Even if it is, lawyers are expensive. $400-$800/hour expensive. The labor law isn’t strong enough and leaves out too many grey areas and even if it’s an open and shut case, the fines/ settlements are often too low to pursue. Unless you are rich and spiteful like…
Labor law in the US is actually one of the strongest and best in the world for workers
It's why millions have come to the US, especially conservative states, to work and restart their life.
Have you ever worked in the United States? Because this comment is absolutely hilarious if you have.
In the United States, you can be dismissed for any reason, with no recourse, and no obligation on part of the employer for compensation. You have no guaranteed benefits and hell, you aren't even entitled to vacation time. Unionization is scant and union busting is legal. Labor law enforcement is anemic at best.
Especially in the southern, conservative states where labor laws and enforcement are even weaker than in the south.
Not surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places. The results, unfortunately, seem secondary to the culture. Their call, their money - pay attention during interviews and how the companies perform.
The sad thing is that everybody on the south side of this problem will cross over 30/35/40 and wonder what hit them.
> At SpaceX and now at Twitter, Musk requires employees to be “hardcore.” Contrary to stereotypes about older workers being less capable or unwilling to perform hard work, I was actually up for the challenge. My life has been spent working long days, nights, and weekends, putting in whatever effort was required to get the job done. My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore.
If you refer to parent comment, I did read the article and saw what looked to me like ageism in practice. The quote you mention showed a willingness to sign up, yet it didn't ensure survival. What did I miss?
> Not surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places.
What does surprise me though is that this fellow seems to be the exemplar of a company lifer, to quote TFA:
"My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore."
Up until one injury and a short absence for surgery and recovery. And boy howdy did things change after that.
> Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places
I'd go further, the author basically points out that he doesn't really have a life beyond work, or is dedicated to the level they're expecting.
The problem here is that Musk companies are churning employees who don't fit the "frat bro" culture that Musk likes. Telsa is like this, SpaceX is going that way, Twitter is clearly doing the same. What's really sad is that the culture they're creating is about that self-identifying alpha male hierarchy – and Musk likes it because he's at the top.
Diverse hiring in terms of age, gender, orientation, etc, is the best way to combat this.
This is a reminder to always figure out the game in an organization and play that game. Don't blindly assume that if you do a good job, you will be safe. You might not like politics, but politics is, unfortunately, a natural part of any organization.
Unions are all about your position in the union and your tenure. They are discriminating by age through explicit design, and in favor of most powerful and least vulnerable actors on the job market.
I get the feeling reading this that it wasnt exclusively about age - there was probably an additional political component that happened behind his back.
Maybe he didn't kiss the right ring or he inadvertently made someone powerful but incompetent look bad in a meeting or something.
This is a good way to build a questionable reputation.
I’d rather be known as a person who sticks to my principles and strives to do good work than someone who molds myself into whatever shape is necessary to succeed.
This isn’t to say that one should be blind to political realities, but to actively participate is to perpetuate the problems at best, and to destroy one’s reputation at worst.
These environments need people who challenge the bullshit. And in tech, we’re pretty privileged in that it’s generally going to be possible to find something else if necessary.
As someone who has stuck to their principles and had their reputation destroyed by someone else more willing to mold themselves into whatever shape is necessary to succeed, I would submit that yours is a losing proposition. Integrity is not a virtue anybody respects these days.
The parent had it right. Times change. Values change. Adapt or die. Don't end up like me.
Would that person have changed their attempts to destroy your reputation if you had similarly molded yourself into whatever shape necessary?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t adapt, or make smart decisions given the circumstances you’re in.
But they’re a big difference between political awareness/navigation and becoming part of the problem.
> Integrity is not a virtue anybody respects these days.
No offense, but this seems like an incredibly jaded response. It sounds like you went through something that led you to believe that, but I know from direct experience that this isn’t true.
I do think it’s harder and harder to find, but the decline of integrity is hastened by people who choose to embrace the opposite.
I'm probably you in different skin, and goddamnit, get back on the horse. These people will drive everything into the ground if we let them win. People like us are needed. The inflexible ones to convenience. The crazies that set the bar high and keep it there. As soon as that bar slips, it slips hard. Eventually, we'll all end up in approximately the same locations, and shit'll be cash.
Loss of integrity is not an option. Let the schmucks blow themselves up. We're the ones people look up to, and know when we throw in the towel, there is damn well a good reason.
C'mon man. On your feet, we have Windmills to fuck up!
> sticks to my principles and strives to do good work
There is a line between challenging bullshit and baseless obstinacy. Every firm is replete with brilliant engineers with whom nobody wants to work, or nobody hears about, and thus who go nowhere, and whose ideas go nowhere. You shouldn’t do anything immoral. But disregarding how a firm communicates aims and values, the essence of politics, is debilitating at best.
I used to feel the same way, but I don't think the idea is to abandon all your values in pursuit of success. Instead it's to figure out the system you're entering into and how to operate within it, what values of your may have to change or at least be suspended, and what new values you might have to adopt to function. You have to figure out the motivations that move the organization forward, what shadow power structures exist (because trust me, they do), and how to accomplish your job within the political and interpersonal "game" that's already in motion by the time you join. And from someone who has worked in orgs as small as 5 people up to Apple's 80k+ behemoth, one has to do this no matter the organization size.
Of course, if doing so requires you to abandon some of your core values, then perhaps that organization or job isn't a good fit for you anyhow. :)
I fully agree with this comment, and should clarify that I don’t mean one should ignore the environment they’re in and just expect the org to magically bend to their will.
But I’ve worked with two very different types of folks:
1. Those who understand the game, hate it, but do their best to work within it.
2. Those who love, embrace, perpetuate the most problematic elements of said game.
To me, playing the game is the latter.
Operating within the game is the former.
There are some lines I’ll never cross. But that doesn’t mean I won’t work within a challenging environment when necessary.
Having a junior engineer show up to "shadow" you and you've got them filing an HR complaint minutes later is not a commendable trait.
It's a total dick move to rope them into your problem. They (presumably) have nothing to do with any of the politics or age discrimination that might be going on. They're just some young engineer that got something like their dream job and (presumably) want to learn from a principal engineer with decades of experience. Teach them what you know and don't make your problem their problem.
More importantly, it's just unwise. They received a very important piece of information and reacted instead of taking some time to think about the best course of action. Reacting in a way that causes the junior engineer to report it to HR sets off a chain of events that may not be in your interest.
Because drum roll.... HR is not your friend. Their role in this scenario is to protect the company. And the easiest way to protect the company is to root out the malcontent in a way that doesn't get them sued. Especially in this sort of scenario where someone with political capital in the organization is gunning for you. Reaching out to the CEO just sealed his fate.
