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Blue Origin Employees Are Jumping Ship (gizmodo.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
schwit1 writes: Jeff Bezos might have felt triumphant when he rocketed toward the edge of space last month, but apparently the same can't be said about other employees at Blue Origin. On Friday, CNBC was first to report that over a dozen engineers had left Bezos's company in recent weeks, with some departing for high-ranking roles at rival spaceflight outfits.

Among the major names that departed Blue Origin were Nitin Arora -- the lead engineer on Blue Origin's lunar lander program -- and Lauren Lyons, who announced earlier this month that she'd taken on a role as the Chief Operating Officer at Firefly Aerospace. Arora, meanwhile, said in a LinkedIn post last week that he'd taken a role at SpaceX. Fox Business confirmed that other prominent exits from the company included ex-NASA astronaut Jeff Ashby, along with Steve Bennet, who helped helm the New Shepard launch program.
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Blue Origin Employees Are Jumping Ship More

Blue Origin Employees Are Jumping Ship

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  • They Should Wait 10 Minutes (Score:4, Funny)

    by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @10:50AM (#61728531)
    They should just wait 10 minutes for the ship to land before they jump off.

    • It depends on how fast that ship is going down. Human Terminal Velocity may be much less than a rocket facing down with full engines going down, as well if you stay in you might survive the crash, but not the fireball afterwards.

      I had left my first job because I was seeing an increase of shady deals and politics going on, that I knew I was going to at some point be in the middle of. So I jump ship at my own choosing, giving up a fancy title to become the CEO, to be a normal software developer at a differe

  • Smart employees know when the wind has shifted (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @10:52AM (#61728545)

    There is a time for a good employee to tough it out for the company. Knowing with a bit more effort you can get past that hard time, and you will be the big hero. Then they are other times where you should just leave the company at your own free well and schedule, because the company is having big issues that you cannot fix, and will just be pushed into a lot of stress and pain, just for you to get fired at some point where it is probably unscheduled and timed poorly.

    Often employees who are more experienced, and probably had already suffered that fate previously. Knows when it is a good time to change, vs a good time to be a hero.

    • Re:Smart employees know when the wind has shifted (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @10:56AM (#61728555) Journal

      Not a whole lot of future in being a lead engineer of a lunar lander program at a company that was not selected to build a lunar lander for the one customer looking to land on Luna.

      Is anyone really surprised that talented people on that team would be looking to go across the street?

      • Quite true, however if that engineer also feels the next time that customer looks to land on Luna they may pick your product, you may want to stay on board to design a much better lander.

        I don't think this applies to this case. Blue Origin reminds me of that kid in Jr. High who is unpopular, but tries so hard to be popular, but fails so bad it.
        While Space X is that kid in Jr. High was is unpopular, but just did his own thing, because he just didn't care about his popularity, but what makes him Happy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ddtmm ( 549094 )

          While Space X is that kid in Jr. High was is unpopular, but just did his own thing, because he just didn't care about his popularity, but what makes him Happy.

          Sorry but, I think you may be that kid.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by xxdelxx ( 551872 )
            Meh - I am that kid. Not enough to be a billionaire unfortunately.

          • Yes, I was that kid. Or at least I think I was that kid.
            I found out early on, if I tried to do things that the popular kids did, it didn't change anything. So if I was doomed to be a Computer Nerd in the 1980's/1990's then I might as well be as good of a Computer Nerd that I could be.

            To my surprise when the 1990's ended, all the stuff I use to do, that would get people to make fun of me, started to become popular, I wasn't quite ready for that change.

      • There are not many companies working on Lunar Landers - actually zero, since I understand even spacex has been forced to stop working on that program by Nasa due to BO's suit.

        I assume if you can create Lunar Landers, you can also create alot of other things.

        • SpaceX is working on Starship's critical path and nothing more. HLS not being worked on has nothing to do with this lawsuit.

          • SpaceX is working on Starship's critical path and nothing more. HLS not being worked on has nothing to do with this lawsuit.

            Elon Musk didn't make that critical path decision until after the HLS contract was awarded. HLS was awarded April 16th. Starship critical path didn't start getting hammered on until probably June, since the public heard about it in July.

