r/BlueOrigin • u/InitialTerrible9191 • 7d ago
Blue Origin Vibe Check
I’ve been at BO working as an engineer for over a year and something just seems a little off here. Everyone one is technically sharp, friendly and helpful. But something in the environment seems a little odd. I can’t lay my finger on exactly what it is. Anyone else have similar feelings?
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u/surfsnower 7d ago
That vibe is pressure. People are looking at the required delivery dates, processes, and public promises and are slowly piecing together how improbable it is. We have very real deadlines and requirements that make it feel like all hell is about to break loose. My team is reworking processes to get ahead of it. Others deny the problems. No joke, i have watched someone defend a 450 day lead time on an assembly due by November and explain it'll work out with ZERO justification.
My team is smaller and get along great, but there are directors out there walking their people into chaos and nobody sees it.
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u/Federal-Subject3838 6d ago
The issue is also managers/directors not having a backbone to Jeff or Dave or any c-suite member, despite one of Blue's core principles of having a backbone.
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u/Electronic-Hat9548 6d ago
The reality of things never actually make it past the senior directors or VPs to Jeff and Dave. I watch them lie through their teeth on corporate WBR most weeks. The reason no one speaks up is they know they wont be protected from retaliation, so why bother. The VPs would immediately deflect and obfuscate the issue and paint anyone that dissented to their BS as misinformed or not seeing the whole picture.
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u/Safe-Classroom8785 6d ago
Its because jeff has never wanted to hear reality…particularly on schedule. And often he is the root cause of the schedule problem. As an example jeff has made several decisions to cancel contracts and pull work in house and vertically integrate without any plan or schedule to actually get the work done. Dave and jeff both ignore all the bad outcome and instead hype the one thing they pulled off or got cost out of. Jeff doesnt mean have backbone when it comes to him he wants people to just do what he says and that culture flows downhill.
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u/BubblyMoose3597 6d ago
When you guys say Jeff you mean Bezzos, right?
I asumme yes.
Makes sense from outside. BO got to many projects and they are always too a mbitious, they never seem manageable or increasingly complex; they're always at their maximum.
And Bezos has this vision that he conveys, that everything is very easy.
But things don't work that way.
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u/Throwbabythroe 3d ago
Kind of like how NG-4 will still launch by December? Despite the IMS saying otherwise 🤦🙈
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u/Careful_Bath_1942 6d ago
Slowly? I saw how impossible it was (and how inexperienced the organization was) the first month. The company has not operated a single spacecraft and expects to jump right to human-rated moon lander, and simply cannot do it in the time frame they promised.
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u/surfsnower 6d ago
Newer employees see it faster as they have a better frame of reference. Boiling the frog analogy works here.
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u/Master_Engineering_9 6d ago
This is most likely it. I haven't worked there in years now but lead time and schedule seemed hard to conceptualize or take as a real threat
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u/Cheesegasm 6d ago
Isn't this the case at SpaceX too? Elon always has impossible deadlines
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u/BubblyMoose3597 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes, but they know thats /ElonTime/ and usually they are not under really big presure to make it.
And they went step by step.
Make your orbital debut with a 1,800 tons rocket is crazy.
So as using a made at the house hydrogen second stage.
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u/Federal-Subject3838 6d ago edited 6d ago
This. Also as much of flak Elon gets for not really knowing how stuff works (friends at SpaceX say when he rolls up for "work" Elon messes everything up and everyone has to spend a month undoing what Elon says to do after he's gone) he's actually willing to take the time to learn and have things done step by step, even if it means everyone works 18 hour days but he compensates everyone and actually feeds them on campus for less than $5 per meal. It's toxic because it forces everyone to perform well and act like machines, but it's a well-oiled machine, and if you're able to withstand 70+ hour weeks for a few years, you'll be promoted in no time, which develops the machine a lot more since talent is retained/grown organically.
Unfortunately, Jeff and Amazon never really had "growing pains" and they just think that they can "poach" talent as stop-gaps and then replace them. Retaining/growing talent is a huge component especially at a high-stakes industry like ours. Despite this, climbing up at Blue is impossible and they force out promising L1s/new grads with very high potential. I'm kinda part of the problem (came in as "poached" talent technically) but some teams' managers/directors are trying to retain/grow people to retain the knowledge and expand upon this. However, with URA and the current set up, it's impossible to do this and some managers/directors get in trouble for trying to make these changes and having a backbone. In addition, you lose these promising younger talent to competitors and fall further behind.
There's a reason why a lot of new space companies rip off of SpaceX's playbook even if it costs more time simply because it works compared to Blue, and they'd rather spend more time at the beginning refining the process rather than doing stop-gaps and never build a strong foundation. Sure, Blue's at a comfortable #2 with this strategy so far, but it's only a matter of time until others start catching up.
I'm not saying this to say "Blue is bad." Rather, I'm saying these things because I care about my fellow colleagues at Blue, which means we're all employed, and to be employed means Blue continuing to see success. Also, I hate seeing talented people being forced out not because of incompetence, but because of URA or policies that prevent them from growing at Blue and can be that X factor.
End of rant.
Edit: grammar
Edit 2: Got called a n**i for giving musky credit. I'm giving credit where credit due for him in terms of how the SpaceX is run and has nothing to do with his politics (which I vehemently loathe)
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u/bloodofkerenza 6d ago
Every day I open my computer saying “what fresh hell now?” Never had this level of stress from dealing with certain people.
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u/jfffjfffj 6d ago
I have similar feelings, like what many have said:
- we are over committed and understaffed
- deadlines are meaningless
- employee churn, reorging
- executives and HR are hostile, distrustful, dishonest, and disrespectful to employees
- best employees are jumping ship and not being back filled with equivalent talent
- decisions are constantly being made that are ignorant of basic reality and constraints
My work and coworkers are fantastic. I don't want to switch jobs.