It's not a matter of principles or doing good work. It's having a basic understanding of how an organization works and acting in a way that will maximize your and/or the companies well being.
He was working 12+ hour days for 4 years straight and left in July. A couple months of unemployment is fine especially with such a niche profession. He might not even be looking.
This story is gross and not entirely surprising. It is unclear to me why anyone would stick around inside the other Musk co. @twitter that wasn't bound by H1B handcuffs.
The upside in that company is really not there...at least at SpaceX you get to build the future.
Could be the changing job market, Musk knows it. If this was the job market like a year or six months ago, Musk would had kept his mouth shut. Elon comes across extremely opportunistic, which is not surprising but he comes across opportunistic in a cruel way. Something that wider group of people should realize and take appropriate steps
I am saying job market is not as robust as it was a year or two ago. Feds tightening has beginning to affect well run companies and workers. There's talk about recession. If it was 2021, anyone from Twitter could have walked into Facebook and get a job
Ah that makes complete sense. I never thought of it that way before but your logic follows. Musk sees what is going on and knows he can take advantage of it. Thank you for explaining.
How many of the best engineers could Twitter possibly be employing? Other companies with sufficient cash might already have their share of the best. If you are really good, you will certainly find takers but unlikely at the same high compensation levels. The state of the economy might be more crucial to anybody’s prospects than you might think.
A year ago getting workers was very nearly impossible because easy credit was flowing like water and capital was abundant. In addition, historical level of retirement was bringing available, knowledgeable workers out of the market. Anyone who drove workers away was shooting themselves in the foot since those workers were very difficult to get back.
Today, the labor market is rougher for employees and easier for employers - credit is drying up and many projects that were employing workers are dying. More workers are competing for fewer positions and even some workers that thought they would retire are coming back after losing money in the markets has made retirement less viable.
I think parent post is saying that musk is a (somewhat) rational actor - when labor was scarce he would have been more careful not to offend. While labor is plentiful he doesn't care how badly he treats his employees because they don't have a better option.
Not sure I agree with that point - musk seems like an even mix of carnival barker and bipolar to me, but I think that's the idea.
It's the US, there are no worker rights but there is this dumb ubiquitous storytelling about billionaires who became rich only because they are smarter and more virtuous than everyone else.
Unfortunately some people will need to suffer a depression or something before they realize they need to focus on their own needs and their own life rather than work 10-12 hours a day seven days a week (my god!) to satisfy someone else's ego.
This is disgusting behavior from SpaceX. It must be even worse for the majority of older people who are more likely to have well established families and "only" want to spend 40 hours of their lives a week working.
The fact they had an expert working 10 hours a day 7 days a week apparently was not enough. They have to be in their twenties to get the real "techbro" badge.
I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
Karoshi is a real thing, and something that gets exponentially more likely as people grow older. There's nothing unethical about setting adequate boundaries so that even the most committed and hard-working employee does not inadvertently burn out, or worse. Work smarter, not just harder.
From reading the article he would have been fine if they assigned him as the manager to train them. But they took over his roles, required training and didn't report to him in any way.
I'm guessing they probably worked on different teams with their own managers. There is a lot of overlap between purchasing, supply chain, manufacturing, design, etc.. We're talking about hundreds of people.
He also wasn't a manager to begin with, that requires it's own set of training, but we are getting way way in the weeds here to even be talking about this all on one person's point of view. There are so many factors that go into org structures, interviews, cross team collaboration, etc..
It's easy to feel slighted when you don't have a full picture. What we do know is the work pace is so frantic that I wouldn't attribute these things to malice immediately. Just a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in a short amount of time.
SpaceX sends real people on rockets into space. If they dont do the job right, people could die. Ive had a back injury, I actually had an artificial disc placed at my L4/L5 (which by the way is a life-saver and my back is 100% now). But there is no way in hell I could do a demanding job or any job at all when I was going through that. Creating redundancy for his position is a no-brainer in this situation.
Thats shifting the goalpost, I didnt comment on SpaceX overall work hours. I commented on a specific employee being disabled. That said, his rockets work - so what argument do you really have?
for jmull below: "no relevant information" He needed back surgery and I have myself had back surgery. I have first hand experience on this topic. Your comment is really out of touch.
You basically stating that SpaceX have to be careful about letting him work after surgery. At the same time they're totally okay overworking engineers all the time which is known to inevitably lead to human errors.
Fact that Musks' rockets work might be very well despite terrible work conditions.
If that was all they'd done, it would've been fine. However, according to this story, that was just the turning point and even his manager didn't know what was happening.
Its OK for people to take time off for things like back surgury, and people should be able to expect they get their job back when they recuperate. The business processes' should be setup such that the business can accomidate this kind of thing, its the cost of doing business. Anything less is just lazy and cheap management and leadership.
Designing medical devices does not equivalate to having had a back issue and knowing what that entails. They run a lean team, they need their people now. Not in 6 months to a year after a back issue is resolved. Its not a union job. Thats what you sign up for.
for teh_klev below: You're taking a complete strangers begruntled story at face value. Again, I had back surgery, there is no way in hell he only missed a few days of work or was working anywhere close to capacity through this ordeal. Back injuries where you need surgery dont just disrupt your work, it disrupts your entire life and it takes time to put the pieces back together.
Isn't this at odds with your previous comment about redundancy being a no-brainer?
He was a principle engineer in an optics lab. Having worked in both optics labs and aerospace, I can say there is very little reason to think that a "bad back" in those roles puts astronauts at additional risk.
> I had back surgery, there is no way in hell he only missed a few days of work or was working anywhere close to capacity through this ordeal.
I'm sorry, are you a doctor? A friend of mine just had back surgery a month ago. Something with his spinal fluid. He was fine & pain free after three days. They sent him home from hospital after four at which point he went back to work.
There are so many reasons why someone may have back surgery.
You seem to deduce something from /your/ back surgery. A specific case and a sample size of one ...
You're all turned around here, let me try to help.
First, I want to thank you for sharing your medical challenges. Coincidentally I've also had quite a bit of back issues my whole life, and it seems to he getting worse. I'm at the age now that I'm expecting some sort of surgury is in my future if I want to stay active for another 20-30 years. Congratulations on your 100% pain reduction after recovery. Having designed quite a few products in that space (surgical navigation systems, bone drills, taps and screws, etc) I know from personal experience that that orthopedics is a pretty brutal thing, that's why they cannot Ortho surgeons "mechanics". So thanks for that. Here's to you and your continued health, and hopefully when the time comes for me I have a similar result. You've given me hope, that's one of the greatest things one can give another - thank you.
On to getting you turned around.
