[HN Gopher] Blue Origin has a toxic culture, former and current ...
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Blue Origin has a toxic culture, former and current employees say
Author : bell-cot
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-09-30 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Is this correlated with months-ago leaks about toxic culture in
| Amazon?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Blue Origin has a toxic culture. Amazon has a toxic culture.
| What do they have in common?
| teakettle42 wrote:
| They're convenient targets for a new breed of muckraking so-
| called journalists?
| pinewurst wrote:
| No - people have been talking about toxic Amazon culture for at
| least the past decade. It should be little surprise that Bezos'
| other enterprise is not a fun place.
| pinewurst wrote:
| It's interesting that BO tries to tar the author by claiming she
| was terminated for violations of federal export control
| regulations - but she was an employee communications manager. How
| does such a role even intersect with that?
|
| Reading the original essay (https://www.lioness.co/post/bezos-
| wants-to-create-a-better-f...) - it's a strange mix of odious
| sexual harassment and the seemingly trivial (pissed because the
| building isn't LEED).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Apollo program was greatly accelerated to meet Kennedy's 10
| year goal and the worry that the Russians would get their first.
| A lot of intermediate testing was skipped.
|
| Fortunately, things went well with Apollo 11.
|
| It's telling that Bezos felt confident enough to personally ride
| in the inaugural manned launch.
| bumby wrote:
| Is there any evidence that testing was skipped? It seems to me,
| testing may likely be more robust now simply because we've
| learned more and have a greater understanding of failure modes,
| rather than previous a deliberate skimping of testing during
| Apollo
| rkochman wrote:
| "The other signatories, a majority of whom were engineers,
| declined to publicly disclose their names because they did not
| want to jeopardize employment at Blue Origin or harm their
| prospects in the aerospace industry for other jobs."
|
| That's not how signing works.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| My organization had an "open letter" published that claimed
| hundreds of signatories but wouldn't disclose the signatures
| due to fear of reprisal.
|
| I'm not sure how effective this can be as the whole point of
| names signed is that they are real. A claim of signatures is
| not very useful.
|
| Cynically, every time I see a "secret list of signers" I just
| figure the number is zero or a bazillion as it doesn't matter.
|
| It's like Nixon's "silent majority" of supporters.
| bumby wrote:
| "Fear of reprisal" is one of the primary measures of a toxic
| culture. But I get what you're saying about it almost being
| an unfalsifiable claim.
| kelnos wrote:
| I get what you are saying, but then what is the solution for
| people who have legitimate complaints, but fear reprisal if
| they don't remain anonymous?
|
| Not everyone has the luxury of being able to go up against
| their employer without repercussions that are worse than the
| original complaint. But that doesn't mean people should just
| have to suck it up and put up with unjust (and perhaps
| illegal) behavior.
| staysafeanon wrote:
| "It's so toxic there that I will virtue signal by non-
| publically signing an essay, but not toxic enough to pen my
| name openly and quit."
| WalterBright wrote:
| It seems odd to me that highly skilled aerospace engineers
| would have any trouble finding other jobs if they were unhappy
| at Blue Origin.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's a small world, and painting a target on your back for
| employers when you need to work to feed your family and see a
| doctor might not be the best decision for those people at the
| moment.
|
| I might agree with you if they were better organized and had
| more leverage. But right now, they aren't and they don't.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| They have very rare skills, but also live in a small pool
| employers as well.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Exactly this. You can be the best Physical Security -
| Spacecraft Engineer (making up a title obviously) on the
| planet who can make sure no unauthorized entities get into
| a spacecraft but if you piss off the 5 people who run
| spacecraft companies you will be unemployed.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Oh phooey. Expertise like that is very transferable. I
| didn't have any trouble transitioning from being an
| aerospace gearbox expert to writing software and then
| compilers.
| _moof wrote:
| Ok. And if you don't want to write compilers?
|
| Not everyone wants to make a career change, especially
| not folks in the space business.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If you decide that you only want to work in a very narrow
| niche that only exists in one company, it's a prison of
| your own making. Not the company's.
|
| P.S. I was also offered a position at Sikorsky working on
| helicopter designs.
| bumby wrote:
| My experience agrees with the OP. Aerospace is sometimes
| considered a subset of mechanical engineering which is a
| very broad field that can be applied across many domains.
|
| Now if you've spent your career in a very narrow subset
| of that field and not developed transferrable skills
| along the way, I'm not sure the fault is entirely the
| employer's.
| bserge wrote:
| "Overqualified".
| _moof wrote:
| Spaceflight is an extremely small world. You will absolutely
| work with the same people at multiple companies.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program.
| tehjoker wrote:
| When funding was much higher for space, amounting to
| percentage points of GDP but still in a small number of
| organizations.
| _moof wrote:
| Thank you for that statistic from 50 years ago. I'm
| talking about today. Companies like Blue Origin, SpaceX,
| etc. are basically a rotating pool. I have personally
| wound up working alongside several coworkers from
| previous jobs, and none of us were referrals. It's such a
| common experience that it's become something of a running
| joke.
| WalterBright wrote:
| By saying it's a "rotating pool", that implicitly means
| people aren't trapped at their existing job.
