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Elon Musk Shakes Up SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Division By Firing a Bunch of Managers (reuters.com) 136

schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk flew to the Seattle area in June for meetings with engineers leading a satellite launch project crucial to his space company's growth. Within hours of landing, Musk had fired at least seven members of the program's senior management team at the Redmond, Washington, office, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites. Known for pushing aggressive deadlines, Musk quickly brought in new managers from SpaceX headquarters in California to replace a number of the managers he fired. Their mandate: Launch SpaceX's first batch of U.S.-made satellites by the middle of next year, the sources said.

The management shakeup followed in-fighting over pressure from Musk to speed up satellite testing schedules, one of the sources said. SpaceX's spokeswoman Eva Behrend offered no comment on the matter. Culture was also a challenge for recent hires, a second source said. A number of the managers had been hired from nearby technology giant Microsoft, where workers were more accustomed to longer development schedules than Musk's famously short deadlines. "Rajeev wanted three more iterations of test satellites," one of the sources said. "Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner."

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Elon Musk Shakes Up SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Division By Firing a Bunch of Managers

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  • Mixed feelings (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @02:13AM (#57572633)

    On the one hand, I am quite glad to see such an actively involved CEO that is not afraid to smack down on senior staff. (as this mitigates feelings of complacency, and resists the formation of entrenched bureaucracies.)

    On the other, I am concerned about rushed deadlines and schedules, since you should not fuck around with things that can cause tremendous amounts of damage to other investments should they go awry. (Like a satellite, or a space vehicle of any kind.) To say nothing of the risks of the finished product not being suitable for purpose...

    So yeah. Mixed feelings.

    • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No mixed feelings here. The numbers of just terrible people pumped out of the Microsoft factory is staggering.

      The good news is they tend to go back and then get paid more.

      Maybe the good ones never leave. I just know they seem to not survive outside of that ecosystem.

      • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @08:08AM (#57573479)

        I have worked with people with Microsoft, Google, AOL (when it was a thing).... And for the most part they are not any better then those guys who worked at small companies, or even in Government.
        Actually people from small companies, are actually much better, because they know how to do more with less.

        • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)

          by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @08:58AM (#57573739)

          I have worked with people with Microsoft, Google, AOL (when it was a thing).... And for the most part they are not any better then those guys who worked at small companies, or even in Government. Actually people from small companies, are actually much better, because they know how to do more with less.

          Damn, I already posted so I can't mod you up. I couldn't agree more and only HR drones who wouldn't know a well run tech company from a tire fire wouldn't know this. For everyone else, you have no excuse for not knowing this. Working at Google these days should be a black mark, not a sign of quality. 10 years ago it would be different but that was a different Google.

        • I have worked with people with Microsoft, Google, AOL (when it was a thing).... And for the most part they are not any better then those guys who worked at small companies, or even in Government. Actually people from small companies, are actually much better, because they know how to do more with less.

          That has been my experience as well. People from both large companies and government tend, more often than not, to have personalities congruent with bureaucracy - there is a level of comfort and security that comes with the size and resources of the organization, but it kills drive and efficiency... In small companies, if something needs to get done and there is nobody else with experience in the task... congratulations, you just signed up for a new, probably stressful, learning experience. But shit gets

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      On the other, I am concerned about rushed deadlines and schedules

      I finally got more than a single persons limited feedback on the software i'm developing. I had another day of updates in, and was going to roll another point rev for tomorrow to incorporate that feedback while the customer was just getting started using the software.

      I started on the changes only to hear, well none of that is getting used. Go to the other lab and help approve the previous version the customer hasn't given any feedback on. In short go backwards, ignore feedback so I can check my box. In

      • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:5, Informative)

        by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:54AM (#57572937) Homepage

        Unfortunately there is a fairly tight deadline which isn't mandated by spacex but rather by the FCC. The license for the satellite constellation requires them to launch at least half of their satellites within 6 years of approval. SpaceX has applied for an exemption to this rule, but AFAIK it has not been granted. While it seems likely that the FCC will grant them some leeway as long as they make good progress, that still means that they can't afford any excessive delays.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          The sales guys took a project (and the awesome commissions) with a sick deadline - without engineering's input.
          When we were told about it and complained, "It's not out deadline, it's the customers! And if we didn't take it, someone else would have! And if you don't think you can deliver, then maybe this isn't the job for you and you don't belong here."

