Blue Origin’s former head of employee communications Alexandra Abrams and 20
former and present Blue Origin employees have published a stinging essay
accusing Jeff Bezos and his space company, Blue Origin, of creating a sexist
working environment where employees are overworked and corners are cut on
safety.
The essay, “Bezos Wants to Create a Better Future in Space. His Company Blue Origin
Is Stuck in a Toxic Past,” was published on Lioness.co. A key theme is that Bezos’ vision of
billions living in space colonies is seriously at odds with the environment
within Blue Origin.
The authors wrote of a sexist and discriminatory atmosphere within a company
that is predominantly male.
Another former executive frequently treated women in a condescending and
demeaning manner, calling them “baby girl,” “baby doll,” or “sweetheart” and
inquiring about their dating lives. His inappropriate behavior was so well
known that some women at the company took to warning new female hires to
stay away from him, all while he was in charge of recruiting employees. It
appeared to many of us that he was protected by his close personal
relationship with Bezos—it took him physically groping a female subordinate
for him to finally be let go.
Additionally, a former NASA astronaut and Blue Origin senior leader once
instructed a group of women with whom he was collaborating: “You should ask
my opinion because I am a man.” When one man was let go for poor
performance, he was allowed to leave with dignity, even a going-away party.
Yet when a woman leader who had significantly improved her department’s
performance was let go, she was ordered to leave immediately, with security
hovering until she exited the building five minutes later.
The author said safety concerns about Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital
flight were dismissed in an atmosphere that discourages dissent and free
discussion.
This suppression of dissent brings us to the matter of safety, which for
many of us is the driving force for coming forward with this essay. At Blue
Origin, a common question during high-level meetings was, “When will Elon or
Branson fly?” Competing with other billionaires—and “making progress for
Jeff”—seemed to take precedence over safety concerns that would have slowed
down the schedule.
In 2020, company leaders demonstrated increasing impatience with New
Shepard’s schedule of a few flights per year; their goal, routinely
communicated to operations and maintenance staff, was to scale to more than
40. Some of us felt that with the resources and staff available,
leadership’s race to launch at such a breakneck speed was seriously
compromising flight safety. When Challenger exploded, the government’s
investigation determined that the push to keep to a schedule of 24 flights
per year “directly contributed to unsafe launch operations.” Of note: the
Challenger report also cited internal stifling of differences of opinion as
one of the organizational issues that led to the disaster and loss of life.
In the opinion of an engineer who has signed on to this essay, “Blue Origin
has been lucky that nothing has happened so far.” Many of this essay’s
authors say they would not fly on a Blue Origin vehicle. And no wonder—we
have all seen how often teams are stretched beyond reasonable limits. In
2019, the team assigned to operate and maintain one of New Shepard’s
subsystems included only a few engineers working long hours. Their
responsibilities, in some of our opinions, went far beyond what would be
manageable for a team double the size, ranging from investigating the root
cause of failures to conducting regular preventative maintenance on the
rocket’s systems.
Meanwhile, the company has ignored environmental and safety concerns.
Jeff Bezos has made splashy announcements and donations to climate justice
groups, but “benefiting Earth” starts in one’s own backyard. In our
experience, environmental concerns have never been a priority at Blue
Origin. Time and again we saw new capabilities added to the Kent factory,
but not until the machinery showed up did the company begin to consider the
environmental impact, including whether a permit was needed to manage the
waste products.
For years employees have raised environmental concerns at company town
halls, but these have been largely left unaddressed. The company
headquarters that opened in 2020 is not a LEED-certified building and was
built on wetlands that were drained for construction. Eventually the
surrounding roads had to be elevated to mitigate the severe flooding that
ensued. We did not see sustainability, climate change, or climate justice
influencing Blue Origin’s decision-making process or company culture.
In the end, Bezos’ vision for the future clashes with the reality of how his
space company operates.
The artistic renderings of Bezos’s orbiting colonies have a utopian flair.
But what will these colonies actually be like, given the disturbing systemic
problems within his own company here on Earth? In our experience, Blue
Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet,
turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns,
and silences those who seek to correct wrongs. That’s not the world we
should be creating here on Earth, and certainly not as our springboard to a
better one.
Read the
full essay.
Tags:
News