SpaceX to Lay Off 10% of Its Workers (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: SpaceX is laying off 10% of its 6,000-person workforce as it tackles two hugely expensive projects. Elon Musk's rocket company said its finances are healthy, but that it needs to make cuts so its most ambitious plans can succeed. "To continue delivering for our customers and to succeed in developing interplanetary spacecraft and a global space-based Internet, SpaceX must become a leaner company," the company said in a statement....

The company earns tens of millions of dollars per launch. SpaceX was recently valued at $30.5 billion after initiating a $500 million equity sale in December. The company also took on about $250 million in debt last year in its first loan sale, according to the Wall Street Journal. But SpaceX's new products are expected to cost billions to develop. In September, Musk estimated SpaceX would spend between $2 billion and $10 billion developing an ultra-powerful spaceship and rocket system, recently renamed Starship and Super Heavy.

SpaceX plans to use the technology to fly tourists to space and, potentially, one day send humans to Mars... SpaceX is also developing a constellation of satellites that could one day beam high-speed internet down to the Earth. SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said during a TED Talk last year that she expects the satellite constellation to cost about $10 billion to deploy. The company has already made headway on both projects.

Comments

yawn

[fluffernutter]

This has become the standard way for corporations to celebrate huge success.

Re:yawn

[bobbied]

SpaceX is not hugely successful though. They just failed their capital raise and are in pretty bad shape. Companies experiencing growth do not have mass layoffs.

10% is a mass layoff? I worked for a company that routinely laid off 10% every year. If you where in the lower 10% of performers you got walking papers right after the 1 Quarter each year. They where growing at the time too. Thankfully I don't work there anymore...

I'm not saying this is a good idea, only that your statement is not necessarily true. Some companies do layoff when growing. It's a management technique that used to be a bit more popular than it is today.

To the question about why SpaceX is doing this, I'm of the opinion (looking into from the outside) that they are trying to "right size" a bit as their growth has leveled off, reorganize things a bit for efficiency. But, I don't really know for sure.

Brutal

[timeOday]

I can't get used to successful companies doing big layoffs just to rebalance for the current workload. I guess it is rational given the assumption that plenty of well-qualified people will always be looking for work - although I'm surprised this is the case here - but beside that if there is no weight given to continuity for employees it just seems impossible to have a stable career + marriage + life.

Re:Brutal

[Hentes]

Succesful doesn't always mean profitable. SpaceX is struggling to stay afloat, and a way to make it more profitable could be to halt new development (and let go of the R&D staff) and start mass producing the design they already have. Always developing new stuff means you have to constantly redesign your production facilities, increasing cost.

Re:Brutal

[Anonymous Coward]

no weight given to continuity for employees it just seems impossible to have a stable career + marriage + life

Welcome to the future. There are many reasons for reduced birth-rates and effectively falling populations (if immigration is stripped out) in the western world. And one of them is that it is becoming increasingly impossible to actually have a long-term partner, start a family and raise kids, when both adults are on short-term contracts, can and will be layed-off regularly, and/or have to move city, retrain, or be furloughed at a moment's notice. "just get a new job" is the refrain - but that is easy to say when you yourself don't need to do that, or ensure that there is continuity in child rearing, education, feeding and providing.

Temporary contracts, temporary accommodation, temporary lives.

The rich don't care - they don't have any of those worries. The technotopia they are trying to build is specifically designed to ensure there is no role for "ordinary people" in the world, so I'm sure they don't care. The rest of us? ......

Re:Brutal

[Anonymous Coward]

You’d rather they keep employees around that they can’t utilize effectively and maybe bankrupt the entire business as a result? SpaceX may be somewhat unique in that it’s part of a new and relatively small industry, but most of the time that companies shed workers there isn’t too much difficulty in finding work at another company in the same industry. Unless the industry as a whole is in a downturn, one company doing badly likely means that another is growing.

I'd rather they recognized humans as valuable assets and treat them as such, and apparently you have no problems telling other people that they be permanent technology refugees to satisfy your consumer desires.

Re:Brutal

[Bite The Pillow]

It's only 10% - they are cutting the dead weight, with a valid layoff reason, not just arbitrary firing.

90% survives. I'd take that wager.

Re:Brutal

[jeti]

SpaceX isn't struggling to stay afloat. They have a very profitable launch business. However, they're struggling to finance the development of the new Starship with its Ultraheavy booster and the Starlink system, which will consist of several thousand satellites, all at once.

Re:Problem with reusable spacecraft

[apoc.famine]

This was my thought as well. It takes a lot of manpower to design and manufacture rockets. It takes a lot of manpower to design and implement a rocket retrieval process. It takes a lot of manpower to design and implement an inspection and refurb process for reused rockets. It takes manpower to learn from the fuckups doing all of this and reconfigure what you're doing to address it.

At this point, SpaceX is past all of that design and implementation work. They seem to be at a fairly stable place, building a few rockets a year, and launching, landing, and refurbing a whole bunch more.

I really am not surprised that they need to reconfigure for 2019, especially given their change in focus. I bet a lot of the employees that they just let go aren't that surprised either. It's one thing when your company does arbitrary layoffs. It's a different thing when you can see the work you're doing drying up, and you can see the company focusing on something that you're not part of.