          Those that didn't put the stupid hours in got "didn't meet expectations" on their next review.

          After a year of 12+ hour days 7 days a week, we missed the deadl

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Doing a contract for somebody else is different than having regulations you must meet. Go peddle your crap elsewhere.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            The sales guys took a project (and the awesome commissions) with a sick deadline - without engineering's input.

            Jesus, this reminds you of only one job?

            I've lost track of how many times I've seen that, and by the time the project is falling apart, the sales guy has gotten his commission check and moved on to lying to other customers.

            Hell, one time one of the products I maintained got sold to a customer for ... well, who knows, actually.

            We got a support call, and it went something like:

            Customer: So, we're tr

      • Ignore management.

        Fix the features you want, on your own lunch time, keep the changes 'locally stored' not checked in.

        Have your own 'version' then when they ask for those features, magically merge them in 1 hr, look like a hero.

        Sometimes, pretend that 1hr fix takes 3hrs, and do 2hrs of your own feature that a customer wants.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It doesn't always work though. Look at Tesla, the self driving division had to fit a revolving door and they are still years away from delivering anything.

      • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)

        by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:27AM (#57572893)

        Tesla recently removed the full-self-driving as an option for new cars. People who bought it 2 years ago still have absolutely nothing, zip, to show for it. But I bet Elon fired a lot of people for it not being ready when he said it would (end of 2017 was supposed be a coast-to-coast demo), hence the revolving door. From what I read and heard, nobody tells Elon something cannot be done or cannot be done within the time he said it can be done, unless they are looking to be fired. This is probably how horrible brain farts of Elon like "I don't need no stinking BSM radars like all the other cars, I can do it with PARKING SENSORS!" get put into the product (it works about as well as a PARKING sensor iwould be expected to work at NON-PARKING speeds, which is not well at all, but Tesla will not admit to it, they scraped their website of this feature being available int past and in recent hardware cars they just released camera based blind spot monitoring). I think a great example of how Elon delivers is AutoPilot 1 Summon, where Elon promised it would "find you anywhere on private property". What was delivered (final version as this is now discontinued hardware) is a feature where the car can drive up to 40ft in a straight line while someone is holding a dead-man-switch to make sure the car doesn't hit anything. That pretty much describes Elon's pattern for the last 5 years. He used to achieve great things, now he's just blowing a lot of hot air.

        • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:5, Insightful)

          by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:45AM (#57572917)

          I think Elon just has this magical view about computers. He seems to have a pretty decent at understanding the limitations of mechanical systems. He hasn't proposed anything rocket based that was not compliant with existing technology. And while the hyperloop has many, many details issues, it is not fundamentally unachievable. It's just that when he starts talking computers he seems to think the x86 in your desktop is a couple iterations away from being a monkey brain or something.

    • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:5, Interesting)

      by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:32AM (#57572905)

      I've seen managers like this before. The problem is, if YOU are the one who decides to cut tests and take shortcuts, and then you send up 50 satellites and they don't work because of those cuts, you career is over. But if the boss is the one who makes that decision and the decision turns out to be a bad one, the issue gets filled under 'well, we had to try' and everyone moves on.

      It's really just a product of having a boss with a ginormous ego - you're sorta screwed if you don't and screwed if you do. Eventually if you are the type who can be controlled by bullying and remain a faithful servant (i.e. much like Tim Cook - compliant and not a threat to the alpha), you will become protected by the boss as a useful asset and then life is much easier.

