roedog

I made my largest gains in programming competence almost 10 years ago when working on a system with no connection to the internet and no cell phone at hand. I was working a development assignment on an air-gapped network. Not being able to search google every time I got stuck forced me to actually read the documentation, man pages, and reference books and think through what was going on and come up with solutions. The internet terminal was a 10 minute walk away so I treated it like a trip to the library for research only after I had spent time working on the problem myself.

A reset could be after the big one hits and we have to rebuild cities.

It indicates that writing and editing thousands of pages of documentation will be contractually required. Word proficiency can save a lot of pain for everyone on that team.

Ah, I wasn't thinking about their commercial business. I can imagine how that would be more price sensitive.

hmm. So they could be losing money on each launch? But, why would they would they choose to sell at a loss when they could beat the competition at twice the price?

Yep, attrition was over twice that last year at some firms in the area. Partly demographics, lots of folks who can retire do. The rest due to competition for staff.

Well, Space X costs less than half than a ULA launch. I suspect that ULA spends that additional money on large sub-contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for the Delta and Atlas vehicles. This makes me think that when we add up the employees on the subcontracts the space X staffing number will be much more impressive in it's leanness.

I hope they all join my company, we've got a lot of work they would find interesting. With the retirement rate increasing it's the time to change things for the better. I want their experience at Space X on how to do things faster and better. But perhaps that's wishful thinking...

The SoCal aerospace job market is hot right now. The driver is multiple large program starts at multiple contractors who are competing for people. This should make it possible for everyone to land on their feet. (I've reached out to my former colleagues who left to join Space X)

What's odd is why SpaceX is cutting staff with the new development underway on the larger rockets and the satellite business. I'm curious about how they're going to increase development while cutting staff. The big aero firms have room for improvement on productivity. But SpaceX has been lean from the start. I wonder how they'll get more out of an already highly productive team. That'd be something to learn from.

Or transition to a system test role that has embedded software with lots of real world hands on work. Your software experience is relevant. Troubleshooting is the hard and rewarding part in common with software development. For example track testing drivetrain software, flight testing gn&c subsystems, testing robotics controllers. Lots of new testing will be needed with autonomous systems.

Yes, many. See the company's career page.

It can also be a fun/technically challenging niche job that avoids the paperwork endemic to many jobs in large contractors.