk company, though I understand those that do. But if I have a super-high performer who is THE ONLY person who can move the needle on a number of high-value projects and is working 70hrs a week to accomplish that... that is a MASSIVE risk to the team and company, and needs to be addressed somehow.
John is a crazy good optical engineer if even 10% of what he says is true. You want a 10x optical engineer, you've found him.
Getting a full metrology lab up and running from scratch in under 7 years would make most R1 professors proud. To do so in under 2 years at a commercial lab is actually amazing.
To then build the relationships up with Thorlabs/Edmunds/Ziess is also pretty amazing. I've tried working with all three of their sales reps before. It's like pulling teeth! And that's with bio-optics. Let alone all the crazy regs and laws that would go along with space-based optics at scale. This is very seriously very impressive!
The bit about having a 20-something shadow him for 2 weeks to 'learn metrology' actually made me laugh out loud. To give the SWEs here an idea, it would be like having an 8 year old try to 'learn Linux' in 2 weeks. Whoever told the kid to try to do that is also so out of their depth that they should be fired too. Metrology, especially optical metrology, is a lifetime of learning and work. Even then, you're still mostly winging it into your 60s.
Optics is Captial-H Hard. It's one of the three domains of physics that smart people never touch, and only fools try to make a living out of (the other two being acoustics and fluids). You can spend a lifetime trying to get alignment on a set of elements or you can get lucky and do it in a few hours. I cannot stress enough how difficult non-theoreticl optics is.
Also, take a note here. By the end, SpaceX is trying to get 5-6 people to do the job of just one somewhat older person. Like, even they think the guy is at least a 5x engineer.
This is a reminder to always figure out the game in an organization and play that game. Don't blindly assume that if you do a good job, you will be safe. You might not like politics, but politics is, unfortunately, a natural part of any organization.
This is a good way to build a questionable reputation.
I’d rather be known as a person who sticks to my principles and strives to do good work than someone who molds myself into whatever shape is necessary to succeed.
This isn’t to say that one should be blind to political realities, but to actively participate is to perpetuate the problems at best, and to destroy one’s reputation at worst.
These environments need people who challenge the bullshit. And in tech, we’re pretty privileged in that it’s generally going to be possible to find something else if necessary.
As someone who has stuck to their principles and had their reputation destroyed by someone else more willing to mold themselves into whatever shape is necessary to succeed, I would submit that yours is a losing proposition. Integrity is not a virtue anybody respects these days.
The parent had it right. Times change. Values change. Adapt or die. Don't end up like me.
Would that person have changed their attempts to destroy your reputation if you had similarly molded yourself into whatever shape necessary?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t adapt, or make smart decisions given the circumstances you’re in.
But they’re a big difference between political awareness/navigation and becoming part of the problem.
> Integrity is not a virtue anybody respects these days.
No offense, but this seems like an incredibly jaded response. It sounds like you went through something that led you to believe that, but I know from direct experience that this isn’t true.
I do think it’s harder and harder to find, but the decline of integrity is hastened by people who choose to embrace the opposite.
I'm probably you in different skin, and goddamnit, get back on the horse. These people will drive everything into the ground if we let them win. People like us are needed. The inflexible ones to convenience. The crazies that set the bar high and keep it there. As soon as that bar slips, it slips hard. Eventually, we'll all end up in approximately the same locations, and shit'll be cash.
Loss of integrity is not an option. Let the schmucks blow themselves up. We're the ones people look up to, and know when we throw in the towel, there is damn well a good reason.
C'mon man. On your feet, we have Windmills to fuck up!
I used to feel the same way, but I don't think the idea is to abandon all your values in pursuit of success. Instead it's to figure out the system you're entering into and how to operate within it, what values of your may have to change or at least be suspended, and what new values you might have to adopt to function. You have to figure out the motivations that move the organization forward, what shadow power structures exist (because trust me, they do), and how to accomplish your job within the political and interpersonal "game" that's already in motion by the time you join. And from someone who has worked in orgs as small as 5 people up to Apple's 80k+ behemoth, one has to do this no matter the organization size.
Of course, if doing so requires you to abandon some of your core values, then perhaps that organization or job isn't a good fit for you anyhow. :)
I fully agree with this comment, and should clarify that I don’t mean one should ignore the environment they’re in and just expect the org to magically bend to their will.