      Now Musk has made the risky decision, everyone will be able to move forward knowing their necks are not so exposed if the gamble doesn't work out.

      • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @06:51AM (#57573155)

        Now Musk has made the risky decision, everyone will be able to move forward knowing their necks are not so exposed if the gamble doesn't work out.

        Oh sure, until that gamble rolls craps, THEN you are done too.

        If the boss is willing to ignore his direct reports, fire a bunch of them because he doesn't like what they tell him about cost and schedule, you don't feel better, you polish up your resume and start looking for another job. Unless the upper management was just garbage and everyone knew it, everybody knows what this means, regardless of how possible something is or isn't, you deliver, on time, or you are given your walking papers.

        This is absolutely the crappiest way to motivate labor and foster team work. Mustk has unwittingly created a dog eat dog world with CYA "I told you so" documentation flying off the printers at all levels. Nobody will want to be left holding the bag and everybody will be setting up to blame the other guy in hopes of keeping his job. Team work be damned.

        You see the real "solution" (if there actually is one) is well motivated teamwork. Getting everybody pulling the same direction at the same time on the stuff that matters most. That kind of culture doesn't get built on firing folks. You build such a culture using carrots, not sticks.

        • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Hodr ( 219920 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @07:55AM (#57573405) Homepage

          From the sounds of this article they already had a fairly toxic work environment with management split about the appropriate way forward. Elon simply picked a side and fired the rest so they wouldn't remain a festering wound.

          I have lived through similar (though smaller in scale) shake-ups and by and large they have been beneficial in focusing the team and removing the stress of politics and having to please bosses with opposed goals.

          • From the sounds of this article they already had a fairly toxic work environment with management split about the appropriate way forward. Elon simply picked a side and fired the rest so they wouldn't remain a festering wound.

            If that's what Musk was trying to accomplish, he's every bit the idiot his detractors claim. You don't fire your underlings for not agreeing with your views, you fire them for not following your instructions or some kind of inexcusable behavior. What Musk did was to beat his underlings with a stick, which may produce immediate and visible compliance at first, but is counter productive in the long term, where they will react in fear. You want employees to take pride in their hard work because they care ab

        • Oh sure, until that gamble rolls craps, THEN you are done too.

          So what you're saying is that a startup company's efforts might fail? Oh no! /s

          I would rather work for a company that is taking risks and maybe failing than work for a bureaucratic snail paced organization who eternally releases also-ran knock off products. If you want to collect a safe steady paycheck maintaining a product which is market proven and has a support contract for the next 40 years to fill out your career, that's a fine career path to choose but that's different from trying to launch a brand

          • Oh sure, until that gamble rolls craps, THEN you are done too.

            So what you're saying is that a startup company's efforts might fail? Oh no! /s

            Not at all. What I'm saying is if you choose to totally ignore the opinions of people who disagree with you and fire a bunch of people closer to the actual work getting done than you are, you send a chilling message to the rest you didn't fire.

            IF Musk fired these folks for BUDGETARY reasons, then let him say that. However, the same thing is going to happen to your work force. Layoffs are a very blunt tool, they destroy moral and culture, and should be used with care and as little as possible. You may l

      • by Anonymous Coward

        There is also another option. The managers that got fired were simply bad at doing their job. E.g. I have seen managers that don't do their work and the lie to cover it up and get caught. I have seen managers like this not get fired, but instead moved to elsewhere to continue there as a manager.

    • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:55AM (#57573063) Homepage

      When you're launching ~10,000 cheap satellites over the coming years you need a different mindset than the people who work on traditional satellite deployments. If there's a problem with the first hundred satellites it's really no big deal.

      • Cheap satellites sounds like a looming space junk problem. We don't need it to become cheaper to launch satellites.

        • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          People who babble about space junk watch too much TV. These are low orbit, and will burn up in a pretty short timeframe.

          • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:4, Informative)

            by Hodr ( 219920 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @08:19AM (#57573541) Homepage

            As long as you consider ~150 years a pretty short timeframe. The very first US satellite launched (70+ years ago) was launched into LEO and hasn't de-orbited yet.