      • Is anyone really surprised that talented people on that team would be looking to go across the street?

        Honestly, I am surprised because Amazon HQ is located across from a hospital. Was Jeff beating them? That seems like enough reason to quit in the first place!

    • Lyons' tenure at Blue wasn't really that long. I hadn't even realized she wasn't at SpaceX anymore, where she used to host launch webcasts. If passion for aerospace were an employee's primary factor in choosing a job, I could see leaving due to recent events. On the other hand, Blue have previously welcomed in SpaceX employees who wanted a better work life balance. I doubt those are the people threatening to leave right now.

      There has also been some movement within Blue on their second stage reuse program, [arstechnica.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xxdelxx ( 551872 )
        There is a certain incongruity in people going *to* a Bezos run outfit for a better work life balance. Musk may be a hard driving asshole but at least he's not a Wall St banker playing at being an astronaut.

        • Musk may be a hard driving asshole

          He is. His factories' safety track record leave a lot to be desired, and even wanted to keep them open at the height of the pandemic.

          but at least he's not a Wall St banker playing at being an astronaut

          It's as if people think Bezos hasn't achieved anything remarkable as CEO/founder of Amazon.

          • Musk may be a hard driving asshole

            He is. His factories' safety track record leave a lot to be desired, and even wanted to keep them open at the height of the pandemic.

            I believe his workers had a lower case rate than the state of California as a whole from May-December last year.

            • Musk may be a hard driving asshole

              He is. His factories' safety track record leave a lot to be desired, and even wanted to keep them open at the height of the pandemic.

              I believe his workers had a lower case rate than the state of California as a whole from May-December last year.

              Be that as it may, that was still a risky gamble on Musk's part at workers' expense, and now he gets to tout his "I was right" parade counting on people's not knowing the difference between causation and correlation.

              These workers are in a better position than, say, fast-food workers or illegal poultry factory workers, so their infection rates are going to be below that of the state. The infections still occurred and were preventable. No bottom line justifies what he did, regardless of the incidental rosy

      • That better work life balance, idea normally falls aside when things start going badly.

    • I would say most of these people and probably more were waiting for the first successful flight before jumping ship. It makes your resume look a lot better to put on there the very public success of the project than to just note that you were a part of this and it hasn't quite happened yet. Your ability to negotiate a better salary goes up significantly, and marketing yourself is a ton easier too.

    • and you will be the big hero. Then they are other times where you should just leave the company at your own free well and schedule, because the company is having big issues that you cannot fix

      "What does your company make?"
      "Little rockets shaped like a penis, that don't reach as high as Brand X"

      Not heroic.

  • Space is unimaginely big.... are they sure they want to jump out into that? I hope they brought a towel

  • their careers are skyrocketing

  • No getting around he is in at least third place (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @11:16AM (#61728639)
    He is the second billionaire to take a sub orbital flight. None of that gives them a workable launch platform. Elon has a two, nearly three useable launch platforms and is only getting better at turnaround and reducing cost.
    • I have a feeling that, if his ex-wife MacKenzie were to start a space company, Jeff would then find himself in fourth place.

      (She won't, though. She's got philanthropy.)

      • I doubt she has to try that hard to compensate, she can have any dimension of "rocket" that she wants.

    • Bezos squandered the slight lead he held at the outset over Musk by being first to hire those few engineers that built DC-X, to get their experience and knowledge of vertical flight to jumpstart his R&D. I certainly thought at the time that Bezos' company would probably run a successful test flight & vertical landing within a few short years. But the decades passed with a few irregular test flights punctuated by more years of little activity. Meanwhile, Musk did his best to recreate the 1950s USAF/N
  • Rocket scientists don't like having to pee in cups, after all.
  • Does anyone have photos of it?

  • Make rockets, not rides for millionaires? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kbonin ( 58917 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @11:26AM (#61728677)
    Blue Origin has done a good job making an expensive ride that takes people almost into space. From the outside they also appear to have decided to be part of traditional cost-plus aerospace, which seems far more interested in milking contracts than building hardware. From the data points leaking out of the company, delivery of a flight ready BE-4 isn't looking good. SpaceX willingness to blow things up to fail fast and learn seems to be working much better than the turtle taking it step by step.

