Angry With The Slow Satellite Broadband Progress, Elon Musk Fired Starlink’s Senior Managers

Author - Nov 01, 2018

The Starlink program's pace of development and tests has been slower than Elon Musk wants. That drives him crazy.

On schedule in the Starlink program, SpaceX will launch the first batch of satellites by the middle of 2019. However, the progress of broadband coverage doesn’t reach as well as he expected. As a result, the CEO fired at least seven senior managers in the Starlink program.

According to Reuters, in June, Elon Musk had a meeting relating to the Starlink program in Seattle. For some unknown, the program is a project to offer low-cost high-speed broadband internet via a satellite network.

The subject of his meeting in Seattle will be around covering high-speed broadband to the world. It’s clear that the result didn’t get Musk’s expectation. As a proof, at least seven senior managers who are working with the Starlink program lost their jobs.

Reuters revealed that Musk didn’t satisfy with these managers’ capacities and the Starlink program’s pace of development and test has been slower than it should be. Musk decided to replace them with managers who work in the headquarters of SpaceX in California.

Some of the abovementioned information was denied by SpaceX. The company said that Musk didn’t fire all of the seven managers. Some resigned of their own accord. No one among the managers offered any comment on the matter.

In February 2018, the two first satellites manufactured by SpaceX were successfully launched into space. Along with the Starlink program, these satellites will help Elon Musk make his dream come true. That is: cover the high-performance satellite internet over the world. Following the project with a scale of 12,000 satellites, Starlink will expectedly launch over 4,000 satellites in a few years.

However, Elon Musk, as well as SpaceX, has had difficulties in looking for those who can meet Musk’s utopian plans with super-short deadlines. Not only that, but they can also help SpaceX produce as cheap and simple satellites as Musk wants. Reuters uncovered that around 50 ones of 300 SpaceX workers have resigned for many reasons.