Current and former Blue Origin employees say workplace culture and safety practices lacking
A group of 21 current and former Blue Origin employees are making serious allegations in an essay about the company's safety practices and workplace culture. In an interview you'll see only on “CBS Mornings,” Laurie Segall interviews one of the authors of the essay about her experiences at the Jeff Bezos-led company.
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6:06 "You cannot create a culture of safety and a culture of fear at the same time. They are incompatible." That's something you don't hear much on mainstream media very often anymore.
So he's running his space company like an Amazon packing plant? I expected as much
@Pete David neither are you, but if you mistreat people and show people you only care about money you soon will be
Very toxic workplace culture in Amazon either!
SpaceX is so far ahead of Blue Origin that it isn't really a contest at this point. SpaceX reached orbit over a decade ago. Blue has yet to even reach orbit.
And Tesla is ahead of every other auto manufacturer in the world, even if Toyota went all electric, it would cost dozens of billions probably.
wasteful vanities
@@sangeet9100 It would be for somebody who doesn't understand the technology and it's application.
@@SDGreg Aww, don't you feel "smart" now
The only ones who think BO is competition to SpaceX are Bezos himself and a bunch of KZheadrs trying to milk sensational clickbait-y titles dry. Comparing BO to SpaceX is like comparing Uber to Mercedes F1 Team. Or comparing Uber to Andretti. Yes they're all cars, but just because a few Uber drivers aspires to/dreams of racing in F1/IndyCar one day, doesn't make Uber anymore competition to a F1/IndyCar team. The same way a sub-orbital joyride is NOT competition to an orbital transport rocket.
Why are people shocked over safety concerns. NASA did the same thing during the space race. Of course what she saying is true. The question should be what will they do to change it?
They wont do anything
Branson is really no competition, and unless BO starts actually launching real rockets, they're not competition for SpaceX, either. Most of the payload mass to orbit is launched by SpaceX at this point.
Branson can achieve a similar rich(I mean dollars) consumer travel experience to Bezos BO and has also launched a small orbital satellite with the other launch system they have developed called Virgin Orbit. SpaceX may well make the cost per Kg lower than any system and any state run launch capability. But the demand will continue to outstrip supply for some time. It is in my opinion too soon to write off BO, Boeing, Virgin, Firefly, ULA and many others because of SpaceX current dominance in the private sector.
@@grumblewoof4721 I'm aware of Virgin Orbit (who recently achieved orbit). Suborbital joy rides are a market, but small. The entire launch market is chump change, $3-4B. I think you are exactly wrong on demand outstripping supply, SpaceX launch cadence is only high because of their own payload (Starlink). The smallsat market is a dead end. If Starship works (big if), it obviates everything else, with a marginal launch cost lower than smallsat launch vehicles. Again, huge if. Virgin Orbit is not yet price competitive, they'll need to has some economies of scale on Launcher One to get the price down.
King really trying hard to show her loyalty to Jeff
Well thats a shocker cause Amazon work environment i heard was so dandy🙄
Says who? The UAW? Yes, Tesla is frequently conflated with Spacex. They kept filing suit after suit with OSHA and nothing came of it. Tesla claims 18% better worker safety than industry - not seeing the dispute there. Returning to Spacex - please cite where there was a report of worker safety and where the stats are backing it up? Treating them like Garbage? I hear of long hours but excited employees. So where does this come from? Never worked hard for anything because you believed in a project? Also as Musk is clearly going after the money, what is he doing with it. Buying a spacious 1000sq foot fold-up home? Yachts, long vacations, any vacations? This is a driven culture, not for everybody, they would't be lining up to work for him if they were treated " like garbage" . If you have incredible opinions that defy known facts, please cite them.
@@user-pz6mc2oj3f Had is the key term. He bought out a cul-de-sac of mansions to get privacy and provide a school (Ad Astra) for his kids. He sold his homes and works out of a $50,000 pre-fab house in Boca Chica. He keeps one $25m mansion for "events". So he has 2 homes that I know of: 1 for events 1 to live out of close to work. I wouldn't have chosen this criticism for a man who commands $206 billion dollars in stock in 4 companies.
@@user-pz6mc2oj3f what have you done contributing to even to your family ? disappointment ?
@@user-pz6mc2oj3f yea cause your brain is so small to take it im sorry
@@user-pz6mc2oj3f lol lazy people. No wonder you buy this fake news.
So glad CBS gave this woman a platform to speak her truth! I believe her.
