Bezos' Blue Origin to layoff about 10% across its space, launch business
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Some incredible management there - produce more with less people and less money.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em
But to be fair, corporations need to say every single thing in a positive light or else media would savagely quote them. See what happens when somebody big admits openly making a mistake. They get punished. This stupidity destroys an honest society. Media and social media are evil forces.
From the information they publish, it looks like stopping the race because you got tired just before the finish line. I wonder what part of the public information is false.
The race hasn't stopped.
I call BS - don’t humanize corporations, they do what they can to maximize profit.
Media is being helpful; without media’s work corporations would still present things in good light for them, only now without third parties involved. Consumers would not benefit from that.
For the ~4 centuries we've had stuff similar to corporations, that never worked anywhere.
Corporations will always cartelize and try to protect each other.
Also, about corporations always protecting each other, this looks incorrect, e.g.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_warfare
Yes, actions have consequences. It's not like these are honest, unavoidable misakes these businesses make. They ruthlessly plan around these concepts, and any failure has employees pay the most.
I think you're confused as to which side of the employer-employee struggle the media aligns itself with. All major news outlets are owned by the owning class, whose interests align with those of Bezos and other employers.
Recently, a member of the owning class did a literal actual Hitler salute on stage twice, and the closest the mass media came to calling a spade a spade was saying things like "alleged resemblance to a Roman salute".
If he really wanted to come out as a “Charlie Chapplin” fan, he would have repainted his brands in the associated colours.
> Recently, a member of the owning class did a literal actual Hitler salute on stage twice, and the closest the mass media came to calling a spade a spade was saying things like "alleged resemblance to a Roman salute".
It took me literally 2 seconds to google for an example of mass media calling it a "Nazi salute". So you're basically just lying to promote your political agenda.
> the closest the mass media came to calling a spade a spade was saying things like "alleged resemblance to a Roman salute".
Here's the Guardian:
> ‘The gesture speaks for itself’: Germans respond to Musk’s apparent Nazi salute
Can you see how you didn't accurately describe the text "apparent Nazi salute" when you chose the words "alleged resemblance to a Roman salute"?
There's a word for what you did. It's "lying".
Most would agree what he did appeared similar to a Nazi salute. Describing it as an "apparent" Nazi salute seems accurate.
There are many references to it in major media outlets though, including this one [1] in the New York Times raising the fact that it was being referred to in strange ways like "Roman salute."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/world/europe/elon-musk-ro...
The headline should be "Elon Musk does Hitler salute on stage", but it isn't. It should be a really big deal, but somehow, it isn't.
I don't know what Elon's intentions are and wouldn't begin to guess. There is a huge difference, though, in being able to say factually that someone was murdered or that the legal system of apartheid ended and saying why you believe someone made a certain gesture.
Anyone could raise their arm and accidentally make a motion similar to a Nazi salute, hell I wouldn't be surprised if you could find a few videos of John McCain making a similar gesture due to his shoulder injuries. Making that gesture doesn't make you a Nazi or it a Nazi salute, why you make that gesture is what decides that.
Do you see no difference in assuming intent from a physical gesture and factually stating someone is dead or a sociopolitical system has been officially ended?
If he was a literal Nazi, don't you think he would have done or said something more incriminating by now? The dude is on twitter shitposting 24/7, surely he would have said something about gassing the jews or whatnot.
The poster said "Elon Musk does Hitler salute on stage" should have been the headline, because it's a Hitler salute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Zwiv8erk0
It does not require "intent" to be what it is, or call out those who write headlines pretending there is any doubt about what the gesture is.
> Anyone could raise their arm and accidentally make a motion similar to a Nazi salute
Only a Nazi can do it during the inauguration of a president who says he's above the law and acts the part, and then instead of apologizing for the mistake, post shit like "Bet you did nazi that coming", spamming the "crying with laughter emoji" like he loves to do.
He probably meant it.
Edit for requested source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mars%3A_A_Technical_Ta...
The author wrote the store around 40 years in his future. We have yet to send a mission to mars, meaning he was off by at least 40 more years.