1 - I mentioned my career in medical devices because you menrioned in your comment the seriousness of OPs work and that if they mess something up people could die. I've designed high volume disposibles that are made in quantities of hundreds of thousands, also capital equipment that has a typical life span of 5-10 years. If a mistake I made gets all the way to the patient hundreds, likely thousands of people could be harmed or killed. (See the Phillips ventilator stuff currently in the news). That being said, in highly regulated spaces like medical, aerospace, cars, etc. if such a mistake made it all the way to the customer, it's not typically viewed as a failure of the engineer that made the mistake, but as a failure of the company process'. There are tons of checks and balances built into the system (by law) such they there has to be a real systemic problem with the company, it's culture and processes, for a mistake to result in harm. Again, see the ongoing phillips thing.
2 - I have also spent much of my career in small teams, often less than 10. Still, in these cases, people get to take care of themselves without fearing for their jobs.
3 - Precisely because of the importance of the work is why you want a veteran engineer like OP. In one hour of work they could identify and resolve an issue that may take less experienced engineers a month for find and solve. I know because I am that guy, and do it weekly.
4 - Space X is not a small team, they have thousands of engineers, they shouldn't operate this way, and your analogy to your small team doesn't hold in OPs case.
5- IMO you in your situation should run a slightly less lean team that allows for your employees their humanity. If you can't, you don't have a viable business plan and should get anothe r that affords your employees their humanity.
Thanks again for the hope, I wish you the best with your health moving forward.
This (OPs situation with space x) is simply bad management. Criminally so.
Yes, redundancy is a good thing. On the other hand, addressing it for an older employee after an injury makes their motivations sound suspect. Would they have treated a younger employee in similar circumstances the same way (because, yes, younger people do get injured)? For that matter, why didn't they have redundancy built into an important role from the outset (making it policy would reduce the likelihood of ageist behaviour)?
Because stakeholders revenue and all that very important stuff on the yearly reports which loses relevance the next year. Because both bonus and dividends are calculated on yearly basis, I'm not sure there's much motivation on the decision makers to put enough weight on the long-term plans. Lip service aside, yeah the most obvious things will be made redundant, all the rest getting pushed aside as "cost of doing business". And they're not even completely wrong.
>I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps.
Hasn't it always been this way at organizations, tech or not? Not even suck ups but people that don't cause a stir, keep their heads down, yes men to whatever the manager asks, etc.
Personally, I've seen it in action in a workplace where everyone "loves" so and so. That person would put on a good face and tell them how "amazing" everything was in every interaction. Behind their backs, that definitely wouldn't be the dialogue.
>You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary.
Or less. A name brand, prestige title, or industry. When I worked in visual effects, it's enough to get your name at the end of a movie to justify working 80-90 hour weeks. Video game peeps had it worse and you don't even see their names on a big screen.
>It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
This is pretty visible in transitions right? New manager comes in, people loyal to old ones start melting away to different groups or leave to either join old manager or go somewhere else. The new manager brings in people they know and trust.
Sucking up to some degree is team work. You need to know how to work with people to get what you need and move the company forward. Each person is different and part of working at a large company is learning how to interact with a multitude of personalities, many that you would not get along with outside of work.
It is like high school, it is like politics, it is like any group of humans interacting. You skills are part of the equation, but your people skills are as well.
It's the people who can go with the flow that stick around long term and actually have a meaningful impact on the success of the company. It's very easy to get caught up and think everyone is against you and burn out.
I think the distinction is it’s a very different to schmooze as a way of getting things done in service of a larger mission vs sucking up in a non-productive way of meeting purely selfish ends.
Having a single point of failure is a terrible idea for the health of the company. It is often unavoidable early on in a product, but if the product is successful, there is a strong need to eliminate the single point of failure.
This can be very hard on engineers that were previous the go-to person for a key area. The person and product was successful so the ask to delegate and dilute ownership seems completely illogical. Some ICs don't want to give this up and so they switch from IC to management for the wrong reasons, leading to a manager that isn't really interested in management and is reluctant to delegate and enable the team.
I've seen this occur many times and it's always painful. Starlink is now large enough that it's a huge risk to have a single key person responsible for optics.
It sounds like the author was never given the chance to build organizational redundancy. It was done around and without them in a strangely secretive way.
It's important to remember that we're only hearing one side of the story here.
It's very clear the author has emotion about what's going on, and there are several emotionally toned segments in his account. That's understandable, but it also likely means that this is a biased account of what transpired.
Fundamentally, it sounds like SpaceX is having other engineers shadow him because he's a single point of failure. That part alone is not remarkable.
From the sounds of it, they were hiring inexperienced/incompetent yes-people into areas of his expertise. That's not really organisational redundancy in my book. Just more blood for the blood gods. I have been places where there's something very simple that a dozen people don't know how to do or the reason why it is there or that it even existed.
They don't also (I believe) take work away from younger workers because they are more likely to change jobs frequently—which is much more common. Pretty clearly ageism.
> "yet I saw my work roles gradually transferred to younger engineers who fit the company’s “frat bro” mold."
Oh, hell no. There is no room, whatsoever, for "frat bros" at a freaking rocket company.
Edit: I am OK with young engineers in roles with oversight, but not with a "frat bro" culture. Also, I'm 21 years old, with no management experience, and even I know that's a horrible idea.
And Werner von Braun was 56 in 1968. You think he should have been replaced with somebody younger? Or do you think that his level of experience was useful?
Experience can be a double edged sword, as not all experience is good. There is probably no better example of this than the hiring of older, German, rocket engineers by the US at that time.
If Werner von Braun was younger he’d have been less likely to have been a career building nazi and SS member.
> The average age of NASA engineers on Apollo 11 was
I don't know the specifics but I would be willing to bet that those Engineers passed ethics courses that are required to get an Engineering degree and certificate.
You think the engineers that build rockets have to take ethics courses? And furthermore, that the lack of ethics courses and similar red tape is a huge loss?
I'm happy to say it's definitely no on the first count and the second one is very subjective, but it's a strong no from me.
The OP used capital "E" engineering, so I'm assuming they may mean an ethics course for licensure, which is required in many states. With that said, I you generally aren't required to have an engineering license to work at NASA.
A different charitable take is that ethics courses are generally a recurring requirement for government employees. I'm not sure how much impact that has on actually ethical behavior.
No. The engineers were at Grumman and North American Rockwell. You'd have to check with them. That article refers to flight dynamics officers in one large room, not engineers. There were thousands and thousands more.
They were indeed younger then. People chain smoked, had heart attacks without modern bypass surgeries, generally had larger families and more kids to take care of.
I read the article and it's clear to me that he was mistreated. The last example you reference, however, is still true.
> This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations.
