(Only tangentially related) If you're a space exploration nerd working in the space industry you'll realize one day that your salary and benefits are space exploration costs. This produces the following dilemma:
Accept a small pay and benefits. Space exploration costs go down. More space exploration is done per dollar.
Demand a good salary and benefits. Space exploration costs go up. Less space exploration gets done per dollar.
The ROI on space exploration (currently) is terrible and the only tangible near term solution to that dilemma is asteroid harvesting. That is why SpaceX is predominantly about getting government contracts - outside of satellites (GEO and down) there isn't much economic incentive for humanity.
Look, manned spaceflight is cool and there are some really bad ass ideas about space exploration, but the reality is that there really isn't that much in it for us. Our bodies are fundamentally not suited for space travel - so much so that the bulk of on-board systems are life support, making anything else a small portion.
What are the goals anyway? I have heard many things like: having a second habitable home for humanity in case (X) happens, or exploration for its own sake. None of these are particularly compelling given the economics behind them.
I certainly wouldn't pass up the chance to go to space, but I think it is not where humanity should be putting its energy.
"SpaceX is predominantly about getting government contracts"
Doesn't sound like they're very successful, then, per Wikipedia, "As of December 2013, SpaceX has a total of 50 future launches under contract, two-thirds of them are for commercial customers."
Now, the article goes on to talk about their efforts to get validated for military launches, and in the relevant article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehi...) it says "On July 11, 2014, the DoD certified the Falcon 9 rocket as an EELV launch vehicle.", so we can expect as of late 2016 for them to have more government launches.
While NASA et. al. get most of the publicity, the numbers show a significant market for commercial launches. Especially, I would imagine, if SpaceX ends up being both cheaper and more reliable, as they have promise to be.
> ...second habitable home for humanity [...] or exploration for its own sake. None of these are particularly compelling given the economics behind them.
So this is what economics has done to "going boldly"? No wonder it's called dismal science ;-)
But seriously, diversification of our real estate beyond a single small planet seems like a necessity given the scale of the potential losses in case (X) happens.
Exploration for its own sake seems like a perfectly valid reason too whether done for touristic or scientific purposes.
As for ROI on space exploration, I wouldn't say it's terrible. It's just that we're short lived creatures and we like our returns fast. Space exploration is a very long term investment with potentially huge returns in far future.
>So this is what economics has done to "going boldly"? No wonder it's called dismal science ;-)
Yes the economist is typically the buzzkill.
To your other point, I think it is silly to think that it would take fewer resources and time to terraform another planet^, than it would be to harden ourselves from disaster. Strike that it's not silly, it's wasteful.
^there are no known planets that are habitable to humans and getting out of our solar system is not feasible for humans given that it is 27,000 ly across
You don't need to terraform a planet in order to inhabit it. Also, not all disasters are easily managed or predicted. Hypothetical virus with long incubation period that spreads quietly to almost every human on Earth before giving any symptoms could pose a huge danger. There are other scenarios where survival of civilization is doubtful or reconstruction is very difficult without off-world help. Given high stakes directing 1% of human energy into the long term goal of expanding our habitat beyond a single planet seems like a reasonable hedge.
Not sure where the figure of 27kly comes from. Depending on how you measure it our solar system is ~200 AU or ~28 light hours across (for comparison 1 ly is ~63241 AU). Our galaxy is ~100kly across and it contains hundreds of billions of stars.
'Asteroid harvesting' is an unsolved problem, and a pipe dream. Mining is very expensive and requires megawatts; asteroid mineral yields are not likely to be better than on Earth; the distances involved are vast.
"asteroid mineral yields are not likely to be better than on Earth."
False. See: Planetary Resources.
Rare earth metals are much more common on many asteroids than on the surface of the earth. During the formation of the planet, they tended to sink to the center, where it's very hard to get to.
A single asteroid Planetary Resources is targeting has more than all the rare earth metals ever mined in history.
IANAL, but I don't think this is going to fly in court given that (4 times) more than 50 people were let go at once. If it looks like a layoff and quacks like a layoff, I don't think the judge or a jury is going to care what SpaceX calls it.
Kind of surprised a company that is so on the ball technically would fuck something like this up; it is definitely going to end up costing them way more than 2 months severance to everyone (plus whatever they were owed -- some people claim they didn't even get that) would have.
US Dept of Labor and the Federal WARN Act have specific requirements for employers over 100 employees where 50 or more are let go from a single location in a 30-day period: http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/layoffs.htm
Doesn't matter if they're layoffs for lack of work or performance-based firings: you still have to comply with the provisions of that law.