But I’ve worked with two very different types of folks:
1. Those who understand the game, hate it, but do their best to work within it.
2. Those who love, embrace, perpetuate the most problematic elements of said game.
To me, playing the game is the latter.
Operating within the game is the former.
There are some lines I’ll never cross. But that doesn’t mean I won’t work within a challenging environment when necessary.
Having a junior engineer show up to "shadow" you and you've got them filing an HR complaint minutes later is not a commendable trait.
It's a total dick move to rope them into your problem. They (presumably) have nothing to do with any of the politics or age discrimination that might be going on. They're just some young engineer that got something like their dream job and (presumably) want to learn from a principal engineer with decades of experience. Teach them what you know and don't make your problem their problem.
More importantly, it's just unwise. They received a very important piece of information and reacted instead of taking some time to think about the best course of action. Reacting in a way that causes the junior engineer to report it to HR sets off a chain of events that may not be in your interest.
Because drum roll.... HR is not your friend. Their role in this scenario is to protect the company. And the easiest way to protect the company is to root out the malcontent in a way that doesn't get them sued. Especially in this sort of scenario where someone with political capital in the organization is gunning for you. Reaching out to the CEO just sealed his fate.
It's not a matter of principles or doing good work. It's having a basic understanding of how an organization works and acting in a way that will maximize your and/or the companies well being.
> sticks to my principles and strives to do good work
There is a line between challenging bullshit and baseless obstinacy. Every firm is replete with brilliant engineers with whom nobody wants to work, or nobody hears about, and thus who go nowhere, and whose ideas go nowhere. You shouldn’t do anything immoral. But disregarding how a firm communicates aims and values, the essence of politics, is debilitating at best.
I get the feeling reading this that it wasnt exclusively about age - there was probably an additional political component that happened behind his back.
Maybe he didn't kiss the right ring or he inadvertently made someone powerful but incompetent look bad in a meeting or something.
Unions are all about your position in the union and your tenure. They are discriminating by age through explicit design, and in favor of most powerful and least vulnerable actors on the job market.
This story is gross and not entirely surprising. It is unclear to me why anyone would stick around inside the other Musk co. @twitter that wasn't bound by H1B handcuffs.
The upside in that company is really not there...at least at SpaceX you get to build the future.
It's the US, there are no worker rights but there is this dumb ubiquitous storytelling about billionaires who became rich only because they are smarter and more virtuous than everyone else.
Unfortunately some people will need to suffer a depression or something before they realize they need to focus on their own needs and their own life rather than work 10-12 hours a day seven days a week (my god!) to satisfy someone else's ego.
Could be the changing job market, Musk knows it. If this was the job market like a year or six months ago, Musk would had kept his mouth shut. Elon comes across extremely opportunistic, which is not surprising but he comes across opportunistic in a cruel way. Something that wider group of people should realize and take appropriate steps
A year ago getting workers was very nearly impossible because easy credit was flowing like water and capital was abundant. In addition, historical level of retirement was bringing available, knowledgeable workers out of the market. Anyone who drove workers away was shooting themselves in the foot since those workers were very difficult to get back.
Today, the labor market is rougher for employees and easier for employers - credit is drying up and many projects that were employing workers are dying. More workers are competing for fewer positions and even some workers that thought they would retire are coming back after losing money in the markets has made retirement less viable.
I think parent post is saying that musk is a (somewhat) rational actor - when labor was scarce he would have been more careful not to offend. While labor is plentiful he doesn't care how badly he treats his employees because they don't have a better option.
Not sure I agree with that point - musk seems like an even mix of carnival barker and bipolar to me, but I think that's the idea.
I am saying job market is not as robust as it was a year or two ago. Feds tightening has beginning to affect well run companies and workers. There's talk about recession. If it was 2021, anyone from Twitter could have walked into Facebook and get a job
Ah that makes complete sense. I never thought of it that way before but your logic follows. Musk sees what is going on and knows he can take advantage of it. Thank you for explaining.
How many of the best engineers could Twitter possibly be employing? Other companies with sufficient cash might already have their share of the best. If you are really good, you will certainly find takers but unlikely at the same high compensation levels. The state of the economy might be more crucial to anybody’s prospects than you might think.