            Satellites launched into LEO are supposed to be setup to de-orbit within 25 years, but that is an assisted de-orbit. If the satellite is unresponsive space junk and if it is relatively small (as these are) it they could be up there a very long time.

            The one benefit is that these are planned to be on the lower side of LEO (think I heard something around 100 or 150 miles) so you could knock a few years off of that 150 as the normal LEO satellites sit around 400 miles, but these are also smaller satellites so they would have less drag and any "junk" would probably be the result of collisions and would be smaller still.

            • Re: Mixed feelings (Score:4, Informative)

              by Enigma2175 ( 179646 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:16AM (#57573855) Homepage Journal

              The very first US satellite launched (70+ years ago) was launched into LEO and hasn't de-orbited yet.

              Really? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]:
              Explorer 1 was the first satellite of the United States ... Explorer 1 was launched on January 31, 1958 ... It remained in orbit until 1970

              And that's with a 358x2550 km orbit. The majority of the Starlink satellites are slated to be in a 350x350 km orbit, they will decay much faster than Explorer 1 because of the lower apogee.

              • Oh man that orbit make me laugh, it looks just like the orbits I got starting KSP.

              • by Hodr ( 219920 )

                So I misspoke. I said first US satellite, but meant first US satellite in LEO. The explorer 1 was a MEO satellite. Explorer 7 was the first US satellite launched into LEO (in 1959) and it is still in orbit today.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • Uh no. ISS is around 200-300 miles, while starlink will be mostly around 750 miles. Another small layer of SATs ( backbone ) is over 1000 miles high.
            • Explorer I was the first successful US satellite launched on Jan. 31, 1958. It burned up in the atmosphere on March 30, 1970.

            • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

              SpaceX has said that they will be de-orbiting satellites within one year of their ending operating, rather than the 25-year recommendation. This obviously doesn't help if the satellite suffers from a failure that prevents it from de-orbiting, though the same is true with the 25-year figure.

              Considering they plan to put up more than ten thousand satellites (with IIRC 4,000+ in the initial constellation), and that they plan to frequently replace them with updated versions over time, it's probably as much about

        • They're going to be in a pretty low orbit, lower than the ISS, they'd passively deorbit with a couple of years even if their propulsion system failed to do so actively.

          • So they'll only be flailing around in decaying orbits for a few years under the management of any third rate operation that can afford to pitch them into the sky.

            What could possibly go wrong?

      • Exactly right. They should have at least 10-20 SATs up there now testing individual SATs AND the network. From there they can send up newly modified units.
        • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

          They have two up there for testing right now. Apart from the more technical tests they've obviously done, they've specifically called out YouTube playback at 4K and Counter-Strike: Go as two use cases they specifically tested. That might sound a bit silly, but they demonstrate high throughput and low latency in applications that the general public can understand. Reportedly, the cause of the dispute is that the manager(s) wanted three more generations of test satellite before the initial launch, while Musk

      • Re:Mixed feelings (Score:5, Informative)

        by ledow ( 319597 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @10:49AM (#57574411) Homepage

        There's a reason you can't pick up a cheap Cessna, and why you have to go through certifications, and why pilots are decrying the use of drones outside of their (heavily restricted) legal limits.

        Nobody cares about what happens to your satellite. It's what it crashes into that's important. A rogue / malfunctioning satellite could easily take out anything - and orbits are getting more and more packed every day and just launching 10,000 things up there carelessly will end in disasters that won't just have you go "Oh well, launch another 10,000" but be brought before people with billion-dollar space programs demanding you never be allowed to launch anything ever again.

        You've only got to hit something quite unimportant in the same orbit, and you could bankrupt the company overnight. Hit something that you didn't even really "know" was there and you could be looking at militaries (your own, or foreign) breathing down your neck.