(I have no knowledge whether SpaceX did or did not comply, of course.)
The official employers guide to WARN states that people let go for cause are not counted under WARN.
The SpaceX position seems to be:
1) We just did our yearly performance reviews
2) Low performers were fired
3) Since they were all let go for cause, WARN does not apply.
Some people are claiming that it is a layoff and SpaceX is just trying to work around it. I'm imagining the SpaceX position here would be:
1) Layoffs are defined as letting employees go due to reduction in work or lack of money
2) SpaceX is experiencing neither of these
3) SpaceX plans to grow 20% this year; proof that there is no reduction in work
4) SpaceX has lots of open positions and is actively hiring; further proof that there is no reduction in work or lack of money
The article says that the suit is about a alleged "violation of California's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.", and "The Cal WARN Act", not the Federal WARN Act.
I have no knowledge of this lawsuit other then this article though.
The "not paying them wages earned before termination" would be a matter of state law, and with California having its own WARN Act, I presume the lawyers think it's best to sue in state court.
Well, the company always wants to say it is a performance based firing, that reduces the company unemployment insurance liability. However, the companies don't get the final say in the matter.
I think fired employees are eligible for unemployment, so I wouldn't think it would effect unemployment insurance liability. As far as I am aware, you are eligible for unemployment so long as you did not chose to leave.
NASA is/was noted for releasing a large number of people after successful missions. Everything is going well overall, they just didn't need everyone around during long idle periods. Might presume SpaceX is doing the same: what do you do with >200 idle personnel? pay them to do nothing, or release them and hire as needed when the time comes again?
I don't think the problem is with laying off unnecessary staff. I think this is a notification and backwage issue. If someone works for you for two weeks, then gets fired, you can't just not pay them for the time worked. Also, in most states, you cannot lay off employees without cause (meaning without a specific issue with a single employees behavior or performance) without sufficient notice.
That's pretty much completely wrong, for better or worse. It's called at will employment.
Edit: I wonder if the downvoters who have not bothered to comment realize that every state in the US except Montana has some form of at will employment. The person I was replying to couldn't be more wrong. (The very obvious claim about not being able to fail to pay people is of course true)
Edit: I wonder if the downvoters who have not bothered to comment realize that every state in the US except Montana has some form of at will employment. The person I was replying to couldn't be more wrong.
You're being downvoted because you're wrong. At-will employment doesn't mean you can stiff your employees on backwages. It also doesn't mean you don't need to comply with Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) laws, which exist in many (most?) states.
At-will employment doesn't mean the employer gets to do whatever they please.
"Oops, our bad. We're going to let you go, because we hired too many people for the amount of work we had, and on that note, since we didn't really have any work for you the last few weeks you were here, well, we're not going to pay you for that. And we're going to tell anyone, including press releases, that you were 'fired'."
Do the affected employees know they're in a bad state? Would be courtesy to let them in on their low performance so that they can make a job change before they are "terminated with cause" as that never looks good for future employment. Are they put on a performance improvement plan? It sounds pretty fucked up.
Two comments: First when any 'vulnerable' company does anything at all out of the ordinary you can see this. SpaceX is vulnerable because they trade on their reputation. Legal extortion is not all that uncommon so it is not necessarily true that the lawyers think they can win, but they may feel they can get a settlement of some sort. Perhaps one of the lawyers in the gallery will chime in.
Second, the laws apply differently in different states. California is an 'at will' state which means you really can be tossed for any non-protected reason at any time (not true if you have a labor contract). But SpaceX employs people in Texas and Florida as well.
Does anyone know why this layoff occurred? Was it a case of their designs maturing, and thus SpaceX no longer needing the large R&D staff they previously did?
Quite curious, as they seem to be doing very well. Musk has capitalized on the Ukraine/Russian ordeal quite well, and is positioned to become a dominant force in the US Aerospace industry. Wouldn't have thought he'd be the type to let go of productive employees on a whim. He understands better than most that talent is the only resource companies have in the long run.
The loss of up to 200 jobs at Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is due to firing of “low performer” employees as part of its annual review process, and not layoffs, the company’s president said July 26. [1]
That sounds like trying to dodge officially having a layoff, or pretty shitty company culture. I wonder what other SpaceX employees think of the matter. I didn't see much news about it.
Allegedly, Cisco had this as official policy. They believed that by firing their lowest 10% after performance reviews every year, they would become a lean and mean beast. In practice, this sort of policy leads to the worst incentives for a business. Managers fight to protect friends at performance evaluation time who don't deserve it over those who are actually star workers, but less popular.