I recently worked for a startup where I consistently out-performed software engineers who were decades younger than me. I was often asked to finish other engineer’s assignments when they got stuck, and to find and fix difficult bugs from other teams. After several years working there, during a favorable performance review, I suggested to the director of software that I could help the company more if he would give me more authority. His response : “You are too old for me to promote”. I quit shortly after. A couple of months after I left my boss was fired, because he didn’t accomplish one task after I left.
I read the article and it's clear to me that he was mistreated. The last example you reference, however, is still true.
> This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations.
A company can't have so much knowledge critical to operations tied up in the mind of one individual. The "retire or die" comment was crass but it applies regardless of age.
It's irresponsible to allow a situation to continue in which the departure of a single individual would completely derail a project for months.
> "yet I saw my work roles gradually transferred to younger engineers who fit the company’s “frat bro” mold."
Oh, hell no. There is no room, whatsoever, for "frat bros" at a freaking rocket company.
Edit: I am OK with young engineers in roles with oversight, but not with a "frat bro" culture. Also, I'm 21 years old, with no management experience, and even I know that's a horrible idea.
No. The engineers were at Grumman and North American Rockwell. You'd have to check with them. That article refers to flight dynamics officers in one large room, not engineers. There were thousands and thousands more.
They were indeed younger then. People chain smoked, had heart attacks without modern bypass surgeries, generally had larger families and more kids to take care of.
And Werner von Braun was 56 in 1968. You think he should have been replaced with somebody younger? Or do you think that his level of experience was useful?
Experience can be a double edged sword, as not all experience is good. There is probably no better example of this than the hiring of older, German, rocket engineers by the US at that time.
If Werner von Braun was younger he’d have been less likely to have been a career building nazi and SS member.
> The average age of NASA engineers on Apollo 11 was
I don't know the specifics but I would be willing to bet that those Engineers passed ethics courses that are required to get an Engineering degree and certificate.
You think the engineers that build rockets have to take ethics courses? And furthermore, that the lack of ethics courses and similar red tape is a huge loss?
I'm happy to say it's definitely no on the first count and the second one is very subjective, but it's a strong no from me.
The OP used capital "E" engineering, so I'm assuming they may mean an ethics course for licensure, which is required in many states. With that said, I you generally aren't required to have an engineering license to work at NASA.
A different charitable take is that ethics courses are generally a recurring requirement for government employees. I'm not sure how much impact that has on actually ethical behavior.
Reminds me of an interview I had at a company that works closely with SpaceX and is staffed mostly by ex-SpaceX engineers:
To get ready for the interview I made myself familiar with the technologies they were using. In the interview I was asked basic questions about data structures and interviewers were clearly unimpressed with my answers. Then the manager involved asked a bunch of questions about ability to follow instructions. Giving them examples of me convincing coworkers to go along with management instructions they disagreed with failed to impress.
The whole situation seemed strange, out of place for the context, and even hostile. The position appeared interesting at first, but talking to the people involved it seems I dodged a bullet. Ageism may be involved, but there also seem to be some very strong but brittle beliefs about what tools and approaches work. All that combines with a readiness, even eagerness, to say no to applicants. Which was really strange in this case as I have decades of coding experience and seemed more familiar with the specific technologies being used than the existing team. Maybe that was part of the problem?
> I have decades of coding experience and seemed more familiar with the specific technologies being used than the existing team. Maybe that was part of the problem?
I interviewed at SpaceX and their questions were illuminating.
One question was, "If you supported a set of capable engineers and they were running python scripts in a shared environment, but they were running into performance issues, what would you do?"
My first thought was, "Holy hell, you're letting non-developers run arbitrary code in some sort of Wild West environment and you're wondering why you have issues? Why would you ever do that?"
I did not respond in this way to the interviewer, but my impression of them was somewhat diminished as a result of my discovery and due diligence during the interview.
I think I probably would have responded in that way to the interviewer. Most likely I wouldn't have gotten the offer, but I'm not sure I could have contained myself.
Maybe Musk is getting a little too old for his role. And he's spread too thin. And he has a drug history. Tesla stockholders might want to take a look at that.