A company can't have so much knowledge critical to operations tied up in the mind of one individual. The "retire or die" comment was crass but it applies regardless of age.
It's irresponsible to allow a situation to continue in which the departure of a single individual would completely derail a project for months.
SpaceX is one one those sink or swim places filled with type A personalities. Teamwork is key, but also challenging if you’re not a people person. If you don’t know something, you need to dive in and learn it. If you know lots of things, you need to help others get up to speed. It doesn’t matter where in the organization they are.
I have no doubt this guy could have been a force amplifier if he hadn’t been so territorial. And they are right, principle engineer is not a management track but a very high and respected title.
He should of been less concerned with his position and more of a team player. Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to higher levels - that’s part of what a principal engineers does.
This speaks volumes -
“And as a result, I was having to mentor a roster of engineers who didn’t report to me and didn’t know what they didn’t know.”
Maybe the guy came from a more traditional engineering company or something. It’s funny his title was pretty much already at the top. A principal that wants to do all the work themselves and not help others who are at the very bottom...
I feel as though you have some big-picture aspects correct, but you're missing out on small-picture concepts. Specifically,
Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to
higher levels - that’s part of what a principal
engineers does.
Yes.
However: effective mentor/mentee relationships are absolutely not achieved by simply throwing unqualified and inexperienced mentees at a senior/principal engineer in a haphazard, unannounced way.
Satellites are being built, rockets are launching and the laser system is operational.
Seems like they made it work, with or without the guy. Though I imagine it would of been a lot smoother if he had helped those engineers in their new roles.
And yes you can build great relationships in a fast paced environment with very senior and very junior engineers thrown into the ring together.
Nobody is saying that they haven't made it work with or without the guy. The key here is that you're essentially saying their culture is OK because the end justify the means, but I don't think that's a company that I'd want to work for. If you do, that's fine, but having warnings like this are nice for the people who don't want to work in environments like that.
you can build great relationships in a fast
paced environment with very senior and very
junior engineers thrown into the ring together.
Er.... yes, absolutely. I don't think that's being disputed. Certainly not by me.
I'm referring to the way it was done as described in his article. That is not a recipe for success. Or, at best: success achieved a lot less efficiently than it could have been.
I've mentored quite a few younger engineers and it has gone both successfully and poorly.
At a bare minimum, it requires a time and attention commitment from the mentor. Unless the job is so trivial (or the mentee so advanced) that the mentee can learn just by hanging around and watching.
When I was a dishwasher in a restaurant (hey, a fast paced environment) it was very easy to train the other new kids. I didn't exactly need advance notice. When I was a cook, it took a little longer. Engineering is slightly more complex.
Maybe Musk is getting a little too old for his role. And he's spread too thin. And he has a drug history. Tesla stockholders might want to take a look at that.
Do we need some kind of industry certification for "this company isn't being run by psychopaths"?
Wouldn't it be nice if you saw a job ad that said "Hey, we're 'Decent Employer' Level 1 Certified!" and you knew that meant: 95% of work weeks are under 45 hours; everyone gets at least 3 weeks vacation per year; Our hiring practices conform to standards to avoid age/gender/race/class biases; etc.
How do I look at a company from the outside and know that they're not a frat-bro culture, so I can avoid even talking to their recruiters?
Too bad that's dead. But would be great to generalize and standardize across companies and industries. It'll never happen, but that's what you're looking for.
For very big companies, it's often well-documented. For smaller companies, kind of luck of the draw; unless you know someone who works there it's hard to find out too much, in general.
I'm not sure what you mean by "frat-bro culture", but the overworking thing is generally pretty straightforward. If a company has any employees who talk about "seven days a week onsite... putting in 10-12 hours almost daily", it's a high-pressure overworking kind of company that's not going to give you much vacation time. SpaceX doesn't exactly keep this aspect a secret, and as the author says he was an enthusiastic participant in it.
Discrimination is harder to avoid because it's not tremendously correlated with overworking or other observable qualities of a work environment. IBM is the epitome of a work-life balance company - didn't stop their executives from secretly plotting to get rid of the "dinobabies".
This is one of the things you're (supposed) to learn about during the interview processes. Lots of companies absolutely will flag as "run by psychopaths" during the interview process. But it also helps to look up the company/founders and see what their general reputation is. Lots of places are an obvious "no thanks" after a bit of googling.
This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations. There is a reason why the notion of "bus factor" exists and if you are senior enough, it is expected of you to mentor new recruits that ultimately will take your job.
That being said, they way he has been treated is absolutely infuriating and probably illegal in numerous countries which are not the USA.
Certainly, redundancy and spreading of responsibilities is a reasonable way to run important divisions like this.
They way SpaceX went about this as outlined in TFA is absolutely not the way to do it. This guy had no input in the process at all, even from the outset or the hiring, and they didn't even report to him!
That seems like such a terrible way to do it, rife to breed resentment and malicious compliance, and let things fall through the cracks.
When I was involved in a bus problem situation, management came to me and said they were concerned about my workload, the hours I was putting in, and the lack of redundancy my position.
What followed was a 6-month process where I was heavily involved in each step, from scoping out the initial additions to the org chart, writing up job descriptions and expectations, application review and interviews, down to onboarding and training of my new team members. In essence we stood up a new division of what had previously been my one-man show, and I now managed two engineers and an admin assistant to get all the work done. It was, all in all, a marvelous process and I am proud of the team I trained. I got my saturdays back, too.
> This is probably only making any news because it's SpaceX.
Agreed - This is just getting upvoted for the anti-Musk trendiness.
It's also important to note that we're only getting one side of the story here. It's entirely possible that they directly asked him to train other people on what he's doing and that he was uncooperative. Who knows - one-sided stories are one-sided.
Probably because principal engineer is an independent contributor type role. Also sounds like he wasn't part of the hiring team to begin with - which is a lot of overhead if you're already a busy engineer.
I too don't understand it. Even reading just his side of the story it seems obvious that he got caught in a power struggle between SpaceX and Starlink. A struggle he lost and apparently a struggle he never knew he was in.
I also don't think he has the right attitude for a principle engineer. Junior engineers don't "take over" your roles. They take on the easy parts of projects so that you can focus on the hard stuff. Part of being a senior engineer is training and enabling more junior engineers. A huge part of his job is to eliminate the "bus factor".
That was my original thought as well. But as the article went on, it was made clear that he wasn't part of the process of creating a team where he can delegate. He was later told he wasn't in a management-track position, which seems at odds with the idea that they wanted him to be leading a team of junior engineers.
He has a right attitude. Top management is clearly failing at the job of being respectful and reasonable manager for him, so he should fire that management. And let them fail.
The right solution is to hire some more people, with input from the critical employee, and have them gradually learn the ropes. And keep the key employees!
