Well I don’t know about your acquaintances but I do know a couple of good engineers who interviewed at SpaceX a few years back and were absolutely put off by the revelation of just how bad the workers are treated there, and how much unpaid overtime they would be expected to work, which would make a decent work/life balance impossible. Certainly there are some people out there who are willing to put up with it, but many other very talented workers don’t even bother to apply to jobs like that, making recruitment of top talent difficult.
There’s often more than one option to pursue when chasing dreams. My co-workers and I are working on a project with pretty cool passenger-carrying spacecraft and didn’t have to settle for working at a toxic workplace to do so.
Hey, I know plenty of folks who don’t want to work at SpaceX. I was just talking about the ones who do.
They won’t be put off by the fact that layoffs sometimes happen in the space industry.
What the rest of us more sensible humans want is mostly irrelevant to them.
(Sincere congrats, BTW, for finding a place to chase your dreams with a saner work/life balance.
I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that exploiting dreamers by underpaying/overworking them is the only – or even the best – way to roll. But it IS how SpaceX rolls, and they’re still drowning in applicants.)
(Hmm. “…passenger carrying spacecraft…” Well, that sure narrows the field! Now you have me guessing! )
It was just those useless Health & Safety guys; I mean, Black Mesa and Aperture Science are doing fine without them. “Cave” Johnson was telling me, only yesterday, that those mooks are just a needless overhead.
An acquaintance of mine, the day before the layoffs were announced, got a job as a highly experienced bachelor’s-level engineer at JPL. I understand they have absorbed a few folks in his role.
The SpaceX business model is built on reusable launch vehicles. At some point (if the reusable thing is accurate, which I’m in no position to comment on), there are of course going to be layoffs simply because there are fewer new launch vehicles needed. I have no idea if right now is that time, but insofar as Elon designed it this way, that does seem to be something that should land at his feet.