| _moof wrote:
| Walter, respectfully, I can see that you aren't
| interested in trying to actually understand what I'm
| saying, or acknowledging that things might have changed
| since you graduated, or respecting that someone who has
| worked for multiple launch providers might actually know
| something about them. That being the case, I'm going to
| end our discussion here.
| snypher wrote:
| I'm glad you finished up with such a grandiose and
| dismissive statement.
| kelnos wrote:
| Please don't do this here. If you think a comment is out
| of line or isn't substantive, just downvote and/or flag
| it and move on.
|
| (I recognize that I am toeing the line here as to whether
| or not I should even comment _here_.)
| kelnos wrote:
| The issue isn't that people are trapped at their current
| job (though some people may also feel that way, who
| knows), it's that if they stand up against poor treatment
| at their current job, the other companies in the field
| won't hire them.
|
| Sure, another option is to not say anything at all, and
| just quietly quit and go to another company, but that
| doesn't really solve the problem; it just makes it
| someone else's problem.
|
| And if the pool of companies is small enough, you also
| run the risk of these bad behaviors cropping up
| everywhere, with nowhere else to go.
| bumby wrote:
| It's only a rotating pool because people want to stay in
| aerospace. Many of those engineers can transfer to other
| fields if they really had the desire. They could work in
| automotive, energy, oil and gas, etc. I assume they
| either like aerospace or don't feel comfortable enough to
| branch out to other domains.
|
| Aerospace is one of those fields where many people feel
| like they are moving backwards if they leave because of
| the status/prestige attached to it.
| kelnos wrote:
| If our job-field selection process has to include "field
| where most companies in it aren't toxic" as a major
| factor, that's... not a good sign. I don't think it'd be
| a good result if people had to leave their field and move
| to another one because the culture at most companies in
| their field is toxic.
| bumby wrote:
| I was mainly addressing the comment about the lack of
| prospects, not really making any claims about the
| aerospace culture as a whole. However, it would be
| interesting to see if toxic culture may correlate with
| specific industries, like those who are constantly
| competing for low-bid government contracts or high-risk
| projects. It seems like it could add some added pressure.
|
| Some fields definitely have that reputation more than
| others. I don't know anything about BO specifically, but
| I wouldn't advise anyone to go into aerospace if they
| wanted a low-key hipster culture.
|
| > _if people had to leave their field and move to another
| one because the culture at most companies in their field
| is toxic._
|
| Some people do exactly this. Oil and manufacturing are
| examples engineers will sometimes avoid because of the
| culture associated with them.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's what happens when there aren't enough colleagues willing
| to also sign. Once a majority are willing to sign, it's a lot
| easier to make your name public. Unfortunately, prior to that
| point there is a ding you take on credibility. However, it's
| pretty odd for employees to want their company to get
| criticized like this unless it deserves it. Why start something
| unless its real when the consequences are fighting the first or
| second richest man in the world?
| nsoxo wrote:
| Or maybe they just disagree?
| tehjoker wrote:
| Possible, but unlikely. Usually when workers speak up
| they're the tip of the iceberg. This is different from e.g.
| celebrities because when they say something, they get
| attention, adulation, sell shit etc. When workers speak up,
| they are risking mostly negative consequences and so most
| speech is repressed.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > "In 2019, Blue Origin leadership requested that all employees
| sign new contracts with a non-disparagement clause binding them
| and their heirs from ever saying something that would 'hurt the
| goodwill of the company,'" the essay authors write. "Contracts
| for some departing employees now mandated they pay the
| corporation's legal fees if the corporation chose to sue them
| for breach of contract. The inner circle of leadership tracked
| who signed and discussed contingency plans for those who did
| not."
|
| They signed non-disparagement contracts.
| jaytaylor wrote:
| > Defamation is essentially, "Don't make up bad things about
| us to hurt us," while disparagement is, "Don't say bad things
| about us--even if they're true." So, yes, even if your happy-
| hour venting session or LinkedIn post references something
| totally true and not malicious, it's still considered
| disparagement.
| belval wrote:
| Can you actually bind the heirs? How would that work?
| LaundroMat wrote:
| Are such things enforceable in court?
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| > all employees sign new contracts with a non-disparagement
| clause binding them and their heirs from ever saying
| something
|
| uh what? their heirs?
|
| How is that even enforceable?
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| I suppose a parent might be held responsible for their kids
| below a certain age - and getting pissy about what a 15
| year old is saying on their Twitch stream is totally in
| keeping with my experience of Bezos' corporate PR.
|
| That said, this should be laughed out of court regardless
| of the age of the "heirs". In Europe you could reasonably
| expect that to happen with minimal bother, but in the US I
| expect the employee would end up paying a six figure sum
| for the privilege of getting the case thrown out.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Is there a company that has achieved world transforming impact
| without at least some employees calling it "toxic"?
| downrightmike wrote:
| Little dick energy filters down.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| Billionaire intellectuals that privately fund space programs are
| surprisingly unethical.
| prepend wrote:
| The examples here don't seem to indicate that a 3,600 person
| company has a toxic culture. It's a dozen or so complaints and it
| seems weird to extrapolate that to the entire org without more
| data.
|
| Of course the headline is true that some employees think it's
| toxic. But that's not terribly remarkable without further info.
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(page generated 2021-09-30 23:02 UTC)