>> I hadn’t even been told that people were being hired, nor was I invited to sit in on interviews—though I was the most qualified to discern candidates’ qualifications and experience.
This has become one of my favorite things to do with my experience, and I've helped hire some great people. To keep him out of this process was a terrible decision.
I don't think it was age discrimination so much as politics and empire building.
There is also a tech-bro factor at play here. I saw this while working at a supplier to another Elon company. They get these 23 year-olds that think they can do anything (them getting hired by XYZ Corp is proof right?) and then they do silly things or don't understand the basics. Hey but when they eventually figure stuff out they can claim a few miles range improvement on that car as their own fabulous innovation!
> probably illegal in numerous countries which are not the USA.
As described, it’s probably illegal in the US too. Hence mentioning the notifications to HR.
There is a difference between increasing your bus factor (which is a thing) and age discrimination. Yes, you mentor new recruits, but you’re also part of hiring them. You’re running the team, not getting parts of your job reassigned until there is nothing left.
Yes, this could have happened ultimately been a person caught between a warring Starlink vs SpaceX — but from an employment point of view, I’m not sure it matters.
It's no secret that SpaceX likes young unmarried employees who can work obscene hours without compensation that matches the bigger companies.
I may know this person and it sucks to be treated this way, but why share it with the world instead of consulting with an attorney about possible action?
He mentions working obscene hours and enjoying it and being good at it.
Read. The. Article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read it. It's right there. It's concise. It's well written. Read. It. Read it. Read the article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read. Read it. Read. Read the article. The link is above. Click it. Read it. Read the article. Read it.
We regularly talk about bus factor* in tech (and other disciplines). It sounds like SpaceX realized they had a too low bus factor in this one critical area; perhaps this realization struck as part of his prep for the short medical leave.
Whether they handled solving that problem appropriately or not is up for debate, but having one person as the only person who understands mission-critical area X is an unacceptable situation at SpaceX's size.
This whole write-up comes off as ridiculous. Complaining that a company wants redundancy... they all do. Expecting that you carve out an area where you give yourself tremendous leverage at the detriment of the company is just foolish. And I don't buy the common "frat bro" culture accusation (which these days just means any young male with a hint of a personality).
This is not just disgusting and infuriating, but also simply stupid and bad management style.
If course you should always strive to reduce the bus factor. But I don't see any reason to not turn such an experienced, and good at their job, employee into a formal leadership/mentorship/consultant role.
Seriously, SpaceX, you can build rockets, but you can't make such obvious management decisions? What the eff?
This is a very vague accusation of "age discrimination" with basically nothing backing it up.
Someone who was supposed to be in a senior position didn't know how to delegate and felt threatened when it happened. He decided to see things through a lens of "age discrimination" instead of contributing anything useful. Drama instead of work. Unsurprisingly, he is no longer employed at the company.
It isn't to say age discrimination isn't a problem everywhere. It is. But this looks like a disgruntled employee story.
This isn't a matter of not being able to delegate. This is a matter of being cut out of the loop.
Done right, these people would have reported to him or reported to a peer manager, but detailed to work with him to build a department. He would have been in on their interviews and selection. He would have been the key voice in structuring the department.
Instead, these people reported to Starlink as opposed to SpaceX and he was forcefully cut out. Totally different dynamic.
One can argue it was OP's mistake to not hire a few people himself, train them and delegate part of his responsibilities to them. This way he would have the management position he desired, he wouldn't have to work such long hours, taking a medical leave would not be a big problem, etc. Instead he left the responsibly to build a team to someone else and not that surprisingly was left out of the loop.
Either way - does it seem like a clear cut case of age discrimination? The same thing happens to young people regularly.
I see your point. Though I would say delegation doesn't always have to imply senior-junior reporting structure. Giving work that had "your name on it" to your peers is something we have to be comfortable with. But if you do it well it tends to turn into that by nature.
That's the thing about discrimination. It happens in small moments like this that add together toward career sabotage. It's always hard to prove on an individual basis because nobody writes down a plan to discriminate against specific employees and the initial response is always to blame the person experiencing it.
I have witnessed age discrimination throughout my career; I don't deny it exists or that it may have been a minor factor with anyone, but I don't buy it as the narrative for his story, or why things didn't work out for him at SpaceX.
I have seen plenty of senior engineers handle themselves well and contribute effectively as individual contributors, leads, and in management. Sure, it's tough to get past the politics. People are often intimidated by senior experience and feel that older members put their own careers at risk. Part of the game is making sure people like and trust you, and part of that is certainly not whining.
More often I have seen disgruntled employees of all ages and situations loudly proclaim some narrative to explain their grievance. Also, I think it's worth noting that dubious activist websites love to push salacious, unsubstantial hearsay, especially on click-bait.
From what the article describes, a senior engineer singlehandedly managed a significant part of operations, and after he had encountered medical problems, his duties were partially dispersed to several younger engineers. This seems like a sensible move to decrease the bus factor.
All true, but you cannot initiate this on the basis of age or disability status -- it must be universal policy that engineers delegate in order to manage risk.
30 year-old must be treated same as 50 or 60 year-old.
If you should ever have to engage in anything that could be viewed as a demotion on the basis of medical disability or age you should it get your HR people involved for due diligence.
I'm maybe cynical but, as I see it, the final result was written right at the start, they only recruited this personn to acquire their knowledge, not finding someone younger at first. I would be ashamed to be involved in this kind of thing, this is despicable.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 424 ms ] threadThe law itself might be one of the strongest and best in the world. Unfortunately it's very much Not Enforced Well.
In the United States, you can be dismissed for any reason, with no recourse, and no obligation on part of the employer for compensation. You have no guaranteed benefits and hell, you aren't even entitled to vacation time. Unionization is scant and union busting is legal. Labor law enforcement is anemic at best.
Especially in the southern, conservative states where labor laws and enforcement are even weaker than in the south.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/30/spacex-age-d...
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/z93nuu/exengine...
The sad thing is that everybody on the south side of this problem will cross over 30/35/40 and wonder what hit them.
Please read the article before commenting.
> Not surprising. Anybody with a life isn't desired by these places.
This seemed to imply he was "turning off" after work or working a standard 40 hours instead of putting in extra hours.
What does surprise me though is that this fellow seems to be the exemplar of a company lifer, to quote TFA:
"My wife resided in Northern California while I was based in Los Angeles; with no children at home and very little social life, I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Covid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore."
Up until one injury and a short absence for surgery and recovery. And boy howdy did things change after that.
I'd go further, the author basically points out that he doesn't really have a life beyond work, or is dedicated to the level they're expecting.