"Elon" in the story is the title used by the martian leader, not the martian's name and definitely not the human billionaire seeking to make the mission happen.
How exactly is it a literal prophecy?
I would follow someone if they were kind enough to show me how to get somewhere but then I’m very gullible
If you shift the goal posts from "nazi salute" to the "intent", apropos nothing, that should give you pause. You call other people retarded, essentially, and can't follow this simple conversation? Huh?
We've got to get over this "all media bad" mentality. It's counterproductive and not helping anything. Sure, there are garbage media organizations publishing to maximize profits but there are also all kinds of organizations doing stellar journalism these days too. Also, "media" is such a broad term that it's almost meaningless.
They just don't have any viewership.
It may be worth studying why and what can be done to fix this. But I bet one will get stuck with "it's because of government corruption" pretty soon and have no place to move from there.
Its a net loss for humanity, as is all political correctness instead of objective truth which should always be pursued. Maybe a good idea on paper, but it failed to actually change anything or anybody, fringe people just got pushed into their own siloed groups and there is no coming back, thanx to 'media'.
Now with ie US elections of gradually in Europe too we saw and see how all fringe quietly became majority at the end.
It's the complete opposite of a growth mindset.
It's a sales mindset.
Our society only wants to hear from con-men, and so (big surprise here) we tend to put literal con-men in leadership positions.
I'd love to hear some recommendations on how to change the incentives around this.
Compare that with Blue Origin that was founded BEFORE SpaceX (in 2000), which launched its first orbital rocket just recently, while SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 rocket 400+ times.
[0] - https://www.geekwire.com/2025/blue-origin-to-lay-off-10-of-w...
Hiring 8,000 people in two years then coming to the conclusion you "aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have" is gross incompetence. Management isn't cleared out on the back of such a performance.
I’m sure President Musks FCC director will be ameanable.
What am I missing here? Can someone please help me understand the other side aside from taking away peoples livelihood = bad and rich people want all the money for themselves
The result is that good people end up loafing because of lowered morale.
If you are in the rest of the world, batch firing "the bottom 10%" for the stated reason of performance (they normally lie and say it is for a different reason) still requires the exact same amount of effort as doing it when there are actual performance issues.
Properly managed teams deal with actual poor performers, and your bottom 10% employee might be a top 1% employee any other company.
Zuck fired a large number of “underperformers” (obviously if they’re based on performance reviews there is plenty of room for error) and critics said that firing people for that reason destroys their dignity. I see it as giving them an opportunity to actually earn their dignity. I know that the people who are duds in our company have a negative reputation, so is allowing them to keep their job and bad reps really keeping their dignity? To me, that results in a middling (at best) society. It’s a dangerous trait to keep in a culture. Letting people exist in a way that doesn’t allow them to flourish is a very cruel thing to do to them and to the future of humanity.
Subjectively, I’m not the programmer’s programmer or a great PM, but needing to serve both of those roles has given me a perspective that allows me to identify value in projects where two people in segmented roles would not. Being able to squeeze another 100% of value with 5% of work every once in a while is a good feeling.
I’m not so arrogant to say that I’m a top tier person, but I hope this answers the question without saying so. I also want to say that I wouldn’t be able to do the things I could do without fantastic business and operational teammates. It makes it all the more frustrating when I see duds in the same role who I know are making more money than great contributors.
Fed rate has improved, inflation is rising again, and the surrounding conditions resemble those of the ZIRP era—aside from the actual rate. Meanwhile, corporations are making more profit than ever. There should be policies in place to prevent them from pulling crap like this whenever they feel like it.
Maybe so, although I don't know that Blue Origin is the best demonstration for the need. I doubt it's made a profit let alone returned investment. Bezos has supposedly been putting 1-2 billion into it every year, and CEO recently said it makes hundreds of millions per year.
> Every other day, I see drama like this that ripples across the globe.
What do you mean by ripples across the globe?
> Fed rate has improved, inflation is rising again, and the surrounding conditions resemble those of the ZIRP era—aside from the actual rate. Meanwhile, corporations are making more profit than ever. There should be policies in place to prevent them from pulling crap like this whenever they feel like it.