In practice, you lose people who are keeping the lights on and who hold vast organizational knowledge. Meanwhile, your entire company becomes physically-attractive subordinates.
The lowest ten percent thing was also a GE, Jack Welch thing. Interestingly, I'm pretty darn sure they always positioned a mass firing as a layoff, even though they applied the ten percent policy.
I talked to some SpaceX people a few months ago and it sounded like the place is a real meat grinder. They are all super pumped about working at SpaceX, just incredibly passionate people who really think they will be on Mars in a few years - At the same time they all work 14 hour days and according to them the retention rate is about a year an a half. My guess is that some people trying to skate by with 10 hour days and management decided they can can them and get more young blood to feed the machine
Question is whether they are actually "low performers", or just culled as most of the staff became unnecessary and legalisms lead to one choice of euphemism over another.
Well, generally speaking "firing" reduces the amount of unemployment insurance you get, while a layoff gets you the full amount. So an employer that shrouds a layoff in a firing is screwing the employee twice.
I generally think that the employer should have a very high bar on proving that it was performance based when you are laying off significant % of the workforce at one time. Every time I was involved in an employee firing, it happened out of phase with the typical performance review cycle, and it was typically one person at a time.
severance pay is given out for layoffs and not firings. It always seemed like a weird system to me b/c if you're laying people off, you're probably already strapped for cash - so you'd try to find an excuse to fire the person.
Yes and no... if your fiscal management is that shoddy that severance is a problem, you're beyond screwed as a company. The idea is that "Well, we're running down our funds, best to get these people out the door now with x month's salary, rather than hope something turns around in x+y months."
It happened a week after their annual review cycle. Their version is that it was just removing underperforming staff. They also claim that they plan to grow their workforce by 20% this year (the layoffs was 5% of the workforce).
EDIT: Also, their RnD program is still going strong, especially so with the new engines and the plan for their 10m diameter rocket.
SpaceX doesn't owe anything to you unless it signed a contract that says it has to employ you for this amount of time. I don't understand neither laws, nor the people who would foster such lawsuits. That's using government to steal someone else's money because you feel it's unfair that they laid you off.
> SpaceX doesn't owe anything to you unless it signed a contract that says it has to employ you for this amount of time. I don't understand neither laws, nor the people who would foster such lawsuits.
If they agreed to employ you in a state, they agreed to do so under the laws of the state. Even if you don't understand the laws, you should be able to understand that the existence of laws providing various protections is part of the context in which people agree to accept employment from a particular employer, in a particular place, and under particular payment terms.
Employers certainly consider the legal environment when they choose to employ people in a particular location, and when they decide on the terms of employment.
I was trying to argue from a moral point of view. The existence of state, which itself is an immoral institution, doesn't justify the absurdity of the idea to demand being employed.
> I was trying to argue from a moral point of view.
One might argue that it is moral (if not legal) for parties to by mutual consent expressly agree to conduct an economic exchange under terms other than those set by the law of the jurisdiction in which the exchange is conducted (even if the law prohibits such waivers and alternations), but I think its a much harder case to make that it is generally moral for one party in arms-length exchange where no such waiver is expressed to simply elect to ignore the governing law, except when one makes the case that what the law demands would be immoral even as a term agreed to by consent, or that the change in the law which occurred after the agreement violated the fundamental premises on which the agreement was based (and even in the last case, only if the the party acted timely to notify the other party of their objection and to either terminate or renegotiate the relationship based on the changed context.)
Of course I don't suggest SpaceX ignores the law. That would put them in a lot of trouble. What I'm saying is, people should stop and think for a moment: wait a minute, why do we have this monopoly on law which many people exploit and why can't we allow people to freely sign employment contracts with the terms defined in advance?
If, for example, 100% of people who SpaceX could hire would express concern over a possible layoff, then SpaceX would have no choice, but to put this into the contract, specifying potential payouts in the case of such a layoff. However, I think people would actually compete to get into SpaceX, thus the actual terms of the contract wouldn't include that. In short, let the market decide voluntarily, what are the best terms.
What's going on now is one side (employees) taking advantage of the other side. I don't care how rich Elon Musk is. If he made his money honestly, he doesn't owe a cent to those employees.
> What's going on now is one side (employees) taking advantage of the other side.
No, its not. Both sides voluntarily entered into an agreement with knowledge of the legal context (well, at least constructive knowledge -- in terms of actual knowledge, there is a real imbalance, here, but it almost always favors the employer, as the side who is more likely to both motivated and able to secure expert assistance prior to making decisions whether, where, and on what terms to engage in employment agreements.)
