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Elon Musk Shakes Up SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Division By Firing a Bunch of Managers (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the if-it-ain't-working-fix-it dept.

schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk flew to the Seattle area in June for meetings with engineers leading a satellite launch project crucial to his space company's growth. Within hours of landing, Musk had fired at least seven members of the program's senior management team at the Redmond, Washington, office, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites. Known for pushing aggressive deadlines, Musk quickly brought in new managers from SpaceX headquarters in California to replace a number of the managers he fired. Their mandate: Launch SpaceX's first batch of U.S.-made satellites by the middle of next year, the sources said.

The management shakeup followed in-fighting over pressure from Musk to speed up satellite testing schedules, one of the sources said. SpaceX's spokeswoman Eva Behrend offered no comment on the matter. Culture was also a challenge for recent hires, a second source said. A number of the managers had been hired from nearby technology giant Microsoft, where workers were more accustomed to longer development schedules than Musk's famously short deadlines. "Rajeev wanted three more iterations of test satellites," one of the sources said. "Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner."

10 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Mixed feelings by wierd_w · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On the one hand, I am quite glad to see such an actively involved CEO that is not afraid to smack down on senior staff. (as this mitigates feelings of complacency, and resists the formation of entrenched bureaucracies.)

    On the other, I am concerned about rushed deadlines and schedules, since you should not fuck around with things that can cause tremendous amounts of damage to other investments should they go awry. (Like a satellite, or a space vehicle of any kind.) To say nothing of the risks of the finished product not being suitable for purpose...

    So yeah. Mixed feelings.

    1. Re: Mixed feelings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No mixed feelings here. The numbers of just terrible people pumped out of the Microsoft factory is staggering.

      The good news is they tend to go back and then get paid more.

      Maybe the good ones never leave. I just know they seem to not survive outside of that ecosystem.

    2. Re:Mixed feelings by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It doesn't always work though. Look at Tesla, the self driving division had to fit a revolving door and they are still years away from delivering anything.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Mixed feelings by misnohmer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Tesla recently removed the full-self-driving as an option for new cars. People who bought it 2 years ago still have absolutely nothing, zip, to show for it. But I bet Elon fired a lot of people for it not being ready when he said it would (end of 2017 was supposed be a coast-to-coast demo), hence the revolving door. From what I read and heard, nobody tells Elon something cannot be done or cannot be done within the time he said it can be done, unless they are looking to be fired. This is probably how horrible brain farts of Elon like "I don't need no stinking BSM radars like all the other cars, I can do it with PARKING SENSORS!" get put into the product (it works about as well as a PARKING sensor iwould be expected to work at NON-PARKING speeds, which is not well at all, but Tesla will not admit to it, they scraped their website of this feature being available int past and in recent hardware cars they just released camera based blind spot monitoring). I think a great example of how Elon delivers is AutoPilot 1 Summon, where Elon promised it would "find you anywhere on private property". What was delivered (final version as this is now discontinued hardware) is a feature where the car can drive up to 40ft in a straight line while someone is holding a dead-man-switch to make sure the car doesn't hit anything. That pretty much describes Elon's pattern for the last 5 years. He used to achieve great things, now he's just blowing a lot of hot air.

    4. Re:Mixed feelings by monkeyxpress · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've seen managers like this before. The problem is, if YOU are the one who decides to cut tests and take shortcuts, and then you send up 50 satellites and they don't work because of those cuts, you career is over. But if the boss is the one who makes that decision and the decision turns out to be a bad one, the issue gets filled under 'well, we had to try' and everyone moves on.

      It's really just a product of having a boss with a ginormous ego - you're sorta screwed if you don't and screwed if you do. Eventually if you are the type who can be controlled by bullying and remain a faithful servant (i.e. much like Tim Cook - compliant and not a threat to the alpha), you will become protected by the boss as a useful asset and then life is much easier.

      Now Musk has made the risky decision, everyone will be able to move forward knowing their necks are not so exposed if the gamble doesn't work out.

    5. Re:Mixed feelings by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When you're launching ~10,000 cheap satellites over the coming years you need a different mindset than the people who work on traditional satellite deployments. If there's a problem with the first hundred satellites it's really no big deal.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    6. Re:Mixed feelings by Hodr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From the sounds of this article they already had a fairly toxic work environment with management split about the appropriate way forward. Elon simply picked a side and fired the rest so they wouldn't remain a festering wound.

      I have lived through similar (though smaller in scale) shake-ups and by and large they have been beneficial in focusing the team and removing the stress of politics and having to please bosses with opposed goals.

    7. Re: Mixed feelings by sfcat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have worked with people with Microsoft, Google, AOL (when it was a thing).... And for the most part they are not any better then those guys who worked at small companies, or even in Government. Actually people from small companies, are actually much better, because they know how to do more with less.

      Damn, I already posted so I can't mod you up. I couldn't agree more and only HR drones who wouldn't know a well run tech company from a tire fire wouldn't know this. For everyone else, you have no excuse for not knowing this. Working at Google these days should be a black mark, not a sign of quality. 10 years ago it would be different but that was a different Google.

      --
      "Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
  2. I'm here to kick ass & chew gum, & I'm out by ClarkMills · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well from my 10,000' view I would say that did look like Starlink had stalled. It certainly didn't seem to be progressing as quickly as I would have hoped. And now that SpaceX has lost some funding from the US military and Tesla wasn't bought out in the "funding secured" fiasco Elon needs to organise his future revenue streams.

    He's not getting any younger and he's still working in a car factory... (and doing a bloody good job but that's just a means to an ends).

  3. Speed is everything by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If one woman needs 9 months to create a baby, just put 9 women on the job and it will be done in 1 month.