    • How do you get money for that without giving rides to millionaires? Are YOU going to personally fund that? You have to start somewhere.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kbonin ( 58917 )
        BlueOrigin has a billionaire backer too. SpaceX bet the farm on orbital capability, and NASA helped fund that to delivery as the US needed a source other than Russia for orbital class engines since US aerospace engine R&D was costed-out into oblivion for short term profits - I saw this from the inside at UTC. BlueOrigin is allegedly funded for $1B a year, but lets be honest - they haven't achieved a fraction of what SpaceX has done with a fraction of the money. And while BlueOrigin is happy to delive

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Perhaps the most noteworthy thing is that SpaceX took a government contract to develop an orbital cargo launch system for $133 million a launch, compared to $238 million for the other awardee in that program, then built a system that actually costs less than half that. Ten years later the competition is still in the $250 mil range while SpaceX is aiming for their next launcher to knock two orders of magnitude off the price.

          They also developed the system for 1/12 of what NASA estimated it would cost traditio

      • Bezos certainly has the money to self-fund an actual space launch venture. He made a very poor decision to go with a "starter rocket" for suborbital joy rides instead. The idea was somewhat popular at one time - it makes sense to work on a lesser challenge to gain experience before fully committing to spaceflight - but both Blue Origin and Virgin have ended up just wasting all of their time and money on something that doesn't fly into space.

        SpaceX started with launching small things into space, and then sca

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lordlod ( 458156 )

        How do you get money for that without giving rides to millionaires? Are YOU going to personally fund that? You have to start somewhere.

        You get a contract from NASA, like SpaceX got, like Blue Origin got through ULA.

        For some reason, Blue Origin chose to focus on their carnival ride rather than the BE-4 engine they were paid for.

        I don't think anyone here is in a position to do more than speculate why they made that choice. However I can't think of many charitable explanations.

  • And here they are in the courts mucking up the works related to the lunar contract with NASA stopping all work. Lets face it Blue Origin is great in court but not that impressive in space.
    But hey they look good compared to Branson.
  • so WHICH employees are jumping ship at Blue Origin?
    The old space cadre that can't produce anything but paper studies, or the new guard that wants to build & fly hardware, risk breaking it, and learn from their failures?
  • They did what they were supposed to do. Put a Billionaire into space momentarily for bragging rights. Company can close down now, after they get done trying to sue NASA for money because their feelings are hurt.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Blue Origin failed to get the NASA contract for moon landings. Of course they were going to lose people working on that stuff.

  • This is actually a pretty common phenomenon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:13PM (#61729311)

    After the first successful launch at Virgin Orbit, a surprising number of employees called it a day and moved on. A lot of people are invested in their job just enough to want to see some success but not necessarily happy enough to see it through a longer haul.

    The best analogy for timelines in NewSpace is the pharmaceutical industry developing a new and difficult to make drug or treatment. It can take decades to achieve any kind of real and lasting success. Most people want more variety out of their careers and are happy to move on to the next thing with a bit of vested stock and some success under their belt. This is also true of the tech industry, where there is a lot of attrition after an IPO.

    I am completely unsurprised at people bailing on Bezos given the fact that he is unlikely to ever catch up with Musk, which he is oddly trying to compete with despite his total lack of competency and experience in the orbital sector. He is presently trying to sue his way to success which is a bad sign. Jeff is hyper competitive and is used to winning at any cost.

    NewSpace has devoured many a billionaire who previously thought they could accomplish anything. Here is the one industry where you cannot win by simply having more resources. Without the right team you are dead in the water, and those teams are incredibly hard to find and put together. You cannot bullshit your way to orbit.

    Space is completely unforgiving, but very rewarding for those who do succeed. I spent 15 years in that industry and that was enough. It was a great street education in just about everything you could imagine. Wouldn't trade that time in my life for the world.

  • they should bask longer in the glory for all their hard work.

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