[jltsiren]

I've never understood the fetishization of long working hours. If there is a job where you can meaningfully work 80+ hours a week, the same (and often better) results can be achieved with more employees working fewer hours. If the work can't be split like that, it's probably demanding enough that you can't sustain more than 20-30 productive hours a week in the long term.

It's possible to mix reasonable hours of demanding work with additional hours of meetings, routine work, and procrastination. Maybe it's cheaper for the employer than managing the work better and hiring additional people for the routine parts. Maybe there are some social and organizational benefits to the employer when the employees have no life outside work. But long hours like that don't lead to superior outputs.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

then why does spacex have superior outputs?

[jltsiren]

It made choices that turned out to be good in retrospect. And it's young enough that it hasn't turned into a stagnant bureaucracy yet.

Technology is not magic. If you can do something, others can do it as well, if they want. Established organizations often fail at that, because they don't want to be successful. They might want to be successful in principle, but in practice, the personal interests of the people in charge override the interests of the organization.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

in 2001, Eutelsat transitioned into a private company, Eutelsat S.A., and later became Eutelsat Communications S.A., headquartered in Paris, France. In 2023, Eutelsat merged with OneWeb, a company founded in 2012, to form the Eutelsat Group.

Essentially, just as old as SpaceX.

So, how does one ensure a company continues to make good decisions? Have a very flat structure, and have alot of smart people work insanely long hours. If you hire twice as much people to match the 80 hour weeks, you no longer have a flat structure and >> "the personal interests of the people in charge override the interests of the organization."

You are right, technology is not magic, you've just got to want it more than anyone else. SpaceX wants it, Europe would rather have their maximum of 48 hours a week. Which is actually halarious, i don't think i've worked under 48 hours a week in my entire adult life. 50 is usually expected, 60 if you want good performance reviews and 70 if you want a promotion.

[jltsiren]

And before 2001, Eutelsat was an intergovernmental organization. You can't get rid of legacy baggage just by rebranding yourself. You need to get rid of existing stakeholders, directors, and managers. And to discard the existing organizational structures and organizational culture.

It's not possible to keep making good decisions indefinitely. Every organization eventually regresses towards mediocrity. Maybe incentives ruin things, maybe administrators learn how to game the system, or maybe the environment changes and the way the organization operates is no longer adequate.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

I don't really follow what you are arguing here. You starting with long hours is the same as hiring two times the amount of people, then you say that the european companies are all to old to innovate? There are plenty of european startups in the space race, they just can't compete... because europeans have a distain for "Fetishizing long work hours"

[jltsiren]

Those are two mostly unrelated discussions.

If you do demanding work, a full working week is 20-30 hours. Even 40 hours is too much and cannot be sustained in the long term. You can do more in the short term, but you'll eventually burn yourself out. Longer hours are only possible with routine and/or fake work that doesn't really make you more productive.

All organizations eventually stagnate, because humans have their own goals instead of being mindless cogs in the machine. SpaceX is still young enough that it may not be showing clear signs of stagnation, but it's hard to see that from the outside. Google is a few years older and clearly suffering from conflicting interests.

[Zigurd]

"Superior outputs" seems to have stagnated at Elon companies: From Falcon 9 to Starship, and from Model Y to Cybertruck, for example.

[panick21_]

Calling building the biggest rocket in the world and the largest sat company in the world, that both launches, manufactures and operates the most sats in the world, while being the only company that can deliver humans reliably into space and also has a private space flight business. Claiming that ist 'stagnet' is an absolutely absurd claim. Oh and that was the Falcon Heavy.

Starship is even bigger and more powerful and has the most advanced rocket engine ever designed.

Just because they haven't yet managed to create a fully reusable vehicle, doesn't mean its 'stagnet'. A fully reusable rocket is insanely hard to build. Lets alone all the new infrastructure required to do it. And the first stage has already proven re-usability. If all they were shooting for was a much bigger Falcon 9, they would already have it.

And maybe try to actually compare it to the competition. Ariane 6 for instant was financed in 2014. And had lots and lots of work done before it, the engine that is in the Ariane 6 second stage has been in development since the late 90s.

SpaceX only had the resources to seriously invest in Starship around 2020 and even then it was nowhere close to top priority.

I know its fashionable to shit on Musk, but common, at least have some perspective. They are by far the biggest most successful space company in the world by such a wide margin that its not even funny. The competition has not yet even replicated the Falcon 9. And Amazon is struggling to get even an inferior version of Starlink up. And Boeing can't get their human system to work at all.

[Zigurd]

Tesla was dominant in EVs until Cybertruck. Now they no longer lead sales numbers in China or Europe or Mexico or Japan or Korea. Elon himself said that Starlink would fail without Starship. Or is believing what he says situational?

[panick21_]

Tesla drop is not only related to Cybertruck. That didn't help, but they have other issues. But so do many other car companies.

> Elon himself said that Starlink would fail without Starship. Or is believing what he says situational?

Elon is well known to make dramatic statements to motivate people. He said that many years ago and the company is totally fine, Starlink is doing well. SpaceX still has the cheapest launch by an order of magnitude.

[kennykartman]

I'm not personally into aerospace, but a couple of my friends are in high profile, international (multi-agency) missions and from their feedback it is my understanding that SpaceX does not have "superior outputs". What SpaceX has is 1. tons of funding 2. less regulation. Does this mean more throughput? Yes. Is the output better? No. Shifting the costs onto the environment and private pockets does not imply that the work is higher quality or that their policies are better.

[pstuart]

> then why does spacex have superior outputs?

  * The dictate of fail fast and iterate quickly, along with simplification of mechanisms and ample compute power.
  * Not being mired in the bureaucracy of committees and government bodies to answer to

Yes, being enabled by a billionaire with a dream made a huge difference. But that's not a guarantee, as there's been 3 such billionaires and only one SpaceX.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

Or... incredibly long work hours and all of that just falls into place? Have you ever read any books about spaceX? His "surges" are what made spacex great.

[pstuart]

> incredibly long work hours

Absolutely makes a difference. My point is that hard work alone was not enough to make it happen -- "fail fast" was key.

[inemesitaffia]

SpaceX was founded with him as a millionaire tho

[pstuart]

True, bad wording on my part. But I stand by my point that the magic came from rapid iteration rather than an ossified and bureaucratic management team that was risk-averse.

[panick21_]

Musk wasn't even close to being a billionaire when SpaceX was founded. He is a billionaire because about 10 years after SpaceX was founded Tesla and SpaceX at the same time took off.

And other people as rich as Musk tried their hand in the space industry.

[darkhorn]

What do you mean by superior output?

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

Tons to space.

[darkhorn]

Because the USA is a big economy where people speak only one language. Would Elon Musk be able to create same success if he started Starlink or SpaceX in Norway?

[wqaatwt]

What about France? ArianeSpace was the SpaceX of the 80s (they had >50% market share of commercial satellite launches). There were plenty of other innovative European companies if you go back several decades. These days? Not so much..

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

no, because it's illegal to work more than 48 hours a week. Which is like... The minimum to not get fired in the states.

If you have more people willing to work longer hours... you win, thats it. It's pretty simple really.

[panick21_]

People only deserve success if they were born in a trash can during the civil war in Sudan. That's such a fucking dumb logic.

Musk specifically went to Silicon Valley because that's where the opportunity were.

But he was only one of many who tried to make it big. Just because the US is a big country doesn't magically create rockets that can fly to space.