This needs to be taken into account with the Law suits Bezos keeps filling
Same story at my job. If something doesn't work and you go to your managers and tell them about it, it doesn't benefit you at all. The opposite is true. So when a tool you have no power over or a concept made by someone else doesn't work, you don't tell your superiors about it but every college knows what's going on. In the long term this will lead to a big problem for the company. But when they wake up it will be to late. the competition doesn't sleep.
The more they rush things the less safe each flight will be. Ofcourse Besso knows that but he made sure the risk were extremely low in his flight but in the future when thr safety standard gradually move down he won't care cause he won't be on those flights. These things safety concerns are just waiting to happen and eventually they will have a lawsuit on their hands
Statistically every launch into space has a risk and the BO system has a single engine for assent and relies on parachutes in the capsule being deployed. All manner of things can go wrong and likely will. We will see what the failure rate is after more flights are made but it is not zero. Engineers and NASA knew that the complexity of their rockets meant a potential failure rate, for the Shuttle it was 1 in 20 I have been told. But the astronauts took these risks as part of their job. I doubt that paying tourist passengers fully understand the risks and probably haven't been told. I agree, lawsuits are probably inevitable in the near future.
@@grumblewoof4721 The Shuttle had problems with the tiles and o rings something that couldve been improved. Oh, and the foam falling off hiting the Spaceplane. Besides that it worked very well.
Shocking!! I thought Besos would force them to pee in bottle like Amazon workers.
In space you have to pee in a bottle
Why I am not suprise!
Culture matters. I have been in a startup with a fast moving culture which became a Fortune 500 company and an established Fortune 500 company with an older culture, which did not really know what fast was. Fast is not the be all and end all but it was what we wanted. If you want innovation, competence, and safety that must be in the culture and obviously it isn't in Blue Origin. You can't do it by decree.
"... That I wish he (Jeff B) was the person we thought he was...." Really? Your talking about a guy known to give employees so little time that their forced to pee in bottles.
One could argue that BO has not really innovated in several years. The current rocket is really old tech they developed years ago and have been tweaking. But where, oh where is New Glenn? Where are new engines that ULA is not-so-patiently waiting for? Sadly, Bezos, a non-engineer, is running BO like Amazon. Fear and loathing might work in retail, but not for building safe rockets. Bezos needs to study air travel, and note that the success of the industry is based of OPEN COMMUNICATION. No punishment for honest mistakes, and learning from problems. BO has adopted a competitive culture of managers competing for enhanced roles and prestige. Quality will and has suffered. Very sad, really. There is an irony here. NASA first feared working with SpaceX because of the risk that Musk was not really serious, this was a game for him, a rich man’s plaything. Now we see he is the real deal. But what of BO? I fear it really IS a mere ego extension of him, and they really, really are not serious. At least not like SpaceX. That may be the reason they lost their contracts.
Actually Bezos has a degree in electrical engineering, but there's no doubt that BO is awful. They are going at a snail's pace, and that's being generous. When you look at his New -Phallus- Shepard rocket, it really does seem like an ego trip, and it's almost like a big 'f*ck you' to any of the female employees that experience harassment. I'm very disappointed bc I just want to see progress, but BO has no sense of urgency. SpaceX culture seems to be similar in terms of harassment and discrimination though. We'll see what happens.
She is brave
Blue Origin, from a branding POV, is not elegant and sexy as SpaceX. Also, apart from these allegations of toxic workplace culture and OSHA issues, BO never made the effort to engage with the general public and media until the day of the launch which was sort of anticlimactic. It was like opening a can of flat soda.
Blue Origin at this point is a very expensive amusement park ride.
I have never felt safe on amassment park rides.
With the door on their capsule opening inward, it's just a matter of time that something similar to what happened to Apollo-1 happens. Those astronauts died because the capsule's door open inward and they couldn't get it opened due to the pressure.
I can’t see how what Blue Origin does is any where near Space X. It would always BO 20 years to catch up.
We all know Amazon all subsidiaries Tesla etc have aggressively established poor abusive work environments. But not alone as HR professional I’ve seen this in hospitality management companies.
Dragon capsule is supposed to land in the ground not water, that's why it has another thrusters beside the abort Draco thrusters.. But NASA insisted them to land in water for safety purpose..
Well it works that is the main thing. I expect that the authorities will enable Dragon do so eventually given that BO capsule does and so does Soyus and the Chinese etc... and of course Startship will.
What Blue Origin is doing, what SpaceX is doing, what Virgin Galactic is doing IS inherently risky. Anyhow Jeff needs to fire Blue Origin's CEO ASAP and hire a leader.
