This was profoundly disappointing. Between this and the contractor layoffs in January, the lab has lost over 600 people at the start of this year. More than 10% of the workforce.
I see complaints here on HN and elsewhere that so many tech workers feel like they're squandering their gifts and time convincing people to click on ads. NASA (and JPL in particular) stands out as an institution where talented and passionate folks are working on things that feel meaningful and that will pay off over the span of decades and generations, increasing our knowledge of the universe and changing our perspective on our place in it, and developing valuable technologies that will have impacts on broader society outside of space exploration in the process.
Really sad to see so many people lose their dream jobs today.
Holy moly - I have 4 friends who work at JPL, two of them have parents who've worked there for 30 plus years. JPL basically never fires anyone who's a full time employee, the running joke among employees is if you're better than the average new college grad your job at JPL is likely safe (speaks volumes for a majority of gov roles).
If JPL is firing people, we're in for a real economic ringer in the next 12-18 months.
Not sure this is indicative of anything other than political dysfunction. JPL is mostly dependent on NASA funding, and without a budget from Congress, NASA reduced their budget for Mars Sample Return by ~$600M. JPL can't pay the bills at the current staff level to the end of the year and here we are. The overall economy has little bearing here.
In this yesterday's video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzpoLmPRZ8I (Starship is Misunderstood, with Casey Handmer (Terraform Industries)) - Casey Handmer touches a bit on some fundamental problems Starship presents to JPL. Basically, JPL excels in making really small and lightweight and very capable yet very expensive equipment, for space - and Starship suggests that it can be replaced with much less lightweight and less expensive one but with about the same capabilities.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] threadI see complaints here on HN and elsewhere that so many tech workers feel like they're squandering their gifts and time convincing people to click on ads. NASA (and JPL in particular) stands out as an institution where talented and passionate folks are working on things that feel meaningful and that will pay off over the span of decades and generations, increasing our knowledge of the universe and changing our perspective on our place in it, and developing valuable technologies that will have impacts on broader society outside of space exploration in the process.
Really sad to see so many people lose their dream jobs today.
If JPL is firing people, we're in for a real economic ringer in the next 12-18 months.