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Here are 10 things you should know as Blue Origin is planning job cuts:
-Jeff Bezos’ firm Blue Origin is laying off around 10 percent of its workforce following a period of rapid expansion, the firm’s chief executive told staff on Thursday. The surprise round of layoffs comes about a month after Blue Origin debuted its flagship New Glenn rocket following years of delays and development setbacks.
-The decision will affect roughly 1,400 of the company’s nearly 14,000 employees – mostly concentrated in Florida, Texas and Washington and comes as Blue Origin starts production of its giant New Glenn rocket, which had its first long-awaited debut launch last month., according to Reuters.
-“There’s no easy way to communicate this,” CEO Dave Limp told employees in the meeting, which was scheduled the night prior and lasted about 10 minutes. “There’s no question that we’ve had a lot of successes over the last few months.”ALSO READ: Supermassive black hole, 6,00,000 times the mass of Sun, is heading towards the Milky Way. When is the collision likely to happen?-“But that being said, when you look at the foundation of the company and what we need to get to over the next three to five years, we just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” Limp said.
-The layoffs announcement came after New Glenn, the company’s powerful rocket capable of hauling satellites to space, had a successful debut flight last month, making an uncrewed trip that tested how the vehicle will carry hefty payloads into distant Earth orbits.
-In a memo sent to employees, Chief Executive Officer Dave Limp said the company’s growth led to “more bureaucracy and less focus” than needed after a hiring spree over the past few years. After years of expansion bankrolled by Bezos, who started Amazon.com Inc. and is the world’s third-richest person, Blue Origin is looking to trim manager ranks as it works to clear some $10 billion worth of launch contracts.
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-According to a Bloomberg news, Dave Limp wrote in the email Blue Origin is eliminating positions in engineering, research and development, and project management, as well as “thinning out our layers of management”.
-Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and since then, the company’s payroll has gone as high as roughly 14,000 employees spread across its headquarters in the Seattle area and sprawling manufacturing and launch operations sites in Florida, Texas and Alabama.
-Blue Origin has drawn unfavorable comparisons to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which leapfrogged many startups over the past quarter century to become the world’s most prolific rocket launcher. Limp, an ex-Amazon leader, was hired in 2023 to help shake the company out of a years-long R&D slump.
-Tech companies are continuing layoffs in 2025. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and Stripe have all announced job cuts. These measures target various divisions and aim to streamline operations.
