The Blue Origin missions to space found a problem, the leaks of collaborators who for a few days have left through the door of Jeff Bezos’ company weeks after the company’s first flight outside the Earth.
Among key leaders and senior engineers, Blue Origin has a staff cut, but not under its decisions, because according to information from the CNBC, they change jobs and the worst part, some go to the biggest competition: SpaceX.
CNBC corroborated a list of now ex-co-workers who left their jobs at Bezos’ company behind as New Shepard Senior Vice President Steve Bennett; New Glenn Senior Director Bob Ess; BE-4 Lead Test and Integration Engineer Jack Nelson; and thus a list with at least 11 more names.
The reason? It is not clear, because to begin with, most did not announce their departure, but there are those who blame a problem with the executive administration, affecting their growth in the last year.
“Blue Origin grew by 850 people in 2020 and we have grown by another 650 so far in 2021. In fact, we have grown by almost a factor of four in the last three years. We continue to play important leadership roles in manufacturing, quality, engine design and vehicle design. It is a team that we are building and we have great talent ”, a spokesperson assured CNBC, as an attempt to say it is not true.
This fight has made Amazon’s sister company seek to encourage workers to stay, as CNBC assured that the company opted for a $ 10,000 bonus given to all its full-time employees without conditions, in “gratitude” for get Bezos into space.
This has not been enough to change the image of the company, as a Glassdoor investigation stated that employee satisfaction within Blue Origin with the leader is very low compared to other companies.
According to Glassdoor, only 15% of Blue Origin employees approve of CEO Bob Smith, compared to 91% for Elon Musk at SpaceX or 77% for Tory Bruno at the United Launch Alliance.
A battle, endless?
Something curious is that the resignations were not only registered after the Bezos flight, but also that NASA will award a unique development contract for the space agency’s program ‘Human Landing System’ to SpaceX for 2.9 billion dollars.
Since then Blue Origin has been impatient for things to change, however, despite the fact that the Government Accountability Office last month dismissed Bezos’s company protest over the case.
Faced with such a situation, Blue Origin decided to attack SpaceX’s Starship rocket directly, and last Monday sued NASA in federal court.
It seems that the company will not give up until it gets a place at NASA, the problem is that in the fight to get it, your entire team may start looking for other alternatives.