The problem here is that Musk companies are churning employees who don't fit the "frat bro" culture that Musk likes. Telsa is like this, SpaceX is going that way, Twitter is clearly doing the same. What's really sad is that the culture they're creating is about that self-identifying alpha male hierarchy – and Musk likes it because he's at the top.
Diverse hiring in terms of age, gender, orientation, etc, is the best way to combat this.
Maybe he didn't kiss the right ring or he inadvertently made someone powerful but incompetent look bad in a meeting or something.
I’d rather be known as a person who sticks to my principles and strives to do good work than someone who molds myself into whatever shape is necessary to succeed.
This isn’t to say that one should be blind to political realities, but to actively participate is to perpetuate the problems at best, and to destroy one’s reputation at worst.
These environments need people who challenge the bullshit. And in tech, we’re pretty privileged in that it’s generally going to be possible to find something else if necessary.
The parent had it right. Times change. Values change. Adapt or die. Don't end up like me.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t adapt, or make smart decisions given the circumstances you’re in.
But they’re a big difference between political awareness/navigation and becoming part of the problem.
> Integrity is not a virtue anybody respects these days.
No offense, but this seems like an incredibly jaded response. It sounds like you went through something that led you to believe that, but I know from direct experience that this isn’t true.
I do think it’s harder and harder to find, but the decline of integrity is hastened by people who choose to embrace the opposite.
I'm probably you in different skin, and goddamnit, get back on the horse. These people will drive everything into the ground if we let them win. People like us are needed. The inflexible ones to convenience. The crazies that set the bar high and keep it there. As soon as that bar slips, it slips hard. Eventually, we'll all end up in approximately the same locations, and shit'll be cash.
Loss of integrity is not an option. Let the schmucks blow themselves up. We're the ones people look up to, and know when we throw in the towel, there is damn well a good reason.
C'mon man. On your feet, we have Windmills to fuck up!
There is a line between challenging bullshit and baseless obstinacy. Every firm is replete with brilliant engineers with whom nobody wants to work, or nobody hears about, and thus who go nowhere, and whose ideas go nowhere. You shouldn’t do anything immoral. But disregarding how a firm communicates aims and values, the essence of politics, is debilitating at best.
Political awareness and the ability to navigate these environments is absolutely a necessary skill.
But there’s a big difference between awareness and smart communication vs. directly perpetuating the worst aspects of such environments.
Baseless obstinacy is a road to nowhere.
Of course, if doing so requires you to abandon some of your core values, then perhaps that organization or job isn't a good fit for you anyhow. :)
But I’ve worked with two very different types of folks:
1. Those who understand the game, hate it, but do their best to work within it.
2. Those who love, embrace, perpetuate the most problematic elements of said game.
To me, playing the game is the latter.
Operating within the game is the former.
There are some lines I’ll never cross. But that doesn’t mean I won’t work within a challenging environment when necessary.
It's a total dick move to rope them into your problem. They (presumably) have nothing to do with any of the politics or age discrimination that might be going on. They're just some young engineer that got something like their dream job and (presumably) want to learn from a principal engineer with decades of experience. Teach them what you know and don't make your problem their problem.
More importantly, it's just unwise. They received a very important piece of information and reacted instead of taking some time to think about the best course of action. Reacting in a way that causes the junior engineer to report it to HR sets off a chain of events that may not be in your interest.
Because drum roll.... HR is not your friend. Their role in this scenario is to protect the company. And the easiest way to protect the company is to root out the malcontent in a way that doesn't get them sued. Especially in this sort of scenario where someone with political capital in the organization is gunning for you. Reaching out to the CEO just sealed his fate.
It's not a matter of principles or doing good work. It's having a basic understanding of how an organization works and acting in a way that will maximize your and/or the companies well being.
Your values may not align with another group values, or its state (good groups can rot). Always, always observe and adjust.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-johnson-0423/
It'd be interesting to know what happens to people in his situation and where they end up. Maybe someone here can refer him to a good company.
"Senior engineer wanted; must be immortal."
The upside in that company is really not there...at least at SpaceX you get to build the future.
Today, the labor market is rougher for employees and easier for employers - credit is drying up and many projects that were employing workers are dying. More workers are competing for fewer positions and even some workers that thought they would retire are coming back after losing money in the markets has made retirement less viable.
I think parent post is saying that musk is a (somewhat) rational actor - when labor was scarce he would have been more careful not to offend. While labor is plentiful he doesn't care how badly he treats his employees because they don't have a better option.
Not sure I agree with that point - musk seems like an even mix of carnival barker and bipolar to me, but I think that's the idea.
That work is too important to leave in one set of hands, in case their CEO dies or loses his marbles.
There are several other new space companies I think are interesting, including SpinLaunch, Relativity Space, and Rocket Lab.
Unfortunately some people will need to suffer a depression or something before they realize they need to focus on their own needs and their own life rather than work 10-12 hours a day seven days a week (my god!) to satisfy someone else's ego.
The fact they had an expert working 10 hours a day 7 days a week apparently was not enough. They have to be in their twenties to get the real "techbro" badge.
I have a strong belief that technical skills aren't as important as the ability to be a suck-up in most mega-corps. You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary. It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
He also wasn't a manager to begin with, that requires it's own set of training, but we are getting way way in the weeds here to even be talking about this all on one person's point of view. There are so many factors that go into org structures, interviews, cross team collaboration, etc..
It's easy to feel slighted when you don't have a full picture. What we do know is the work pace is so frantic that I wouldn't attribute these things to malice immediately. Just a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in a short amount of time.
for jmull below: "no relevant information" He needed back surgery and I have myself had back surgery. I have first hand experience on this topic. Your comment is really out of touch.
Really, how can you possibly believe this judgement has any bearing on the situation?
You basically stating that SpaceX have to be careful about letting him work after surgery. At the same time they're totally okay overworking engineers all the time which is known to inevitably lead to human errors.
Fact that Musks' rockets work might be very well despite terrible work conditions.
I design medical devices, same thing.
Its OK for people to take time off for things like back surgury, and people should be able to expect they get their job back when they recuperate. The business processes' should be setup such that the business can accomidate this kind of thing, its the cost of doing business. Anything less is just lazy and cheap management and leadership.
for teh_klev below: You're taking a complete strangers begruntled story at face value. Again, I had back surgery, there is no way in hell he only missed a few days of work or was working anywhere close to capacity through this ordeal. Back injuries where you need surgery dont just disrupt your work, it disrupts your entire life and it takes time to put the pieces back together.
You may have missed this from the article:
"I said I expected to be out for only a few days"
and
"returned to work after missing only a few days, as expected"
That's absolutely no time at all.
Isn't this at odds with your previous comment about redundancy being a no-brainer?
