[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.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

>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.

This line shows me that we will never agree. If i showed this to my boss he would laugh... and so would my entire team.

Silicon Valley runs on 80-hour weeks, sleepless nights, and a culture that glorifies obsession. It's a system that burns hot — and burns people out. Many of the engineers and founders who fuel these breakthroughs walk away in their 30s and 40s, exhausted but occasionally leaving billion-dollar companies in their wake.