It appears that Bezos is more directly involved in running BO now so the CEO may well be simply the manager doing what Jeff wants. Firing the CEO will do nothing if the culture is defined by Bezos.
That's not the point the employees are making. Yes, it is inherently risky, but there's no reason to make it more risky by comprising safety bc the boss wants bragging rights. The whole point it to reduce the risk as much as possible.
LOL she used a “burner laptop so she couldn’t be tracked”??? What does that even mean
A cheap Google Chromebook with no personally identifiable information on it, using accounts with fake names, wasn't ordered online, bought at a retail store with cash, using a VPN on public Wi-Fi so that location couldn't gathered. It can be done, though just one slip-up...
As a Seattlite… are we really surprised?
This is right of the show billions
The Blue Origin engine they're developing for the new Vulcan Atlas Rocket still isn't ready and has been pushed back to 2022. It should've been ready at least last year. Blue Origin has been sending up the New Glenn rocket like a Yo-Yo! Why so much testing? The 1st Stage seems to work well so what is the problem? perhaps this lady is giving the answer?
The woman caster at the end keeps saying that BO has had 17 consecutive successful flights to space that were safe is wrong and what most don't understand is the difference between low earth orbit in which is all BO and Virgin have achieved and space orbit in which Space-X, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada, Boing are the only one's that have achieved this and Space-X is the only one sending people to space orbit and or the space station. The difference between low earth orbit and space orbit is comparable to a glider flying and not needing oxygen and a jet flying at 60,000 feet and needing a pressurized cabin with oxygen, there is a big technological difference between the two to be able to fly at that altitude and the same is with low earth orbit and space orbit, between the engine designs to cabin designs to withstand the higher pressures to technology needed for the shielding of the heat upon reentry which BO or Virgin have not designed and or overcome yet if ever.
Other countries are sending people to space but these are state run space agencies and manufacturing. The US is now relying only on commercial with SpaceX and hoping for Boeing. Would be cool though if there were a rocket company called Boing ! Other US companies are working on it and no doubt private companies in other countries may enter the arena of crewed space flight in the coming decades.
There is more to this story. Dig deep. You will be surprised !
Like what?
How?
Are we talking the flat earth nonsense here?
QAnon intensifies
Suborbital is like dipping a toe in the ocean and claiming to be a deep sea diver.
Bezos will be first human to sue others in space.
SpaceX has made Blue Origin irrelevant and obsolete before they had even completed the New Glen.
Good for her she left good for you
Blue origin has already lost the space race.
From the moment they were chosen to design the lander, I knew they already lost. Its like they were never even in it.
So silly media thinks going up and down for a few minutes means anything but a joy ride.
Former employee. Looking for 15 minutes and payout. 17 or so flights with no issues doesn’t seem like it’s coming off its rails
Blue Origin has not even launched a single orbital rocket after nearly a decade. Put up or shut up Blue Origin.
Jeff is messed up
If you ever worked for Amazon, this is not far fetched
Let’s see how it all turns out in the next few years compared to SpaceX. We already know BO doesn’t have nothing on SpaceX, but I’m taking in terms of safety and reliability. This is just my opinion, but it won’t end well.
This is great news! Blue origin needs to open up to some risk. As an engineer I know NOTHING is safe, Not your car, not that bridge, not the building you are in and not the phone in your hand. It is so important to fail sometimes so you can succeed in the long run. Fail fast, Fail often.
Why is there a competition? I didn't see Branson competing. I would hope that Branson would run Virgin Galactic with the steady pace and employee and customer first and not be concerned with Musk or Bezos. I love the Virgin Brand and to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong, but I have not heard Branson compete in this space race. I think Bezos has a super xxxxxl Ego and is a narcissist
Branson with Virgin Galactic is not competing as he has said his goal is for space tourism or using space for hopping from city/country to city/country not a space race or space travel to outer space to compete with space venturing companies.
@@jamesmarsh1831 Virgin Orbit competes in the small sat launch area, I don't think he wants to send people to orbit. SpaceX is now decades ahead of any commercial competition except perhaps for Boeing but they are lagging. SpaceX is relatively safe and proven crewed orbital and to the ISS. Falcon Heavy could launch a capsule to the moon although a lander might be difficult with one launch. Starship will eclipse everything that has come before (assuming it works) and Elon is working on a bigger version already.
New Shepard is the least ambitious of Blue Origin’s projects. The safety culture impacts their more ambitious projects such as the Human Landing System for return to the moon.