He was a principle engineer in an optics lab. Having worked in both optics labs and aerospace, I can say there is very little reason to think that a "bad back" in those roles puts astronauts at additional risk.
I'm sorry, are you a doctor? A friend of mine just had back surgery a month ago. Something with his spinal fluid. He was fine & pain free after three days. They sent him home from hospital after four at which point he went back to work.
There are so many reasons why someone may have back surgery. You seem to deduce something from /your/ back surgery. A specific case and a sample size of one ...
First, I want to thank you for sharing your medical challenges. Coincidentally I've also had quite a bit of back issues my whole life, and it seems to he getting worse. I'm at the age now that I'm expecting some sort of surgury is in my future if I want to stay active for another 20-30 years. Congratulations on your 100% pain reduction after recovery. Having designed quite a few products in that space (surgical navigation systems, bone drills, taps and screws, etc) I know from personal experience that that orthopedics is a pretty brutal thing, that's why they cannot Ortho surgeons "mechanics". So thanks for that. Here's to you and your continued health, and hopefully when the time comes for me I have a similar result. You've given me hope, that's one of the greatest things one can give another - thank you.
On to getting you turned around.
1 - I mentioned my career in medical devices because you menrioned in your comment the seriousness of OPs work and that if they mess something up people could die. I've designed high volume disposibles that are made in quantities of hundreds of thousands, also capital equipment that has a typical life span of 5-10 years. If a mistake I made gets all the way to the patient hundreds, likely thousands of people could be harmed or killed. (See the Phillips ventilator stuff currently in the news). That being said, in highly regulated spaces like medical, aerospace, cars, etc. if such a mistake made it all the way to the customer, it's not typically viewed as a failure of the engineer that made the mistake, but as a failure of the company process'. There are tons of checks and balances built into the system (by law) such they there has to be a real systemic problem with the company, it's culture and processes, for a mistake to result in harm. Again, see the ongoing phillips thing.
2 - I have also spent much of my career in small teams, often less than 10. Still, in these cases, people get to take care of themselves without fearing for their jobs.
3 - Precisely because of the importance of the work is why you want a veteran engineer like OP. In one hour of work they could identify and resolve an issue that may take less experienced engineers a month for find and solve. I know because I am that guy, and do it weekly.
4 - Space X is not a small team, they have thousands of engineers, they shouldn't operate this way, and your analogy to your small team doesn't hold in OPs case.
5- IMO you in your situation should run a slightly less lean team that allows for your employees their humanity. If you can't, you don't have a viable business plan and should get anothe r that affords your employees their humanity.
Thanks again for the hope, I wish you the best with your health moving forward.
This (OPs situation with space x) is simply bad management. Criminally so.
Hasn't it always been this way at organizations, tech or not? Not even suck ups but people that don't cause a stir, keep their heads down, yes men to whatever the manager asks, etc.
Personally, I've seen it in action in a workplace where everyone "loves" so and so. That person would put on a good face and tell them how "amazing" everything was in every interaction. Behind their backs, that definitely wouldn't be the dialogue.
>You can easily buy a suck-up offering graduates a six-figure salary.
Or less. A name brand, prestige title, or industry. When I worked in visual effects, it's enough to get your name at the end of a movie to justify working 80-90 hour weeks. Video game peeps had it worse and you don't even see their names on a big screen.
>It's like VPs are building their own personal armies not to get ousted by the other feudal lords.
This is pretty visible in transitions right? New manager comes in, people loyal to old ones start melting away to different groups or leave to either join old manager or go somewhere else. The new manager brings in people they know and trust.
It's how we all benefit from weak ties.
It is like high school, it is like politics, it is like any group of humans interacting. You skills are part of the equation, but your people skills are as well.
It's the people who can go with the flow that stick around long term and actually have a meaningful impact on the success of the company. It's very easy to get caught up and think everyone is against you and burn out.
This can be very hard on engineers that were previous the go-to person for a key area. The person and product was successful so the ask to delegate and dilute ownership seems completely illogical. Some ICs don't want to give this up and so they switch from IC to management for the wrong reasons, leading to a manager that isn't really interested in management and is reluctant to delegate and enable the team.
I've seen this occur many times and it's always painful. Starlink is now large enough that it's a huge risk to have a single key person responsible for optics.
It's very clear the author has emotion about what's going on, and there are several emotionally toned segments in his account. That's understandable, but it also likely means that this is a biased account of what transpired.
Fundamentally, it sounds like SpaceX is having other engineers shadow him because he's a single point of failure. That part alone is not remarkable.
Oh, hell no. There is no room, whatsoever, for "frat bros" at a freaking rocket company.
Edit: I am OK with young engineers in roles with oversight, but not with a "frat bro" culture. Also, I'm 21 years old, with no management experience, and even I know that's a horrible idea.
You could almost make the argument that as these engineers hit their 40's they began mailing it in.
I wonder how Soviet engineer ages correlated to the the relative success of particular programs?
If Werner von Braun was younger he’d have been less likely to have been a career building nazi and SS member.
I don't know the specifics but I would be willing to bet that those Engineers passed ethics courses that are required to get an Engineering degree and certificate.
...unlike software "engineers".
I'm happy to say it's definitely no on the first count and the second one is very subjective, but it's a strong no from me.
A different charitable take is that ethics courses are generally a recurring requirement for government employees. I'm not sure how much impact that has on actually ethical behavior.
They were indeed younger then. People chain smoked, had heart attacks without modern bypass surgeries, generally had larger families and more kids to take care of.
Edit -- case in point:
> SpaceX is one one those sink or swim places filled with type A personalities. You need to be ‘useful’
> He should of been less concerned with his position and more of a team player.
> This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations.
> This may be unpopular to some here, but it is dangerous to let one man run a substantial part of the company's operations.
A company can't have so much knowledge critical to operations tied up in the mind of one individual. The "retire or die" comment was crass but it applies regardless of age.
It's irresponsible to allow a situation to continue in which the departure of a single individual would completely derail a project for months.
I might die tomorrow, i'm 35.
I might retire at the end of the week if my lottery ticket hits the jackpot. I might just leave the company.
I have no doubt this guy could have been a force amplifier if he hadn’t been so territorial. And they are right, principle engineer is not a management track but a very high and respected title.
He should of been less concerned with his position and more of a team player. Mentoring younger engineers so they can raise to higher levels - that’s part of what a principal engineers does.
This speaks volumes - “And as a result, I was having to mentor a roster of engineers who didn’t report to me and didn’t know what they didn’t know.”
Maybe the guy came from a more traditional engineering company or something. It’s funny his title was pretty much already at the top. A principal that wants to do all the work themselves and not help others who are at the very bottom...
