In an open letter, former employees of the space company Blue Origin from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos expressed severe criticism.
Seattle – The space company Blue Origin of Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos advertises plans to want to improve the world. The company plans to “create a future in which millions of people can live and work in space for the benefit of planet earth,” says the company’s website. In an open letter published on the Lioness.co platform on Thursday, former employees of the company gave an insight into a completely different picture of corporate culture.
The 21 employees, of whom – presumably because of strict confidentiality clauses – only one appears by name with the former communications strategist Alexandra Abrams, accuse Blue Origin of the exact opposite: cultivating a work environment that “leads in a direction that Brings out worst in our world today ”.
Sexual harassment and gender paygap: Ex-employees raise allegations against Blue Origin
Of the total of 3,600 employees of the company, 100 percent of the technical management personnel are male, the vast majority of all employees are “male and the overwhelming majority are white”, according to the open letter. And while the different pay for men and women in space travel is not only a problem at Blue Origin, there are also “forms of sexist treatment” that are significantly more drastic than in other companies in the industry.
Among other things, there are allegations that a high-ranking confidante of Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith had to answer to the HR department several times on charges of sexual harassment and was nevertheless involved in important personnel decisions. Another former manager of the company, who is considered a confidante of the company’s founder Jeff Bezos, was notorious in the company for regularly addressing colleagues as “Baby Girl”, “Baby Doll” or “Sweetheart”. However, he only received his dismissal when he was accused of having physically sexually harassed an employee.
Former employees have doubts about the safety of Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin
But not only in dealing with employees: the former employees raise serious allegations. In the open letter they emphasize that Blue Origin has no concrete plans to become CO2-neutral or to reduce its “large ecological footprint” in any other way. For an organization that has the goal of “building a new world because we are on the best way to ruin our current world” this must be a matter of course. Except for “vague declarations of intent” by the founder Jeff Bezos and his donations to climate organizations, hardly anything has happened in this regard.
On the subject of security at Blue Origin, the ex-employees write in their open letter that the question of the technical progress of Richard Branson’s and Elon Musk’s competitors often played a greater role than the security of their own technology. One person involved in the open letter who worked in the company’s development department said it was “lucky nothing bad has happened at Blue Origin.” This is due to the corporate culture and the fact that teams often have to work under precarious conditions and “beyond reasonable limits”.
“Toxic” corporate culture at Blue Origin: Ex-employees with allegations
In addition, a “toxic work environment” is criticized, which, according to the signatories of the open letter, prevails at Blue Origin. After that, the company management repeatedly called for employees to go beyond their limits because they had to “get more out of the employees”. After all, it is “a privilege to be part of history” for the employees. A senior executive would have urged the ex-employees to emulate Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which sees “burnout as part of their work strategy”. Many former and current employees could report on situations that could safely be described as “dehumanizing”.
This type of corporate culture is also evident in dealing with criticism from employees at Blue Origin. Anyone who expresses criticism at employee meetings, known as town halls, runs the risk of ending up on lists of potential “agitators” who have to justify themselves to their superiors. “Critics of the company were pushed out and made with sums of money to sign restrictive confidentiality agreements,” says the open letter.
Blue Origin: Ex-employees urge Jeff Bezos to rethink
Finally, the signatories of the open letter demand a rethinking of the space company Blue Origin and its founder Jeff Bezos: “Of course no company is perfect. But in companies, just like in our society, it is important that the leaders steer change when problems are uncovered. ”Although billionaires like to present themselves as altruists who care about the well-being of humanity: Most of this picture is just an illusion, created by PR teams and supported by a lot of ego ”, criticize the undersigned. (Sandra Kathe)