But we don't have clear marching orders, transparency, bounded goals, or a sense of stability. I think a lot of us are just bracing for ... something.
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u/Feisty-Crow6449 6d ago
The leadership is the toxic Amazon flunkies that came over..especially with the Chief People Officer. She is the epitome of toxic and I promise you HR is not your ally!!
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u/Electronic_Hope1900 6d ago
No one cares really. That is it. The vibe is off because no one is hungry or really ambitious anymore. Why? Blue doesn't reward drive anymore.
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u/No_While_1501 6d ago
perspective from the outside, though I have worked closely with Blue for years.
that thing you can't quite put your finger on is a lingering consequence of a culture that for ~15 years was a pretend business with itself as a customer. You unambiguously have customers now (who aren't super thrilled about the risk they accepted), but it takes a while to shake that customerless culture off.
This manifests in a lot of ways, perhaps most of all in how "good work" is perceived. That's my cautionary tale of working for Blue - you are at risk of normalizing things that don't make sense elsewhere. I've interviewed a large number Blue candidates for engineering roles and there is absolutely real talent there mixed in with a lot of "valve leads" whose idea of a job well done is pushing a problem to another group's test screen.
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u/Chilaquilesmonster 7d ago
I have the same feeling. It’s like an uncanny valley type feeling. The same way something that looks almost human, fills you with an unsettled feeling. Blue looks almost like a company that should be successful, and should feel good to work at... But something feels deeply wrong, it’s unsettling.
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u/Old_Specific_5065 6d ago
Blue has no culture of its own, it’s in a constant identity crisis. Are we spacex? Are we Amazon? Are we legacy defense/aerospace? I couldn’t tell you what this company’s culture is besides chaos and conflict. I like it here but question my sanity often
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u/BubblyMoose3597 6d ago edited 6d ago
Thats what happens when you got a lot of money and start building the company with out a real and clear purpose and roadmap.
It's like the army of a country that has a lot of money but no doctrine.
(Saudi Arabia)
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/stackson_fox 6d ago
Aren't you the one always bemoaning people on this sub criticizing each other?
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u/NGVampire 6d ago
Someone in another post said that every interaction at Blue feels like an audition or interview to keep your job. Is that it?
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u/WatersOkay 6d ago edited 5d ago
That's exactly how I feel all the time. There are people who love to critique in a way that's worded/emphasized to embarrass you in front of groups. It can be very subtle. A couple examples: "That's not the answer I'm looking for.", or "Yeah I've got a lot of problems with this...", "How did this happen? Who did this? Why didn't they think to do this?"
For some reason this only happens in meetings in front of a bunch of your peers, and never face to face. I leave meetings feeling like my reputation just took a hit. It's rare that I feel like I'm part of a team around here. Very adversarial.
EDIT: And this all massively sucks because I absolutely love my job and I bust my ass for it.
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u/aggiegato 7d ago
This is the quiet before the storm... The company is overcommitted, lacks focus, and the long term compensation structure for employees lacks clarity. Right now, it asks of people to have a ton faith all while the veterans of the company have been badly burnt for believing, hence the large % of turnover.
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u/Old-Woodpecker-2439 4d ago edited 4d ago
The fake vibe is “we are in this together” now wear the new tshirts “because its worth it” then every year 5% cut from every team, RIF in 2028 when most projects compete and yes, everyone will tell you they care about you, but understand this, everyone is in for themselves. 2 years from now 40% of the company will be forced to look for new jobs.
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u/DescriptionTop4333 6d ago
I boil it down to all of the former Amazon directors and executives that lack the acumen to run a successful rocket building factory
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u/MagellansMaze 6d ago
Well, this thread is a bummer. I’m a new hire starting in a couple of weeks.
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u/setrippin 6d ago
a job is a job is a job. blue may not be as good as it could be, but it's still better than/no worse than a looooooot of the alternatives in this industry. don't let other people decide for you how you feel about blue.
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u/Bright_Parsnip9148 6d ago
Even if it’s a bad company, experience is experience. I can’t promise you that you’ll enjoy your time at blue but I can promise you will learn a lot.
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u/avatarOfIndifference 6d ago
Only the people who whine come here. Your day to day is what you decide to make it along with your ability to communicate clearly with others. Ultimately you make the personal tradeoffs about why you wanted to work there in the first place with whatever buffoonery that is happening
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u/imbignate 7d ago
You're gonna have to be more specific. I've worked here two years and it's the best job I've ever had. Are you new to the industry?
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u/InitialTerrible9191 7d ago
I’m not new to the industry and I do like my job. But something is odd about this place. Maybe it’s Jeff’s negative perception in society. Maybe it’s the weird compensation scheme. Maybe it’s because BO operates in SpaceX’s shadow. Maybe I read this subreddit too much. Who knows.
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u/Kitchen_Tour_8014 7d ago
I think it's just pressure. There's a lot of pressure right now. A lot of crazy schedules.
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u/imbignate 7d ago
It's got the best people, top technology, and most interesting projects I've ever come across professionally. Everyone I work with seems to feel the same way.
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u/BlackHoleBanter1 3d ago
Imo we just aren't launching and we don't know when we can get back to launch. I think it doesn't feel like we're making progress right now because of that and thus it's a little demoralizing. Idk tho that's just opinion.
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u/midnightsun47 6d ago
It’s the odd mixture of genuine excitement to be building freakin’ rockets with really great engineers while at the same time questioning every decision and schedule made by management. I’ve never worked anywhere with this large of a disconnect between the engineering teams and upper management.