However: effective mentor/mentee relationships are absolutely not achieved by simply throwing unqualified and inexperienced mentees at a senior/principal engineer in a haphazard, unannounced way.
Seems like they made it work, with or without the guy. Though I imagine it would of been a lot smoother if he had helped those engineers in their new roles.
And yes you can build great relationships in a fast paced environment with very senior and very junior engineers thrown into the ring together.
I'm referring to the way it was done as described in his article. That is not a recipe for success. Or, at best: success achieved a lot less efficiently than it could have been.
I've mentored quite a few younger engineers and it has gone both successfully and poorly.
At a bare minimum, it requires a time and attention commitment from the mentor. Unless the job is so trivial (or the mentee so advanced) that the mentee can learn just by hanging around and watching.
When I was a dishwasher in a restaurant (hey, a fast paced environment) it was very easy to train the other new kids. I didn't exactly need advance notice. When I was a cook, it took a little longer. Engineering is slightly more complex.
Should be monitored for stroke risk and be kept out of high-value decisions.
Wouldn't it be nice if you saw a job ad that said "Hey, we're 'Decent Employer' Level 1 Certified!" and you knew that meant: 95% of work weeks are under 45 hours; everyone gets at least 3 weeks vacation per year; Our hiring practices conform to standards to avoid age/gender/race/class biases; etc.
How do I look at a company from the outside and know that they're not a frat-bro culture, so I can avoid even talking to their recruiters?
Too bad that's dead. But would be great to generalize and standardize across companies and industries. It'll never happen, but that's what you're looking for.
Discrimination is harder to avoid because it's not tremendously correlated with overworking or other observable qualities of a work environment. IBM is the epitome of a work-life balance company - didn't stop their executives from secretly plotting to get rid of the "dinobabies".
That being said, they way he has been treated is absolutely infuriating and probably illegal in numerous countries which are not the USA.
They way SpaceX went about this as outlined in TFA is absolutely not the way to do it. This guy had no input in the process at all, even from the outset or the hiring, and they didn't even report to him!
"Aging out" has been a huge problem in the Silicon Valley for decades, for example.
This is probably only making any news because it's SpaceX.
When I was involved in a bus problem situation, management came to me and said they were concerned about my workload, the hours I was putting in, and the lack of redundancy my position.
What followed was a 6-month process where I was heavily involved in each step, from scoping out the initial additions to the org chart, writing up job descriptions and expectations, application review and interviews, down to onboarding and training of my new team members. In essence we stood up a new division of what had previously been my one-man show, and I now managed two engineers and an admin assistant to get all the work done. It was, all in all, a marvelous process and I am proud of the team I trained. I got my saturdays back, too.
Agreed - This is just getting upvoted for the anti-Musk trendiness.
It's also important to note that we're only getting one side of the story here. It's entirely possible that they directly asked him to train other people on what he's doing and that he was uncooperative. Who knows - one-sided stories are one-sided.
I also don't think he has the right attitude for a principle engineer. Junior engineers don't "take over" your roles. They take on the easy parts of projects so that you can focus on the hard stuff. Part of being a senior engineer is training and enabling more junior engineers. A huge part of his job is to eliminate the "bus factor".
That was my take away as well - and again, not to mention the fact that we're getting a one-sided accounting of the facts.
>> I hadn’t even been told that people were being hired, nor was I invited to sit in on interviews—though I was the most qualified to discern candidates’ qualifications and experience.
This has become one of my favorite things to do with my experience, and I've helped hire some great people. To keep him out of this process was a terrible decision.
I don't think it was age discrimination so much as politics and empire building.
There is also a tech-bro factor at play here. I saw this while working at a supplier to another Elon company. They get these 23 year-olds that think they can do anything (them getting hired by XYZ Corp is proof right?) and then they do silly things or don't understand the basics. Hey but when they eventually figure stuff out they can claim a few miles range improvement on that car as their own fabulous innovation!
As described, it’s probably illegal in the US too. Hence mentioning the notifications to HR.
There is a difference between increasing your bus factor (which is a thing) and age discrimination. Yes, you mentor new recruits, but you’re also part of hiring them. You’re running the team, not getting parts of your job reassigned until there is nothing left.
Yes, this could have happened ultimately been a person caught between a warring Starlink vs SpaceX — but from an employment point of view, I’m not sure it matters.
I may know this person and it sucks to be treated this way, but why share it with the world instead of consulting with an attorney about possible action?
Read. The. Article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read it. It's right there. It's concise. It's well written. Read. It. Read it. Read the article. Read it. Read the article. Read the article. Read. Read it. Read. Read the article. The link is above. Click it. Read it. Read the article. Read it.
Whether they handled solving that problem appropriately or not is up for debate, but having one person as the only person who understands mission-critical area X is an unacceptable situation at SpaceX's size.
* - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
Or SpaceX values having senior engineers work on new things and junior engineers to maintain existing mature services?
Which is why at some tech companies, they allow you to continue to advance your career as a distinguished individual contributor.
If course you should always strive to reduce the bus factor. But I don't see any reason to not turn such an experienced, and good at their job, employee into a formal leadership/mentorship/consultant role.
Seriously, SpaceX, you can build rockets, but you can't make such obvious management decisions? What the eff?
Someone who was supposed to be in a senior position didn't know how to delegate and felt threatened when it happened. He decided to see things through a lens of "age discrimination" instead of contributing anything useful. Drama instead of work. Unsurprisingly, he is no longer employed at the company.
It isn't to say age discrimination isn't a problem everywhere. It is. But this looks like a disgruntled employee story.
Done right, these people would have reported to him or reported to a peer manager, but detailed to work with him to build a department. He would have been in on their interviews and selection. He would have been the key voice in structuring the department.
Instead, these people reported to Starlink as opposed to SpaceX and he was forcefully cut out. Totally different dynamic.
I see your point. Though I would say delegation doesn't always have to imply senior-junior reporting structure. Giving work that had "your name on it" to your peers is something we have to be comfortable with. But if you do it well it tends to turn into that by nature.
I have seen plenty of senior engineers handle themselves well and contribute effectively as individual contributors, leads, and in management. Sure, it's tough to get past the politics. People are often intimidated by senior experience and feel that older members put their own careers at risk. Part of the game is making sure people like and trust you, and part of that is certainly not whining.
More often I have seen disgruntled employees of all ages and situations loudly proclaim some narrative to explain their grievance. Also, I think it's worth noting that dubious activist websites love to push salacious, unsubstantial hearsay, especially on click-bait.
30 year-old must be treated same as 50 or 60 year-old.
If you should ever have to engage in anything that could be viewed as a demotion on the basis of medical disability or age you should it get your HR people involved for due diligence.