Top talent departs Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as NASA lander fight escalates(cnbc.com)
cnbc.com
Top talent departs Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as NASA lander fight escalates
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/20/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-losing-top-talent-during-nasa-lander-fight.html
5 comments
Jeff thinks the way to the moon is via lawsuits and courtrooms
I'm curious. Ostensibly, working at Blue Origin would appear to me to be prestigious.
Does anyone have any insight as to the reasons for the departures, apart from 'frustration with management' and 'bureaucratic structure'?
Does anyone have any insight as to the reasons for the departures, apart from 'frustration with management' and 'bureaucratic structure'?
Former Blue Origin employee here. I didn’t leave in the recent wave of departures, but rather a much earlier one. It’s been ongoing for years, ever since Bob Smith became CEO. This is just the first time there has been a big piece about it in the media (to my knowledge).
If I had to distill the myriad reasons for the waves of departures down to one theme: disappointment. Folks who have been at Blue Origin since before Smith witnessed a huge shift in mentality, going from “we hired you all because you’re smart and we need smart people” under previous leadership to “we’re gonna do what Bob says because he’s the boss”. It’s absolutely demoralizing, even more so because Bob Smith clearly has no idea how to actually make Blue Origin competitive with the likes of SpaceX, as evidenced by everything you’ve already read in the media recently.
If I had to distill the myriad reasons for the waves of departures down to one theme: disappointment. Folks who have been at Blue Origin since before Smith witnessed a huge shift in mentality, going from “we hired you all because you’re smart and we need smart people” under previous leadership to “we’re gonna do what Bob says because he’s the boss”. It’s absolutely demoralizing, even more so because Bob Smith clearly has no idea how to actually make Blue Origin competitive with the likes of SpaceX, as evidenced by everything you’ve already read in the media recently.
Thanks for the insight, appreciated. So as the old adage goes, 'it all starts at the top'...
I don't know any of these people (ouside of NASA) but when you've got engineers who are actually capable of getting to space, those are some high-performance operators.
No doubt about it.
When engineers like this get a new or changing CEO or anyone in a leadership position having strong impact, the person can become widely disappointing if the leadership positiion is not occupied by someone actually up to the same level of excellence.
Different consensus can be built that these are some low-performance operators or executives.
No doubt about it.
Except the engineers who depend on the situation for their income regardless don't talk about it.
The rest leave.
When you get somebody in a leadership position without the specific leadership ability necessary, they might as well not have any proven leadership ability at all.
It's way worse if the position is occupied with someone having the opposite type of ability.
It can be death to technology before they ever had computer technology.
There will be a force at work which brings the remaining engineers' achievable level of technology down to that of the lower capability of excellence imposed from above.
Even Elon Musk seems to generate a degree of disappointment, so there is always going to be some room for improvement. Maybe he sets a higher bar by being more widely recognized as a high-performance operator himself. You would have to do the math.
No doubt about it.
When engineers like this get a new or changing CEO or anyone in a leadership position having strong impact, the person can become widely disappointing if the leadership positiion is not occupied by someone actually up to the same level of excellence.
Different consensus can be built that these are some low-performance operators or executives.
No doubt about it.
Except the engineers who depend on the situation for their income regardless don't talk about it.
The rest leave.
When you get somebody in a leadership position without the specific leadership ability necessary, they might as well not have any proven leadership ability at all.
It's way worse if the position is occupied with someone having the opposite type of ability.
It can be death to technology before they ever had computer technology.
There will be a force at work which brings the remaining engineers' achievable level of technology down to that of the lower capability of excellence imposed from above.
Even Elon Musk seems to generate a degree of disappointment, so there is always going to be some room for improvement. Maybe he sets a higher bar by being more widely recognized as a high-performance operator himself. You would have to do the math.