"At what age will he be when this predominantly young staff become concerned that he might “retire or die”?"
As an older tech person myself I hate to say it but it won't matter because he's "special". I sincerely believe that people in a top role like that simply do not relate to the rest of us. They've lost the ability to do that. It's a rare person that reaches such levels of power and privilege and is still able to remain grounded in the reality that the people around them exist within.
Taking a job at SpaceX was an irrational move by OP - the job ending in a way he desired was extremely unlikely. Getting up the management ladder in any large organization is a matter of making personal connections with the current leaders - like it or not it's just human nature. The guy expected to be promoted only based on the work he did :)
For someone with so much experience in a niche technical area starting a consulting company is obviously a better choice. You have far better pay, you don't have to play all the HR games and if they want to get rid of you it's nobody's problem - you just get an extra bonus.
Even if it is, lawyers are expensive. $400-$800/hour expensive. The labor law isn’t strong enough and leaves out too many grey areas and even if it’s an open and shut case, the fines/ settlements are often too low to pursue. Unless you are rich and spiteful like…
Labor law in the US is actually one of the strongest and best in the world for workers
It's why millions have come to the US, especially conservative states, to work and restart their life.
Have you ever worked in the United States? Because this comment is absolutely hilarious if you have.
In the United States, you can be dismissed for any reason, with no recourse, and no obligation on part of the employer for compensation. You have no guaranteed benefits and hell, you aren't even entitled to vacation time. Unionization is scant and union busting is legal. Labor law enforcement is anemic at best.
Especially in the southern, conservative states where labor laws and enforcement are even weaker than in the south.
Sadly, every big company mistreats people like this frequently. There is nothing unique about SpaceX or other Musk companies in this story. I have seen this happen all over the place. It’s awful that companies get away with it, but they do.
This story is getting more traction than most because it fits the trend of negative press directed at Musk right now, with a market desperate for material to fuel their confirmation bias.
You are lucky. It happens on many Apple teams, Facebook at various times, every game company, the movie CGI industry, etc.
These days I am careful not to get suckered into a work situation like that, I’m too old for that crap.
This is not just disgusting and infuriating, but also simply stupid and bad management style.
If course you should always strive to reduce the bus factor. But I don't see any reason to not turn such an experienced, and good at their job, employee into a formal leadership/mentorship/consultant role.
Seriously, SpaceX, you can build rockets, but you can't make such obvious management decisions? What the eff?
Not surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places. The results, unfortunately, seem secondary to the culture. Their call, their money - pay attention during interviews and how the companies perform.
The sad thing is that everybody on the south side of this problem will cross over 30/35/40 and wonder what hit them.
> Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places
I'd go further, the author basically points out that he doesn't really have a life beyond work, or is dedicated to the level they're expecting.
The problem here is that Musk companies are churning employees who don't fit the "frat bro" culture that Musk likes. Telsa is like this, SpaceX is going that way, Twitter is clearly doing the same. What's really sad is that the culture they're creating is about that self-identifying alpha male hierarchy – and Musk likes it because he's at the top.
Diverse hiring in terms of age, gender, orientation, etc, is the best way to combat this.
> Not surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places.
What does surprise me though is that this fellow seems to be the exemplar of a company lifer, to quote TFA:
"My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore."
Up until one injury and a short absence for surgery and recovery. And boy howdy did things change after that.
> At SpaceX and now at Twitter, Musk requires employees to be “hardcore.” Contrary to stereotypes about older workers being less capable or unwilling to perform hard work, I was actually up for the challenge. My life has been spent working long days, nights, and weekends, putting in whatever effort was required to get the job done. My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore.
If you refer to parent comment, I did read the article and saw what looked to me like ageism in practice. The quote you mention showed a willingness to sign up, yet it didn't ensure survival. What did I miss?
> I thought it was a strange question; having spent my career in age-diverse companies, I hadn’t even considered that this could be an issue.
This was my initial reaction to encountering the new "tech bro" culture. I had been in a "silo," where advanced age was actually a positive thing, for a long time. During that time, the tech industry changed.
> Contrary to stereotypes about older workers being less capable or unwilling to perform hard work, I was actually up for the challenge.