I don't think that's a good line to go down to basically say corporate profits in good times should be curtailed by forcing them to hold onto employees who are costing more than they make for the company. Because what do you do in bad times? Force the companies to go bankrupt, or weaken laws?
I think labor protection should be significantly or entirely divorced from corporate performance, and profit-taking that is wildly disproportionate to value provided should be addressed by mostly by promoting competition.
I heard a talk today(1) that pointed out that pre-Musk was given too much power and now we see from BO's demise why. Competition is now impossible.
When visas are tied to jobs, getting laid off means something completely different—even in a good labor market. I had to move from the US to one of those countries with strong labor protections. But I agree that salaries take a massive hit because of this, and opportunities are reduced too.
I’ve seen the opposite as well—people losing their residence permits and healthcare coverage, and then going bankrupt after a layoff. For me, lower pay for better labor protection is a sensible tradeoff. But of course, your mileage may vary.
As someone from a country with strong labor protections, I'm in favor of making it easier to fire people. There's too much dead weight around in companies here. But being fired shouldn't be a life threatening event.
But the reality is that tying visas and healthcare to jobs, and treating expats who pay taxes in the 90th percentile like unwanted immigrants, is a bad deal for everyone involved.
I do hope this gets fixed at some point—I’d love to go back. I made some great friends there. But until then, I still stand for better labor protection.
I don't understand how America (I'm an American) has diverged so far from what the literal Statue of Liberty stands for.
If someone wants to come here and try make a life for themselves, by all means come and give it your best shot.
As a lifetime employee, I know we need better labor protection laws and enforcement.
Wage theft is one of the largest sources of crime in America.
https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...
But we had Mistral and it’s so bad in the market that Macron asked for 109b€ additional investment to be able to keep France competitive.
We also had Daily Motion but it was also second to market, like 0,5% of Youtube size.
So yeah labour protection laws give you very cheap engineers with 35hrs per week and 7 weeks of holidays per year.
Good luck competing!
That said, Europe isn’t struggling because of labor protection rules but because of its culture.
There are 69 countries with 69 different languages, and each of them wants high-paid foreigners to learn their language. I saw the same thing in France, Germany, and Finland. Why on earth would I care about German or French when I speak and write native-level English?
Another issue is the vacation culture. Three weeks of vacation is incredibly generous, but people here get even more. I’m switching teams because my current one can’t ship anything—different people are on exceedingly long vacations at different times, and there’s no coordination.
Europe is poorer and full of red tape. The fragmentation of languages and regulations doesn’t help. It’s a massive continent, yet the only real tech hubs are in Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. The rest are just running underpaying sweatshops.
In the US salaries have to be inflated in order to cover the lack of transportation, healthcare, and social services.
To claim that all (or even most) issues with wages can be solved with less regulation and enforcement to prevent fraud and abuse doesn't carry water.
I think we need to abolish salaried work, at least for anybody who isn't in management, and legally require companies to use timeclocks with auditable logs. And if a manager tells you to work without clocking in, that should be a mandatory prison sentence. Do all this and wage theft should become a relic of the past.
(Also, none of this requires it to become a lengthy bureaucratic nightmare to hire or lay off employees, so the concern about companies becoming less nimble and more reluctant to hire at all should not apply. It is possible to have our cake and eat it too.)
I don't know any fellow Americans that want labor laws similar to Europe. In sure some people do, but in my experience its nowhere near a majority.
I understand the hate for at will employment. If you pay attention to the industry and what your company is doing, you can avoid layoffs or at least be better prepared for them.
Good luck getting more NASA contracts when Musk is in the government.
Also, with New Glenn nearly ready for customers, it's time to shitcan the people who make that happen and replace them with people who can sell and deliver on launches. Why keep paying engineers when you can lay them off and hire some new ones in a few years when you're ready to consider a new rocket design.
Which means in the future Bezos needs something comparable to Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule, not a small suborbital pleasure craft like New Shepard.
Kind of reminiscent of the Cold War space efforts, when the USA was focusing on Mars and the USSR on Venus, both making great accomplishments.