        Space is a controlled environment. Media stunts like launching cars on joke orbits aren't really compatible with that. We haven't got to the point that we can de-regulate ordinary airspace, so literally the only thing keeping you "safe" up in space from amateur idiots and commercially-produced tat is sheer volume of space. As that narrows, things get more and more stupid and dangerous.

        You can't make cars without abiding by manufacturer regulations. You certainly can't build saleable aircraft without a shed-ton more regulation. Just lobbing things up into space isn't a behaviour that will be tolerated for very long once the first mess-up is made.

        P.S. It took SpaceX years and dozens and dozens of test landings where they destroyed drone-boats, rockets, broke off their landing legs, abandoned landings to just plunge into the sea etc. before they got a landing that you can coo over. This stuff isn't "easy" and certainly isn't reliable.

        Applying the same principle to something that might share an orbit with an component from your rivals that's so expensive that it might cost your company every profit it's ever made (yeah, right) in order to put something equivalent back up there in reparation? That's not "a different mindset". That's "commercial suicide".

    • ...as this mitigates feelings of complacency, and resists the formation of entrenched bureaucracies.

      When you make it sound like that, Stalin's Great Purge comes to mind.

    • Well,... like all the rest of us you have NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER in this field.

      It's easy to criticise, but hard to defend such a position in the light of all the monumental accomplishments Space-X realised...

      How can we judge from our lazy chairs if Elon did the right thing here?

      His track record is amazing. And sure, he does make (some) mistakes; but none of those could have been avoided by outsiders interpreting news articles...

    • From my experience, when these projects get delayed and take a long time, is because most of the work going on is protecting your own butt. This is prevalent in work cultures which when there is a problem, the direction goes to who did the mistake and punish them. So people learn to have documentation, gigs of emails (copies of it if email is purged) to show off if there is a problem, that they have record of disagreeing with it, to showing they were told to do it that way, or someone else didn't do it th

    • by vadim_t ( 324782 )

      So what this tells me is that this piece of news might as well not exist. The only reasonable reaction is "Oh, okay".

      Because whether this is a good or a bad decision on Musk's part depends on whether those managers were doing a good job or not, and not having insight into those managers' work and reasoning we can't tell if they were doing a good job or not, and therefore whether Musk's decision to fire them was a good one or not.

    • Agreed. Makes me concerned about how he's handling manned spaceflight and worried that he'll push that too fast as well.
    • To say nothing of the risks of the finished product not being suitable for purpose.

      Like perhaps an "autopilot" feature that doesn't seem to always work as it should in avoiding obvious obstacles.

      I remain in the "mixed feelings" category. Musk has led his companies to do some pretty amazing things, but he's clearly not the most stable of personalities, and not a person I'd likely enjoy working under.

    • On the other, I am concerned about rushed deadlines

      FCC is more to be blamed for that than Musk.

  • by ClarkMills ( 515300 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @02:24AM (#57572651)

    Well from my 10,000' view I would say that did look like Starlink had stalled. It certainly didn't seem to be progressing as quickly as I would have hoped. And now that SpaceX has lost some funding from the US military and Tesla wasn't bought out in the "funding secured" fiasco Elon needs to organise his future revenue streams.

    He's not getting any younger and he's still working in a car factory... (and doing a bloody good job but that's just a means to an ends).

    • He's not getting any younger and he's still working in a car factory...

      He started out as a bank manager. Poor guy is headed in the wrong direction, career-wise!

      I kid, I kid...

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Don't forget he's already digging underground. You can't get much lower than that, what a boring job!

        Hey Elon, have you ever considered digging geothermal boreholes?

    • How do you figure that SX lost military funding? He applied for some that was designed to get competition going in launchers that run from about 15 -50 tonnes to leo. Bfr was way too big for that and would not help create new competition.
  • by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:05AM (#57572745)

    And it takes them AGES to get anything approved and everything goes through 100 hands.

    It doesn't come as a surprise that short deadlines and pressure is a massive culture shock.