Check out my GH activity graph[0]. That's not gamed. There's something wrong with me. I'm 60. Today, I was working on adding some thread resilience to one of my SDKs[1]. It had been giving me weird crashes, the last few days. Thread collisions are a bitch to debug.
> But nothing was done to remedy my situation
One thing that I learned, very early on, was to think very carefully, before moving to involve HR. They are there only to protect the C-suite. Despite their frequent declamations that they were "on our side," I never saw them actually do anything that did not benefit the executives.
> but asked that I keep my concerns between her, myself, and the head of HR.
That's typical. It means that it becomes a "He said, she said," gaslighting contest.
It really pains me to read this, because I know that experienced, steady, hands were responsible for some of the amazing work that SpaceX has done.
Of course, like all of these types of things, we are only hearing one side of the story. There are many factors, like people being difficult to work with (but that, too is not always a bad thing. I worked for a Quality-first corporation, and we were all "difficult to work with," as we did not suffer fools or sloppy work).
I'm an aging elder millenial, I've spent my entire career in tech, and these stories scare me. Lately, I have started to think about starting my own business so that I do not suddenly find myself unemployed and unemployable in five to ten years.
I mean, I don't think this is typical; these companies aren't exactly known for being great places to work. I'm also an early millennial, and know lots of people considerably older than me still happily (or at least no more grumpily than everyone else) working in tech jobs.
I read the whole piece. My key observation, is the author's assumption that HR was 'there for the employees'. HR doesn't exist for you, HR exists for the corporation, for the protection of the corporation.
It astounds me, in this day and age, that employees think HR is there to protect them. I understand the misconception from young people at their first job, but the author is 60 (+/-) over the time of this story.
In my 38 years of working at medium to large corporations, I have had exactly one time when HR was useful to me, and that was on my way out the door in my prior job.
I think this is more socially engrained in the USA than people realize and not SpaceX specific. I’ve personally seen numerous cases where relatives/children/“friends” pressure and/or believe it is best to stick “old” people in nursing homes even when they are perfectly capable of being on their own and contribute to society. They believe it is “too much of a hassle” dealing with “old” people even if it is their own parent(s).
It seems obvious to me that this is the way a company with a 70-80 hour work week operates. That demand is incompatible with any lifestyle that includes self care and family responsibilities.
Companies can gain a lot of efficiencies by bulldozing any inconveniences, rather than dealing with them. It may get them rich quick, but it also will get them on the front page of the newspaper for all the wrong reasons.
It is time for us to unionize. Elon is attempting an explicit attack of capital against tech labor, plus he wields a massive propaganda machine and has already turned half the country against us, calling us entitled, woke, spoiled, etc.
We have no power against capital unless we band together.
I don't understand unions. Why not, I don't know ... just look for another job if you don't like the current one?
If you are as valuable as you think, then you should find a better job in no time. If the firm is in the wrong, people will follow suit and the company will fail and competitors which treat people better will thrive, no?
I'm maybe cynical but, as I see it, the final result was written right at the start, they only recruited this personn to acquire their knowledge, not finding someone younger at first. I would be ashamed to be involved in this kind of thing, this is despicable.
As a counter example, William H. Gerstenmaier is 68 years old and joined SpaceX when he was 65. He is the Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability.
I don't know the whole story here. I hope he doesnt have a lot of baggage my generation has with over work. It may just be a bus-factor issue. I don't have the whole story.
I remember a story my Dad told about cultural clashes with overseas employees.
I'm ironically constrained by those stories. I dont think I'll escape them. It's work trying.
But I read also a lot of I. And you did everything by yourself, didn't you? 12 hours on 7 days you did all tasks by yourself. It doesn't sound you looked for people to help you, to share your knowledge and experience.
To be honest I think that work was taken away from you because you haven't been a team player!
It's no secret that SpaceX likes young unmarried employees who can work obscene hours without compensation that matches the bigger companies.
I may know this person and it sucks to be treated this way, but why share it with the world instead of consulting with an attorney about possible action?
He mentions working obscene hours and enjoying it and being good at it.
Read. The. Article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read it. It's right there. It's concise. It's well written. Read. It. Read it. Read the article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read. Read it. Read. Read the article. The link is above. Click it. Read it. Read the article. Read it.
