Blue Origin: Jeff Bezos celebrates his space flight. (Image: Blue Origin)
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and head of the space company Blue Origin, has been shooting against SpaceX for weeks. Because the Blue Origin rival, led by Tesla CEO, won a tender for the provision of the lander for NASA’s upcoming lunar mission – somewhat surprising. Because originally NASA had stated that it wanted to choose several companies for the order. Some lawsuits and PR campaigns against SpaceX later, several – including senior – Blue Origin employees are now drawing the consequences: they quit.
Leading engineer moves to SpaceX
Certainly the behavior of Bezos and the Blue Origin PR department is not the only reason why, according to CNBC, at least 17 executives and Engineers left the company this summer. Some of those who quit were on the team that worked on the Blue Moon lunar module. Perhaps the lack of perspective in this area also contributed to the mood of change. With Nitin Arora, for example, one of the top engineers has switched to SpaceX.
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That the deal was against SpaceX but a hot topic at Blue Origin is evidenced by a posting on Reddit. There it says under the title “We are not like that” that the vast majority at Blue Origin would not approve of the company’s “PR stunts”. After all, the space sector is very small and everyone is somehow known to one another – even friends: inside. In addition, most of the employees are space fans and focused on the respective mission. They worked hard – sometimes at least 60 hours a week, according to Reddit.
Glassdoor: Bad mood at Blue Origin
How dissatisfied the employees: inside – or at least some of them – currently with the Blue-Origin Management are shown by the reviews on the US career platform Glassdoor. There are currently only 15 percent agree with the Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith. For comparison: At SpaceX, 91 percent vote in favor of Elon Musk. The bad mood, which according to CNBC is said to have arisen mainly around the space flight of Jeff Bezos, could not improve even a one-time bonus of 10,000 US dollars. Because only permanent employees got this, but not the numerous contract workers: inside the company.
The other side of the coin: Blue Origin currently has around 4,000 employees. According to the company, there were 850 new hires in 2020 and 650 to date by 2021. Blue Origin told CNBC that the number of employees has quadrupled in the past three years. Important management positions in the areas of production, design and quality control are also currently being filled. The team they are currently building has a lot of talent, so Blue Origin.