    • Cant do anything right, but yet, some retard wants to buy Nokia, and fucks it up inc Win Mob, and gets paid millions.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The MS culture is about removing development efforts from developers to give managers a tighter control over where projects go. In turn developers only have to do a few very minor things and there are both more developers and more managers than actually required (a lot more in the latter case,) it makes it so their managers can lead in a top-down manner and actually get what they describe (most of the wiggle room developers have has been encoded into the managerial system through layers of managers deep en

    • It's called "sharing the blame".

    • This was my biggest surprise in the article. While I know many people who have worked for Microsoft and can't disparage their technical skills, I do know that their management structure and culture is not something that you could not tolerate in a fast paced/startup organization.

      I wonder if one of the purposes of these firings was a warning to other organizations within SpaceX and help set the expectation that Mr. Musk wants things fast and right the first time.

  • by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:26AM (#57572765)

    Elon Musk Shakes Up SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Division By Firing a Bunch of Managers

    Into space?

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Not sure if future Boring Company 'human cannon' gimmick product, or prototype mass driver...

    • Elon Musk Shakes Up SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Division By Firing a Bunch of Managers

      Into space?

      Better than burying them alive with the Boring company ...

    • One way to get rid of the bodies: Put them in the trunk of your car and launch it out to the orbit of Mars.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:19AM (#57572883)

    Lazy Seattle people only want to work 100 hour weeks.

    Elon owns you now.

  • Speed is everything (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:55AM (#57572941)

    If one woman needs 9 months to create a baby, just put 9 women on the job and it will be done in 1 month.

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      That's how it works with Warlock summoning rituals, yes. Wait, that IS where babies come from, right?!
      Mommy, why'd you lie to me?!

    • and they just waited around with 1,000 women on the payroll in order to achieve it. that wouldn't work so well if some of the women weren't even pregnant after all, and others were prone to miscarriages for medical reasons.

      That's more like the situation here .... They can't get a project going in time to get thousands of small satellites in low space orbit if a big number of their engineers tasked with the project are still of the mentality of going much slower and reducing risk of a failed satellite to as

  • Rei ? (Score:1, Troll)

    by nukenerd ( 172703 )

    I wonder if Rei was one of them. I'll look out for any change of tone.

  • Iridium launched and had an operational global network in a fairly timely manner. Quite an engineering accomplishment but The revenue generation failed miserably since coverage only line of sight with a big handset and low bandwidth. Most users were better off with GSM land site services.
    • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      The counter-point is that after Iridium's debt was erased, they became a profitable company and have launched their new "NEXT" constellation to replace the old one (65 launched to date, the final 10 launching next month). The new constellation cost them ~$2.9 billion USD (2.1 for the satellites, 0.8 for the launches), which is something like half or two thirds of the cost of their original constellation adjusted for inflation. The new constellation can also probably serve a much broader market due to higher

  • Yeah, it said some came from MS but, wonder how many came that were ex-NASA or other ex-government? Government employees typically never care about two things. 1. Deadlines 2. Budgets They work "for the government" and their unlimited resources (taxpayers) and never worry about performance as they usually have to kill someone to be fired (except for politicians.)
  • Firing managers who weren't pushing an "agressive enough development schedule".

    Also known as a death march, and upper management with the perception of reality Trumpolini has - "come on, all you need to do is move your mouse and do a few clickes, and your program's done, right?"

    Clearly, Musk is of the opinion that if you work for him, his wants are your entire life, you have no life (nor do you deserve one) outside of work.

    Worked a death march for Ameritech in the mid-nineties. My late wife was only semi-jo

  • Yay, he's kicking out a layer of useless managers who were holding up actual work getting done.

    Boo, he's gone and installed new ones.

  • Now that Elon isn't spending so much time screwing things up at Tesla it looks like he's spending more time over at SpaceX. Crap! Things were going so well over there too. Elon is good for getting projects started and setting the goals for his companies but he should be kept well away from the daily running of them (and away from Twitter).

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