What did you expect from musk companies? They've had this reputation as early as 2013. If you want to work at Musk companies because the work excites you, then you have to know you are accepting the company culture too.
this is going to get more and more common. There is a massive demographic cliff of retiring boomers with advanced technology skills that can’t be readily replaced.
My recommendation if you are older than 40 is to be working at high quality small to medium sized enterprises. And work for people who are around your same age.
Big companies are a terrible place to be. They can afford not to care. They will just hire more minions to swarm your area and replace you.
The nastiest political wars are among middle managers.
I would guess Spacex has a general strategy internally around this exact scenario. Or a playbook for doing this.
If someone is flagged as boomer, they pack juniors and shadows on them to drain wherever expertise they can.
I don’t know what to say - more and more boomers will retire and companies are going to treat them like outgoing tumors.
Technology industry does not have any graceful ways to see aging workers out other than to strip them for spare parts pre emptively.
This is ugly stuff but I have seen it play out and been on the receiving end of it myself.
The good news is with demographic issues maybe companies have to get better at this.
We regularly talk about bus factor* in tech (and other disciplines). It sounds like SpaceX realized they had a too low bus factor in this one critical area; perhaps this realization struck as part of his prep for the short medical leave.
Whether they handled solving that problem appropriately or not is up for debate, but having one person as the only person who understands mission-critical area X is an unacceptable situation at SpaceX's size.
There is a strange trend I’m seeing where it seems like people think they are entitled to a job at SpaceX, or Facebook/twitter/etc.
Here are the job requirements:
* Work 80 hrs a week
* Have no life outside of work
* Be the smartest or nearly the smartest person in your field
If you satisfy these requirements, then you will be working at these companies. If you don’t, then there are a nearly infinite number of other companies that will hire you.
I just don’t get why anybody is upset at the requirements being what they are. If you don’t like what the company is asking for, then don’t sell them your labor.
There's a strange trend I've noticed where people post hot air comments about articles they didn't read. He outlines clearly that he was spending most of his waking life working for the company, had singlehandedly built out the majority of the most significant infrastructure for their optics systems, and was the foremost expert at the company in the field.
> I just don’t get why anybody is upset at the requirements being what they are.
I'm not upset about a company having requirements like the ones you lay out. Neither is anyone in this entire comment section nor the author of the post.
Right now, in this moment, I'm upset specifically at people like you.
I did read the article. You disagree with me, and my point apparently. I don't think this is something you need to be upset about.
>I'm not upset about a company having requirements like the ones you lay out. Neither is anyone in this entire comment section nor the author of the post.
The top comment in this thread reads:
>This is disgusting behavior from SpaceX. It must be even worse for the majority of older people who are more likely to have well established families and "only" want to spend 40 hours of their lives a week working.
> I did read the article. You disagree with me, and my point apparently.
The point I'm making about your point is that your point is a pointless point to point out because it has nothing to do with the article. I don't even disagree with your point. It's just that it's about as useful in this particular comment thread as trying to make a point about the development of tools during the paleolithic era, or whether vegan mayonnaise truly constitutes a mayonnaise.
> The top comment in this thread reads: [...] How is this not a commentary on people wanting to have a job at spacex, but also wanting to be able to only work 40 hours a week?
Fine, you're right, that person is also going on a tangent, but at least it acknowledges and adds to the article.
Other points you could have made that would be an equally useful response to this article:
* He shouldn't have shaved his armpits in the bathroom sink
* He shouldn't have sniffed glue at his desk
* He shouldn't have levitated office supplies with his mind as a prank
"Of course, he didn't actually do any of these things, but I don't know why people are so upset that I'm suggesting these things are bad."
2) I made a comment on the general sentiment towards spacex which has been expressed both at large in the tech community, as well as in this thread.
You disagree with me about something. Fine. Stop saying that I'm attacking this person when I'm not. If you don't like my comment, then downvote it. You don't have to lie about what I'm saying and work yourself up into a state of anger over it.
There are a bunch of comments in this thread also attacking Elon Musk. Does the article claim that it was Elon who fired him? Are you getting angry at those people for implying that Elon has something to do with this? And insisting that they didn't read the article which clearly states that it wasn't Elon that fired him?