> I don't care how rich Elon Musk is. If he made his money honestly, he doesn't owe a cent to those employees.
To the extent that SpaceX makes money by not treating people according to the law under which they agreed to employment, the money is not made honestly, so even if I accepted your maxim, it would be irrelevant.
> why can't we allow people to freely sign employment contracts with the terms defined in advance?
Because
1) What incentive would people have to abide by their deals ? (also known as : NEVER sign a contract with any royalty or any parliament or congress. They are not bound by them. Just don't get yourself into that)
2) How would you even know the terms of a contract ? People may think they agree about every detail, I have done enough law to know perfectly well they never do. Given the chance, people will sign things like "I rent this room for 800 euro per month", for example. Now, the primary renter dies in a car crash, what happens ? Who owes what ? What if they're married ? What if there's children ? Does the inheritor inherit the obligation ?
3) How would you resolve obvious assymetric bargaining positions ? Suppose someone signed a contract selling someone into slavery ? Before you say otherwise, note that under muslim law, that is legal. Without law of the land, who is to say this is wrong ? And what would you do about it.
But these are the obvious arguments. How about I save the 5000 page book this would become if we went over the entire set of problems that contracts pose. Here's a link, I guarantee that every single paragraph identifies a problem in "pure" contract law and free agreements between parties :
Of course. If you actually signed a contract saying "I will abide the law of this land". But not you, not me, not the ex-employees and not even SpaceX signed ever signed such a contract. They're simply operating under a set of laws created by a system which claims to be legit, but which in reality forces people to comply.
Yes, they are. Any entity who makes and enforces law is, ipso facto, a government. An entity that doesn't do that isn't a government, even if it calls itself one. That's what governing is, and government is simply that which governs.
I suggest you watch this short video then, which explains how laws, protection and private property can be created and enforced in a free market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o
Are you trolling or not? It is kind of a sad reflection on my view of internet people that I'm not sure and leaning heavily towards you being serious.
But, seriously, the state is an immoral institution?
Building the national highway system and all the related infrastructure (bridges, etc), the public school system (which didn't always and needn't suck, even if it is in distress now), the various social safety nets that keep us from discarding the elderly like trash, the means of protection of yours and everyone's wealth from banditry, the means of protection of our land from outside invaders, etc, etc, etc... this is an inherently immoral institution? What an incredibly dumb and short-sighted thing to say.
I'm with you on balance: state is better than no state. However, I don't think the matter is as clear cut as you think. A few examples (I'll try to match them to yours):
Public infrastructure projects often involve bribery and cronyism. Public school system may be used for ideological indoctrination. National safety nets foster risk aversion and allow young people to throw off the burden of care for their elderly. Police may be overly brutal when protecting your wealth from banditry. The means of protection of your land from outside invaders can become the means to invade outsiders and to conduct mass surveillance of the locals.
It's a superhard design challenge to create a set of checks and balances which prevent abuse of power.
I don't disagree; I just think going from "there is a lot wrong with our current government" (and clearly there is) to "government is evil" (or immoral) is such a huge, huge leap of logic that I don't understand how rational people can make it.
The very idea that anything like modern society is possible without government is entirely faith-based (since there are no successful examples to prove it) and, I would argue, very naive on the subject of the many failings humans have when not regulated by outside checks and balances.
It's not a huge leap of logic. Logic is logic. If a person goes and kills a bunch of people, or orders to kill a bunch of people - you call him what? Murderer. You don't care whether he also helps old people in the nursing home or teaches children or helps the poor - those actions don't make him less of a murderer.
And yet, when a government takes tax money by force or threat of force and spends them on bloody wars where many people die, you say "but it also builds roads and educates our children and enforces private property, so it's not that bad, it's not evil". Well, it is. You're just avoiding using logic when it comes to government, it somehow is exempt from logical thinking for many people.
If you can't come up with a solution how to build a society without government and taxation, you're simply not thinking hard. The fact that there is no country on earth without government (except for Somalia, which you cannot compare to, say, the US, but which you SHOULD compare to the surrounding countries) means nothing. In the 16-th century there was no country on earth without slavery. In the same century hardly anyone in the society could imagine how to organize it without God, because, supposedly, without the fear of God humans would go crazy and start killing each other. So, please, stop and think about this: if there was no way for anyone to form a government, how would I solve all the problems governments are currently responsible for. It's a useful exercise.
