Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has 'bro culture that makes it a hostile workplace for ...

Jeff Bezos’ space exploration firm Blue Origin is suffering from dysfunctional leadership and a sexism-fueled ‘bro culture’ that makes it intimidating for women to work there, according to current and former employees.

Other executives said that the dysfunctional corporate culture at Blue Origin was to blame for its lagging behind rival SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk.

One executive reportedly said leadership at Blue Origin was ‘lazy compared to SpaceX’ and that Bezos was ‘super jealous’ of Musk’s outfit.

Women who worked at the company reported sexist remarks from male executives, including one who referenced her menstrual cycle while another joked about ‘getting on her knees.’

One former executive, Walt McCleery, who was vice president of recruiting, was fired after several women reported that he made them uncomfortable, according to The Washington Post.

During one meeting with an outside company, McCleery is reported to have told executives from another firm: ‘I apologize for [her] being emotional. It must be her time of the month.’

McCleery, who was terminated after the company asked a law firm to investigate, denied the allegations, telling the Post that they were ‘not true as far as I’m concerned.’

Another former engineer said she was kneeling at a co-worker’s desk in 2016 while they went over drawings together when her manager, an older man, walked by and said: ‘You’ve only been working here two weeks. You don’t have to get on your knees yet.’

The ex-engineer said she was shocked by the remark because she expected Blue Origin to be a welcoming environment.

‘I was naive and in denial, maybe,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t until I thought about it later that it was obvious.’

Human resources provided coaching to another executive after he repeatedly referred to a group of female employees as ‘mean girls,’ prompting them to lodge a complaint.

Last month, a former employee, Alexandra Abrams, who headed Blue Origin’s employee communications, went public with claims that the firm ‘turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns and silences those who seek to correct wrongs.’

A spokesperson for Blue Origin released a statement to the Post saying that the company takes ‘all claims seriously and we have no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind.

‘Where we substantiate allegations of misconduct under our anti-harassment, anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation policy we take the appropriate action - up to and including termination of employment.’

DailyMail.com has reached out to Blue Origin seeking comment.

The Post interviewed more than 20 former and current company workers, some of whom also take aim at CEO Bob Smith.

In response to the allegations of a toxic workplace, Smith said: 'It is particularly difficult and painful, for me, to hear claims being levied that attempt to characterize our entire team in a way that doesn't align with the character and capability that I see at Blue Origin every day.'

After Bezos’ company was contacted on Sunday by the Post, the Amazon founder took to social media.

He boasted over Amazon's global success despite being branded as 'silly' in a 1999 magazine article on Twitter - only for his rival, Elon Musk, to reply with a No.2 medal after surpassing him as the world's richest man.

Bezos shared a tweet which included the front page of the Barron's magazine from 1999 which described his new business paradigm as 'silly' and described the billionaire as 'just a middle man'.

He tweeted: 'Listen and be open, but don't let anybody tell you who you are. This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail.

In 2017, Smith was hired by Bezos to run day-to-day operations at Blue Origin. Employees at the company said he instituted a culture that left them feeling disillusioned.

'When he was hired, everyone was asking, "Who's Bob Smith?" Nobody knew who he was,' one former Blue Origin executive told the Post.

Under Smith's leadership, Blue Origin grew significant, expanding its operations into Florida and Alabama.

It also pursued several ambitious projects, including the New Glenn rocket and the construction of a spacecraft that could land on the moon.

But current and former employees said that the firm was struggling to keep up with its closest competitor, Musk's SpaceX.

In April, NASA picked SpaceX to build a spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon despite the fact that Blue Origin bid twice as much money.

In 2019, Blue Origin lost out to SpaceX again after the Pentagon awarded the firm launch contracts.

Blue Origin has also been beset by delays in its New Glenn rocket, which Bezos vowed would reach orbit by last year.

In late 2018, Blue Origin hired a consulting firm to compile a report as to why the company was lagging behind SpaceX.

The report cited several problem areas, including a poor corporate culture, lack of work ethic, a meager presence on social media, and a lack of major customers.

SpaceX 'expects and gets more from their employees,' one Blue Origin executive told colleagues.

Another executive said that Blue Origin 'is kind of lazy compared to SpaceX.'

Smith and other top executives sat in a separate executive suite in a brand new office building - away from the rest of the staff. This was a far cry from the early days of the company when executives and rank-and-file would mingle.

‘That wasn’t appreciated,’ one former executive said. ‘It was an I’m-above-you message.’

Smith was left to run the company as he saw fit because Bezos was in the middle of drama in his personal life, including a divorce from his wife.

Observers said that it was around this time that Blue Origin’s deficiencies became more apparent.

'Jeff got divorced and he was distracted,' one former top executive told the Post.

'Blue's workforce was going up and his net worth was going up, and there were a lot of things on his plate, like the climate fund that he wanted to do.

'Combined with his personal life...that gave Bob an opportunity to really turn Blue upside down.

'He was CEO, so Jeff gave him a lot of rope.'

According to current and former employees interviewed by the Post, Bezos was happy to allow Smith to run the company.

Smith, meanwhile, ‘made it real clear the only conduit to Jeff was him. And so there was no check and balance.’

Jeff Bezos accused of reaching for the stars at ANY cost: 21 Blue Origin employees accuse Amazon boss of IGNORING safety concerns and fostering 'sexist and toxic' workplace to win billionaire space race with Musk and Branson

Nearly two dozen Blue Origin employees accused Bezos of creating a 'toxic' work environment where the company sacrificed safety to work at 'breakneck speed' in order to win the billionaire space race.  

In an essay published last month, Alexandra Abrams, the former head of Blue Origin Employee Communications, along with 20 employees said the priority was to 'make progress for Jeff' as he competed with Elon Musk and Richard Branson to make it to space first. 

They claimed that the most common question at high-level meetings was: 'When will Elon or Branson fly?' and safety concerns were ignored because they would have 'slowed progress'. 

'Progress at Blue Origin was smooth and steady and slow, until Jeff started getting impatient that Elon and Branson were getting ahead, and then we started feeling this increasing pressure and impatience that would filter down from leadership,' Abrams told CBS Mornings.

Ultimately, Branson flew to the edge of space first, on July 11 - nine days ahead of Bezos. Musk, who leads SpaceX, has not flown into space himself, but his company sent four civilians into space on September 15, flying 360 miles above the Earth. 

The essay is the latest blow to Bezos and Blue Origin, who has filed a lawsuit against NASA over its decision to only award Musk's SpaceX the contract to build a lunar lander. 

In leaked documents, NASA blasted Blue Origin over Bezos' decision to take the space agency to court. 

The US space agency believes Blue Origin seeks to 'prioritize its own fortunes over that of NASA, the United States, and every person alive today'. 

Blue Origin is suing NASA due to the space agency opting to only give SpaceX a contract to build a lunar lander for upcoming missions to the Moon. 

Musk commented on the Blue Origin lawsuit last month, telling CNBC reporter the company is 'suing to stop competition,' whereas SpaceX has sued to be 'allowed to compete.' 

NASA argued in legal filings that Blue Origin is jeopardizing its attempts to send its first crewed mission to the Moon since 1972 as part of NASA's Artemis program, potentially by hurting it financially with the court case.   

In the aforementioned essay, the employees said they felt 'unease' when Bezos blasted into space with three other civilians on an unpiloted rocket, with some unable to watch the event. 

Most said that with their concerns over safety, they would not fly in Blue Origin rockets at all.