{"id":17264,"date":"2023-09-06T23:52:56","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T15:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/employees-report-a-rare-round-of-layoffs-at-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-venture\/"},"modified":"2023-09-06T23:52:56","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T15:52:56","slug":"employees-report-a-rare-round-of-layoffs-at-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-venture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/employees-report-a-rare-round-of-layoffs-at-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-venture\/","title":{"rendered":"Employees report a rare round of layoffs at Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bloe
The marquee of Blue Origin\u2019s HQ in Kent, Wash., glows on a rainy morning. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several employees at Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin are reporting that they\u2019ve been laid off, marking a rare turnabout in the rapid growth of Jeff Bezos\u2019 space venture.<\/p>\n

The reduction in force appears to be focused in the areas of human resources and talent acquisition, based on employees\u2019 postings to LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

TechCrunch\u2019s Aria Alamalhodaei, who reported the layoff trend on X \/ Twitter, said it looked as if \u201csome (but not all) folks were given the opportunity to find another role\u201d within the privately held company.<\/p>\n

Micah Thornton, a production control specialist at Blue Origin, wrote on LinkedIn that \u201cseveral people from the Blue Origin Space Human Resource\/Talent Acquisition team have been let go due to downsizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several other employees wrote that they were laid off on Tuesday and are seeking new roles elsewhere. We\u2019ve reached out to Blue Origin and will be updating this story with anything further that we can pass along.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2000, Blue Origin\u2019s employment profile has been trending sharply upward in recent years, due to projects that include the suborbital New Shepard program (currently grounded after a launch anomaly that occurred a year ago), the BE-4 rocket engine and the orbital-class New Glenn rocket, the Blue Moon lunar lander and the Orbital Reef space station.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s workforce tally was less than 1,000 as recently as 2018. Two years ago, that count was reported at nearly 4,000 employees, and the figure rose to 6,000 by July 2022. Blue Origin\u2019s current number of employees \u2014 including workers in Kent as well as in Alabama, California, Florida, Texas, the Washington, D.C., area and other locales \u2014 is said to have hit nearly 11,000.<\/p>\n

Despite the newly reported layoffs, Blue Origin is continuing to hire employees for other types of jobs, primarily in technical fields. The company\u2019s career website currently has more than 440 job listings, although some of those listings refer to the same job.<\/p>\n

Update for Nov. 30:<\/strong> I\u2019ve updated the reference to job listings to provide additional context.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The marquee of Blue Origin\u2019s HQ in Kent, Wash., glows on a rainy morning. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) Several employees at Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin are reporting that they\u2019ve been laid off, marking a rare turnabout in the rapid growth of Jeff Bezos\u2019 space venture. The reduction in force appears to be focused in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,4457],"class_list":["post-17264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-layoffs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}