By Ankita Chakravarti
A 62-year-old principal engineer has alleged that Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceX sidelined him, fearing he might die or retire. The employee, John Johnson, detailed his journey for the company in a blog post. He has noted that despite achieving performance goals and working longer hours than most of his colleagues, his work roles were gradually transferred to younger engineers.
Johnson revealed in a blog published at lioness.co that he had been a victim of age discrimination at Musk-led rocket company. He has also filed a complaint with the Washington State Human Rights Commission.
Johnson revealed that he was hired by SpaceX at the age of 58 in 2018 for his “deep expertise in a niche sector called optics engineering that is key to diverse applications, such as the space borne instruments used to acquire and send satellite images to Earth.” During his interview, he was asked by one of the senior members of the company about whether he will be comfortable in working with younger colleagues.
“At SpaceX and now at Twitter, Musk requires employees to be “hardcore.” Contrary to stereotypes about older workers being less capable or unwilling to perform hard work, I was actually up for the challenge. My life has been spent working long days, nights, and weekends, putting in whatever effort was required to get the job done,” he noted in the blog. “I often spent seven days a week onsite at SpaceX, putting in 10-12 hours almost daily. I knew no one there who worked more hours than I did. Later, during Ovid, I was still working onsite and traveling for business while many other engineers worked remotely. I was quite hardcore,” Johnson further added.
It was only when he went for surgery in 2020, that his duties were transferred to other younger employees with lot less experience and expertise. He then reported to the HR about age discrimination he was facing in the company. “When I met with them, they suggested that everything had stemmed from simple “misunderstandings” and recommended that I monitor internal job board postings. “
During a meeting with the HR, he was told that business conditions had changed and that SpaceX no longer had work for him in my technology area, but his boss promised to find some new work for him. When the new work did not materiliaze, he was forced to leave the company in June 2022.