Or maybe: there is a broader conversation happening in this thread both about Elon and his companies, and also about the overall sentiment workers have towards their employment at these companies.
Again: you don't like what I said. That's fine, and you should argue with me if you want to, just don't lie about what I said.
I guess you did not read the article where he said he was meeting all the "hardcore" work requirements but was pushed out because of what he suspects was ageism
This is a very vague accusation of "age discrimination" with basically nothing backing it up.
Someone who was supposed to be in a senior position didn't know how to delegate and felt threatened when it happened. He decided to see things through a lens of "age discrimination" instead of contributing anything useful. Drama instead of work. Unsurprisingly, he is no longer employed at the company.
It isn't to say age discrimination isn't a problem everywhere. It is. But this looks like a disgruntled employee story.
This isn't a matter of not being able to delegate. This is a matter of being cut out of the loop.
Done right, these people would have reported to him or reported to a peer manager, but detailed to work with him to build a department. He would have been in on their interviews and selection. He would have been the key voice in structuring the department.
Instead, these people reported to Starlink as opposed to SpaceX and he was forcefully cut out. Totally different dynamic.
One can argue it was OP's mistake to not hire a few people himself, train them and delegate part of his responsibilities to them. This way he would have the management position he desired, he wouldn't have to work such long hours, taking a medical leave would not be a big problem, etc. Instead he left the responsibly to build a team to someone else and not that surprisingly was left out of the loop.
Either way - does it seem like a clear cut case of age discrimination? The same thing happens to young people regularly.
I see your point. Though I would say delegation doesn't always have to imply senior-junior reporting structure. Giving work that had "your name on it" to your peers is something we have to be comfortable with. But if you do it well it tends to turn into that by nature.
That's the thing about discrimination. It happens in small moments like this that add together toward career sabotage. It's always hard to prove on an individual basis because nobody writes down a plan to discriminate against specific employees and the initial response is always to blame the person experiencing it.
I have witnessed age discrimination throughout my career; I don't deny it exists or that it may have been a minor factor with anyone, but I don't buy it as the narrative for his story, or why things didn't work out for him at SpaceX.
I have seen plenty of senior engineers handle themselves well and contribute effectively as individual contributors, leads, and in management. Sure, it's tough to get past the politics. People are often intimidated by senior experience and feel that older members put their own careers at risk. Part of the game is making sure people like and trust you, and part of that is certainly not whining.
More often I have seen disgruntled employees of all ages and situations loudly proclaim some narrative to explain their grievance. Also, I think it's worth noting that dubious activist websites love to push salacious, unsubstantial hearsay, especially on click-bait.
This is like listening to just one side in a divorce.
As an outsider, I don't think it's fair to judge unless you hear the other side, and we almost certainly won't hear that (for legal reasons). Maybe if there is an ongoing stream of these sorts of letters we could infer something. But as far as I am aware, there isn't.
I get that it's popular to hate on Musk right now but it's still inappropriate to get worked up over what's basically a nasty breakup.
Agreed. Especially after reading the below snippet. My sympathy went out of the window.
> My life has been spent working long days, nights, and weekends, putting in whatever effort was required to get the job done. My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore.
I'm not denying that there is age discrimination happening but I wonder how much of this story is distorted by his perception of it. If he wants to pursue legal action that's his right but I think Spacex did him a favor.
Do we need some kind of industry certification for "this company isn't being run by psychopaths"?
Wouldn't it be nice if you saw a job ad that said "Hey, we're 'Decent Employer' Level 1 Certified!" and you knew that meant: 95% of work weeks are under 45 hours; everyone gets at least 3 weeks vacation per year; Our hiring practices conform to standards to avoid age/gender/race/class biases; etc.
How do I look at a company from the outside and know that they're not a frat-bro culture, so I can avoid even talking to their recruiters?
Too bad that's dead. But would be great to generalize and standardize across companies and industries. It'll never happen, but that's what you're looking for.
I'm not sure what you mean by "frat-bro culture", but the overworking thing is generally pretty straightforward. If a company has any employees who talk about "seven days a week onsite... putting in 10-12 hours almost daily", it's a high-pressure overworking kind of company that's not going to give you much vacation time. SpaceX doesn't exactly keep this aspect a secret, and as the author says he was an enthusiastic participant in it.
