All is not well at Blue Origin, the aerospace company of billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The loss of critical employees adds to the defeat of a multimillion-dollar contract with NASA at the hands of SpaceX of Elon Musk, who Bezos has decided to fight in court.
Engineers Nitin Arora and Lauren Lyons left Blue Origin and, to top it off, Elon Musk companies: SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, respectively.
And they are not the only ones. Blue Origin has lost workers who held vital positions: New Shepard senior vice president, mission assurance chief, national security sales director, and the list goes on in other areas.
Why is Blue Origin losing employees?
The main reason does not seem to be money. An example: Jeff Bezos thanked Blue Origin workers for their support in July to achieve his space flight with a bonus of US $ 10,000 without any conditions, according to CNBC.
The Blue Origin bureaucracy seems to be driving away their talents. The job-rating platform Glassdoor registers complaints about a “slow and bureaucratic” company from former employees.
Jeff Bezos has always encouraged cutting red tape at Amazon, but this doesn’t seem to have permeated his space adventure.
Glassdoor also indicates that only 15% of Blue Origin employees approve of current CEO Bob Smith. Instead, Elon Musk has a 91% approval rating at SpaceX.
Another factor may be not securing contracts with NASA for the return to the Moon. Understandably, many engineers prefer to move to SpaceX, part of the long-awaited Artemis mission.