Bezos' Blue Origin to layoff about 10% across its space, launch business

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/bezos-blue-origin-to-layoff-about-10percent-across-its-space-launch-business-.html

by pinewurst • 1 year ago

98 108 1 year ago

tjpnz• 1 year ago

What happened to New Shepard? I thought the intent was to operate a space tourism business which could be scaled up to run at a profit.

ramraj07• 1 year ago

I also intend to get the nobel prize. Guess I and Bezos are in the same boat now.

ReptileMan• 1 year ago

You can try the peace prize. They give it to everybody regardless of merit.

asadotzler• 1 year ago

I suspect with New Glenn finally up and running the tourism photo-ops-buying-time farce can come to an end, and I'll bet that's where many of these layoffs happened.

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.

wongarsu2• 1 year ago

Bezos competing with Branson for just-barely-space tourism was fun for a while. But the impending decommissioning of the ISS is fueling a boom in space station development. The future of space tourism is in private space stations like the one Axiom is building.

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.

Mountain_Skies2• 1 year ago

The tech and infrastructure aren't anywhere near being where it needs to be yet, but it's interesting to note that Bezos is focused on O'Neill Cylinders while Musk is focused on Mars settlement. Both can benefit from there being space stations, but the dream of an O'Neill type space station seems more in line with space station development. Perhaps the two companies can have some overlap, especially when it comes to getting out of Earth's gravity well, but once in space, specialize in different frontiers.

blitzar3• 1 year ago

company-wide layoffs of “about 10 percent” of its employees, a sweeping readjustment as it aims to cut costs and ramp up rocket launches

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

alecco• 1 year ago

It's corporate doublespeak.

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.

MangoCoffee• 1 year ago

Bezos pumped billions into Blue Origin and still lost to SpaceX. Maybe scaling down and running it like a startup would be better. I wonder if Bezos is still pumping billions into Blue Origin even now

thih93• 1 year ago

corporations need to say every single thing in a positive light or else media would savagely quote them

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.

johnnyanmac2• 1 year ago

See what happens when somebody big admits openly making a mistake. They get punished.

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.

wesselbindt6• 1 year ago

media would savagely quote them

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".

gnz11• 1 year ago

Media and social media are evil forces.

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.

adverbly• 1 year ago

Well said.

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.

bloomingkales• 1 year ago

He already got to space. It's like releasing a triple A game, you release the staff after it's done. It's sociopathically optimal, and lauded in certain circles as a virtue.

oskarkk6• 1 year ago

SpaceX has 13000 employees and has launched more than 100 orbital rockets into space last year (and they're also manufacturing thousands of satellites and doing other things). They were able to launch 20 rockets in a year having 5000 employees. ULA is launching couple of rockets a year with 2700 employees. Blue Origin was developing their rocket for the last 10 years and has just launched it for the first time. The whole company doesn't seem to be very efficient.

_fizz_buzz_• 1 year ago

I see your point, but going from 0 rocket launches to 1 rocket launch probably takes a lot more work than going from 1 rocket launch to x number of rocket launches.

signatoremo2• 1 year ago

It’s typical HN reaction to only paying attention to layoffs, but not hirings. Blue Origin grew substantially from 1000 in 2018 to 6000 in 2022, to 14,000 in 2024 [0]. Which isn’t much less than SpaceX, despite the latter handling 140 launches a year and handling thousands of Starlink satellites. Reducing the workforce only makes sense. Whether they’ve done it right is another story.

[0] https://www.geekwire.com/2025/blue-origin-to-lay-off-10-of-w...

blitzar3• 1 year ago

I am saying it is poor management, nothing more nothing less.

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.

lupusreal5• 1 year ago

Blue Origin management has been talking some crazy shit about building and launching as many as 12 launches this year and 25 rockets in 2026. That's not something they said years ago, they said this a few months ago. There's no conceivably way they manage it but they're saying it anyway, which means Bezos must be supplying them with some good cocaine.

hindsightbias• 1 year ago

They have to orbit ~1600 Kupiers by summer 2026 per their FCC license.

I’m sure President Musks FCC director will be ameanable.

janderson2156• 1 year ago

I don’t understand how so many people perceive the world this way. I work with a top tier of people but also have a couple of duds in my 85 person org. We would definitely be a better company if we got rid of 10 people. Some people are a net negative and eat up important resources who should be spending their time doing things that provide more value versus trying to help the duds.

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

_dark_matter_• 1 year ago

Why do those people still work there? They should be let go individually to find something more compatible. Mass layoffs are not the way to make that decision.

mi_lk• 1 year ago

Are you a top tier person or a dud?

nabla9• 1 year ago

NASA awarded NLS II launch services contract with on-ramp provision to Blue Origin, but that's not enough.

Good luck getting more NASA contracts when Musk is in the government.

globalnode• 1 year ago

Yeah that's what I was thinking too. No more govt. contracts for at least 4 years.

oskarkk6• 1 year ago

If Blue Origin will not get contracts they can sue, in much the same way as SpaceX sued many years ago to be able to compete for national security launches against the old monopoly of ULA.

taurath2• 1 year ago

How many contractors are also gonna go out? Those numbers are never included, but might be a staggering amount.

snailmailstare• 1 year ago

If they are actually raising the number of launches then it could also be a huge increase of contractors in areas the company never built its own competence.

taurath2• 1 year ago

Why have employees at all then?

rednafi4• 1 year ago

America needs better labor protection laws. Every other day, I see drama like this that 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.

starspangled• 1 year ago

America needs better labor protection laws.

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.

chillingeffect3• 1 year ago

Clearly with Musk running the country, BO's chance of getting contracts is zero.

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.

(1) https://youtu.be/z8Lrd8FM6mA

glimshe• 1 year ago

As a lifetime employee, I don't want better labor protection laws. One of the reasons that America has better job prospects than most of the developed world is exactly because of its flexibility in hiring and firing people. Blue Origin hired thousands of people in the past few years because they knew they could reduce the labor force in case of a business contraction or poor decisions in hiring. I've left a country with amazing labor protection laws because it was really hard to find a good job and salary was relatively low because employers had to take into account the huge risks of hiring even a single person.

rednafi4• 1 year ago

It’s a different tradeoff. I come from a country with a weak passport, which limits my opportunities a lot. It’s hard to explain that to someone who can travel wherever they want, so it’s a bit different for me.

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.

btreecat2• 1 year ago

As a lifetime employee, I don't want better labor protection laws.

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...

valyala• 1 year ago

No, thank you! Europe has these laws, which complicate reducing workforce when needed. These laws resulted in economic crisis across top industries (such as automotive) we see right now.

_heimdall7• 1 year ago

"Better" is all in the eye if the beholder.

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.

bilsbie2• 1 year ago

The harder you make it to fire, the harder you make it to hire.

latentcall• 1 year ago

Protection laws? Maybe. I think we need to improve the lives of workers in other ways. Higher pay, better benefits, universal healthcare to break the employer tie, more time off, more sick time, mandated parental leave.

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.

bilsbie2• 1 year ago

What’s the strategy behind these? They never seemed money constrained before. Why now? And they just had their first launch.

extraduder_ire• 1 year ago

Is this going to end up like Amazon's tendency to churn 10% of employees a year?

bdcravens• 1 year ago

Considering that Chevron is laying off 20% of its global work force, 10% seems like a slight tightening of the belt.

Bezos' Blue Origin to layoff about 10% across its space, launch business

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