Discrimination is harder to avoid because it's not tremendously correlated with overworking or other observable qualities of a work environment. IBM is the epitome of a work-life balance company - didn't stop their executives from secretly plotting to get rid of the "dinobabies".
For very big companies, it's often well-documented. For smaller companies, kind of luck of the draw; unless you know someone who works there it's hard to find out too much, in general.
This is one of the things you're (supposed) to learn about during the interview processes. Lots of companies absolutely will flag as "run by psychopaths" during the interview process. But it also helps to look up the company/founders and see what their general reputation is. Lots of places are an obvious "no thanks" after a bit of googling.
This whole write-up comes off as ridiculous. Complaining that a company wants redundancy... they all do. Expecting that you carve out an area where you give yourself tremendous leverage at the detriment of the company is just foolish. And I don't buy the common "frat bro" culture accusation (which these days just means any young male with a hint of a personality).
He was working 12+ hour days for 4 years straight and left in July. A couple months of unemployment is fine especially with such a niche profession. He might not even be looking.
From what the article describes, a senior engineer singlehandedly managed a significant part of operations, and after he had encountered medical problems, his duties were partially dispersed to several younger engineers. This seems like a sensible move to decrease the bus factor.
All true, but you cannot initiate this on the basis of age or disability status -- it must be universal policy that engineers delegate in order to manage risk.
30 year-old must be treated same as 50 or 60 year-old.
If you should ever have to engage in anything that could be viewed as a demotion on the basis of medical disability or age you should it get your HR people involved for due diligence.
SpaceX is one one those sink or swim places filled with type A personalities. Teamwork is key, but also challenging if you’re not a people person. If you don’t know something, you need to dive in and learn it. If you know lots of things, you need to help others get up to speed. It doesn’t matter where in the organization they are.
I have no doubt this guy could have been a force amplifier if he hadn’t been so territorial. And they are right, principle engineer is not a management track but a very high and respected title.
He should of been less concerned with his position and more of a team player. Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to higher levels - that’s part of what a principal engineers does.
This speaks volumes -
“And as a result, I was having to mentor a roster of engineers who didn’t report to me and didn’t know what they didn’t know.”
Maybe the guy came from a more traditional engineering company or something. It’s funny his title was pretty much already at the top. A principal that wants to do all the work themselves and not help others who are at the very bottom...
I feel as though you have some big-picture aspects correct, but you're missing out on small-picture concepts. Specifically,
Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to
higher levels - that’s part of what a principal
engineers does.
Yes.
However: effective mentor/mentee relationships are absolutely not achieved by simply throwing unqualified and inexperienced mentees at a senior/principal engineer in a haphazard, unannounced way.
Satellites are being built, rockets are launching and the laser system is operational.
Seems like they made it work, with or without the guy. Though I imagine it would of been a lot smoother if he had helped those engineers in their new roles.
And yes you can build great relationships in a fast paced environment with very senior and very junior engineers thrown into the ring together.
Nobody is saying that they haven't made it work with or without the guy. The key here is that you're essentially saying their culture is OK because the end justify the means, but I don't think that's a company that I'd want to work for. If you do, that's fine, but having warnings like this are nice for the people who don't want to work in environments like that.
you can build great relationships in a fast
paced environment with very senior and very
junior engineers thrown into the ring together.
Er.... yes, absolutely. I don't think that's being disputed. Certainly not by me.
I'm referring to the way it was done as described in his article. That is not a recipe for success. Or, at best: success achieved a lot less efficiently than it could have been.
I've mentored quite a few younger engineers and it has gone both successfully and poorly.
At a bare minimum, it requires a time and attention commitment from the mentor. Unless the job is so trivial (or the mentee so advanced) that the mentee can learn just by hanging around and watching.
When I was a dishwasher in a restaurant (hey, a fast paced environment) it was very easy to train the other new kids. I didn't exactly need advance notice. When I was a cook, it took a little longer. Engineering is slightly more complex.
The fact they had an expert working 10 hours a day 7 days a week apparently was not enough. They have to be in their twenties to get the real "techbro" badge.
I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.