The Space Economy

CHAPTER 9Winning the War for Talent: A Guide to Recruiting and Retaining “The Right Stuff”

A war for talent rages in the Space Economy. A decade ago, companies like SpaceX had to lure software engineers away from Google and Facebook and avionics engineers from NASA and large defense contractors. Today, the talent war continues much closer to home, as cutting‐edge startups within the Space Economy battle each other for the world‐class employees they need to make their ambitious visions soar.

“Attracting talent isn't as easy as it was early on,” Planet Labs CEO Robbie Schingler told me. “There's more competition. Rising interest in things like self‐driving cars, robotics companies, green tech. Also, many companies in the space sector have raised a whole bunch of money. That's inflating salaries quite a bit. Simultaneously, there's been a shift in people not wanting to live in major cities anymore. When you're building hardware, you still need your team in the lab.”

Just how hard has it become for companies to fill roles and keep them filled? One indication is in the rising number of acquisitions that don't make sense as acquisitions per se. Many are “acqui‐hires,” a common practice in tech. In acquisitions like these, the company's revenue stream, intellectual property, and customer base don't fully account for the sale price. Instead, the real target of the acquisition is the pre‐assembled team of experts that comes bundled with the other assets of the organization. Acqui‐hires ...