Blue Origin has a toxic culture, former and current employees say | Hacker News Reader

Blue Origin has a toxic culture, former and current employees say

arstechnica.com

76 pointsbell-cot73 comments

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).

Why is someone pushing TFA again and again in HN?

HN'ers think Blue Origin is an interesting topic, I guess.

So far, it's a clear failure, but in this business everyone is a couple bad decisions away from failure anyway.

> 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?

Surprisingly, export control regulations come in play when hiring (on H1B visa) nationals from some lucky countries like Cuba, North Korea, Iran. It is HR responsibility to comply in each and every case.

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.

From the article:

"After publication of the essay, Ars spoke with several current and former employees who have provided reliable information in the past about the company. Although it is clear the essay was a product of disgruntled workers, these sources agreed that there were elements of truth in the essay. For these sources, the withering criticism of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, and his hand-picked chief executive, Bob Smith, rang especially true."

...which speaks far more to Ars upholding journalistic standards than to the essay containing a high % of quality data.

(Still, comparing Blue Origin's achievements with those of younger, likely far-less-well capitalized SpaceX...there sure seems to something badly wrong with Blue Origin.)

> that there were elements of truth in the essay.

This doesn’t sound damning at all and doesn’t seem to support the letter’s claim of toxic culture.

Is there a company that has achieved world transforming impact without at least some employees calling it “toxic”?

well, low world orbit transforming impact.

Oh, not implying that BO is there yet. But Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Amazon, clearly are and have all been called toxic. Hell, even Microsoft was once extremely toxic, especially if you were in a room with Bill Gates.

I agree, I think this is a penetrating and fair question to ask.

Some may feel it's dismissive of the complaints. But 95% or more of the complaints in the letter are characterizations, not descriptions. Take for example the HR executive groping another employee. What does groping mean? Brushing? Back of the hand? Possibly accidental? Grabbing? Pinching? This is a pattern with activists, using characterizations. And the executive was fired after the groping incident, which means...the system works? He was fired in spite of being a high-level exec, in spite of his personal ties to Bezos.

Another example concerns a female manager I believe who was fired abruptly. This is presented as an example of a bias in favor of men. So... no man's ever been fired abruptly? No man's ever been escorted out of the building by security? It's not allowed to fire women abruptly?

Yet another example in the letter is a man saying to a group of women something like "you need to listen to me because I'm a man". But... isn't that what feminism is? Don't feminists go to groups of men and say "You have to listen to me for no other reason than I'm a woman".

It's difficult for me to see how any thinking person can read that letter and not see it as an example of fainting feminism. [Edited, spelling, sarcasm removed]

I a woman complains about groping at a workplace and it is anything but accidental, it doesn't matter what "kind" of groping it is! It creates a hostile environment in the workplace. Sure, in this incident after the complain the person was fired. What about the hundreds of times he had done something like this and the woman because of comments like yours had NOT filed a complaint?

For your listen to me argument just "NO". It doesn't matter what your straw man feminist says, at a workplace it is NOT ok to say "you need to listen to me because I'm a man". It is also not ok to say "you need to listen to me because I'm a woman"

Westinghouse

Glass Door for rocket companies:

Relativity Space, Tim Ellis: 95% approve

SpaceX, Elon Musk: 92% approve

Rocket Lab, Peter Beck: 81% approve

ULA, Tory Bruno: 77% approve

Boeing, David Calhoun: 71% approve

Blue Origin, Bob Smith: 18% approve

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1418971851066429447

Wow that’s the biggest piece of evidence that the letter is accurate. 18% is abysmal

These stories are true for any major defense contractor. Working at a large defense contract is always a coin flip. I know people who have loved it from day 1 ( aka people who have been there 15+ years) or have left after a year or two.

It seems defense contractors do not care for new hires. They will always give senior staff favor and not push younger staff to become better.

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.

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

I've read a couple of books on how several Apollo test missions were skipped and they went straight to the landing shot. They were skipped in order to meet the time goals, and made a lot of people nervous.

One system they had big problems with were the Saturn V engines, which had a tendency to violently pogo (dynamic instability). The Russian moon program had the same problem, and they gave up on it.

Wait, she was fired 2 years ago and she's _still_ railing against Blue Origin? It doesn't seem healthy to hold onto hatred for that long.

You must never have been fired from a draining and toxic role that without the toxic part, you loved and wanted to make a career of only to get shit on and then fired and then threatened and shit on some more. Lucky.

It easily took me two years to stop letting scar tissue and impostor syndrome from affecting my professional and personal life, and I was very aware of it and working on it.

“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.

It seems odd to me that highly skilled aerospace engineers would have any trouble finding other jobs if they were unhappy at Blue Origin.

They have very rare skills, but also live in a small pool employers as well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Right. I have a skill set from a previous job that I don't use anymore. I could get hired tomorrow to do that job again but I have no interest in it. I guess if we are saying highly skilled people can find another job then I agree but that wasnt the argument.

"Overqualified".

Spaceflight is an extremely small world. You will absolutely work with the same people at multiple companies.

400,000 people worked on the Apollo program.

When funding was much higher for space, amounting to percentage points of GDP but still in a small number of organizations.

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.

By saying it's a "rotating pool", that implicitly means people aren't trapped at their existing job.

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.

I'm glad you finished up with such a grandiose and dismissive statement.

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.)

My comment stands, thanks.

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.

If you don't like the conditions at work, adult up and try to fix it. Or find another job. Or start your own outfit. (Didn't some Google auto-drive engineers do just that?)

Writing an anonymous letter because you willingly signed a statement that you wouldn't is - well how can I put this - not something I can respect.

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.

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.

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.

Fields that are more desirable often correlate with less desirable working conditions. Supply & demand at work.

I don't know that I agree, unless you equate "more pay" to the same thing as "more desirable". Typically, I see the opposite where the desirable conditions (fulfillment, status, general low-stress working conditions) with what most people correlate with the more desirable fields. It seems less desirable fields have to make up for that with higher pay.

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.

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?

Or maybe they just disagree?

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.

> "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.

> 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.

Can you actually bind the heirs? How would that work?

Are such things enforceable in court?

Doesn’t need to be, the company has more money than the individual, so the threat remains tangible to many.

I understand that, but I still wonder if it is.

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

"This org is kind of shitty. Sadly, I need to move on.". That's what the vast majority of people do. Unless there are clearly illegal acts, say withholding pay or physical endangerment, not sure why people would want to pick a public fight with their employer. It's a lose-lose proposition.

I think the solution is to not make unverifiable claims. Just write a letter and have it stand on its merits.

If I can’t disclose the identity of 21 people and have no way of verifying that 21 people did someone, I can just not mention that part.

"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.

> It’s like Nixon’s “silent majority” of supporters.

The term "silent majority" referred to people in the 1968 and 1972 elections who held moderate-to-conservative views that weren't represented in the mass protests and domestic terrorism of the time. Considering that Nixon won both presidential elections--1972 in an utter landslide--it turned out that the "silent majority" actually existed--quite unlike these anonymous signatories.

"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."

Reminds me of those journalists who penned a letter against censorship but used a pen name to sign it lol.

Is this correlated with months-ago leaks about toxic culture in Amazon?

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.

Blue Origin has a toxic culture. Amazon has a toxic culture. What do they have in common?

They’re convenient targets for a new breed of muckraking so-called journalists?

I’ll take “Large companies founded by a billionaire public figure” for a $1000, Alex.

Billionaire intellectuals that privately fund space programs are surprisingly unethical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com