Nonsense. I am sure she was sleeping during all the safety courses and meetings that the company provides to all workers. Also, I haven’t been in a company that treats everyone with respect and tolerance 👍
Not sure what this person expect. You are buildings rockets. They are pretty much bombs. I was a infantryman in the army, a high risk job, that can lead to death. This applies to building rockets, there is a level of risk that is required to push the envelope.
Now she works in spacex
Shes an actress
Just a taste of the normal amazon culture, it will get way worse.
that explain the unfinished game his company made called "new world" what a scam!
This crew is clueless!
Jeff has never been interested in others’ well being. Look at Amazon.
"It was great that Blue Origin was 'Smooth, and Steady, and Slow...... until". In other words, It was a great place to work when you didn't have to do much, and there was no pressure to perform the job you were hired to do. But, then they wanted us to actually perform the job we were hired for at a pace that I found not as "comfortabl/slow" as before. So I quit, and now want to throw the company "under the bus" because they interfered with my "Smooth, Steady, and Slow" job. Lesson learned here Jeff Bezos. The ULA guys must be in a panic.. BE FOUR
Exactly what I was thinking. It's as if these people don't understand the complexity of what is being achieved with limited resources. Individual sexism is an individual problem that should be dealt with but shouldn't be mixed with those complaining about pressure to perform.
And the story is brought to you by virgin galactic.
besos is supposedly the worst employer on earth and maybe in space,come on "the leopard dosent change its spots".its a pity.
She’s not gonna let the money she took in exchange for saying nothing silence her any more. What a trooper.
Hahaha. I get it !!!! It was most likely a severance package anyway
@@wambamit344 she said she signed an non disclosure agreement for money.
Brave lady and so beautiful+ smart 🤓.
Good morning every body,how are you,thank to meet and but me say little.
Duh
Bezos really loves his new toy.
Guess we’ll find out, if Jeff Bezos kills Captain Kirk.
If it's so bad then quit... Oh wait
who signed the petition to keep Bezos off earth after he went up in his rocket?
So this lady is saying something that happened three years ago? lol ok
The interview blew a good opportunity to explain BO lack of delivery. Safety is nebulous in a dangerous business. Until an explosion occurs, or she cites specific shortcommings other than "pressure" no one cares. The real meat of it was one of the richest people on the planet hiring someone who pinches pennies and slows down the whole process. The BE-4 debacle is an example that might be cited. It has already cost ULA one launch bid and soon will do it again- tens of millions in potential profit taken off the table (they are still competing with F9 and FH. In another year Spacex will be offering Starship as a viable launch option.... then the window for Vulcan will collapse. BO's failure with BE-4 is preventing ULA from locking in contracts before that happens.
Fighters for money!!!!!lol
She got fired and replaced by a younger hotter employee that’s what really happened
This is surprising for a Bezos company. Amazon employees give it such a good reputation. They defecate in bags to send Bezos to space for 5min. That's love.
She is talking all BS. My husband works for Blue and there is no basis to what she is talking about at all. She is a woman scorned. Women are valued at Blue Origin. She is bringing all these accusations because she didnt do her work properly and got fired
former employee? what was her position? for all we know she might have been taste testing burgers in the cafeteria
Head of internal communications, two years ago.
It said Communications Officer a couple of times. That's the term for Internal comms between management and employees. So se Was in a good position to see what was wrong. Doesn't make her right, people often conflate pressure with "risk". More telling is the "hardware poor" nature of the operation. Speaks to cutting corners and doing things on the cheap while still demanding results. That is more telling than saying a rocket company with no known blow-ups (common in the industry) is "unsafe". Better to say the development is at a crawl due to poor management and demands are still made to perform. This implies a culture that doesn't value safety or moves very slowly or both. This can be seen in their failures at BE-4 debacle and Lander debacle... and other than that, after 20 years, they have a glorified pogo-stick replicated years ago in the "grasshopper" experiments and in the 1990s by Delta rocket experiments. In short, 20 years and nothing new to show for it. That speaks of bad management.
What the f is she talking about??
She doesn't like how the sausage is made.
The space race nobody cares about because, in fact, we've been going to space since the sixties. And we even went to the moon.
Elon won the space race by paying his employees, also, if this woman cares about safety she'd care about her own safety by eating less and obtaining a healthy body image.
actually space X employees are paid less than employees at BO
@@Bferr89 AMAZON, ever heard of AMAZON?
😆😆😆tying it back to her looks like the insecure dude you are
@@des3753 So her weight is healthy, she's basically an olympian huh?
What does her weigh have to do with safety concerns and internal personnel issues.