Just yesterday, the Executive Director of Blue Origin talked about how his team is moving towards success and preparing to launch the second copy of the New Glenn heavy missile, and today he notified employees about the imminent dismissal of 10 % of them. According to him, the company is overloaded with a bureaucratic apparatus and a number of unnecessary positions. The staff reduction, according to the leader, will benefit Blue Origin and will allow it to demonstrate growth.
Image source: Blue Origin
It is noteworthy that Blue Origin Director Dave Limp was appointed to this position personally Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, in order to optimize production processes. However, Limp had no experience in this area – earlier he served as the head of the consumer goods department in Amazon. Having mastered in a new role by the end of 2023 and partially successfully launched the first rocket, the limp moved to the usual personnel optimization process. However, for most Blue Origin employees, what was happening was a surprise.
«It also became clear that the structure of our organization should change so that our roles are best agreed with the implementation of these priorities. Unfortunately, this will lead to the elimination of some posts in the engineering department, research and development department, as well as in program management and projects. In addition, the number of management levels will be reduced, ”LIMP wrote in the newsletter to employees.
The company described the main task of the company in 2025 as “increasing production volumes”. And although Blue Origin now reduces about 10 % of employees – which, according to Reuters, is approximately 1,400 people – this year the company plans to hire hundreds of new workers to realize the tasks.
At the same time, the second and third flight of New Glenn will be carried out as part of the improvement of the rocket, which during the first launch could not land the first stage. If everything goes according to plan, the second flight will take place until the end of spring, but nothing is known about the third yet. Perhaps the company is in a hurry with optimization, but of course the head of Blue Origin is more visible.