How to decide on an offer at SpaceX - Material Planner SpaceX Employee Review

3.0
Jan 25, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Do you want to work with ridiculously smart and hard working people? Do you want to build the world's most innovative space vehicles? Do you want to take part in crucial milestones that will make humanity a space-faring race? Do you want to move at a superhuman pace doing ridiculously cool things? Do you want to accelerate your career at least twice the speed? Do you want a much bigger job scope than what you have now, with a lot more engaging work? Do you want to nix having a job description, and take ownership for any and every problem without concerns of stepping on people's toes or fighting resistance to change? Do you want experience in what it takes to run a company at it's most basic level, when there isn't a system or process, or the system or process isn't good enough to work well? And then fix the system or process? Do you want to get away from a job doing nothing but plugging numbers into something like SAP, and take responsibility for way bigger things that you should probably have responsibility for at this point in your career?

Cons

Are you willing to live in a sketchy area, with roommates? Are you willing to work at all hours as the norm, and have little time for life? Are you willing to spend time in traffic everywhere you go? Are you willing to fight really hard to make friends in a city where people fear making friends (aka Hollywood culture)? Are you willing to live in a city with progressive social norms, where churches are small and rare, taxes will take an extra 15% of your income, parking is not free, and everything costs more? Are you willing to work within the Elon culture, which is not fun like other tech companies? He pushes for the sake of pushing, and the culture is aggressive and impersonal. Are you willing to work with no support from management, or maybe managers that make things less clear/more difficult? Your manager may be your age and amazing technically, but have no clue how to lead or manage. Are you willing to never get a promotion unless you work longer than anybody else? Everyone at SpaceX is ridiculously smart and hard working.

Explore other reviews about SpaceX

5.0
Apr 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lots of fun work to do! Your manager will make or break it for you!

Cons

Burnout culture Depending on department learning is very much a self guided journey

1
4.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You learn so much because the work is so freaking intense, its a lot of fun if you're the type of person who loves to get emerged in hard problems. The hours for me were not too bad but I was the exception, all the other interns I was with dealt with 60-70+ hour weeks, some interns came in at 10am and left at 12am, when I say its intense, I'm not joking. This is however very unique to the Starbase location. I've heard Hawthorne is a lot more chill. I honestly despite how challenging the role was always look back on it with a sense of pride in my work, and longing to be back there. It really does feel that you're doing world changing things.

Cons

Very un diverse upper management, I'd say the company is pretty diverse in the lower ranks, but once you start to look at the org chart and see who's in charge, you realize that its mainly just white people. Makes you wonder if as a person of color you too will be able to move up. Housing sucks: there was limited housing on campus for full time employees, you have to wait a year plus to get off the queue and once you're off you only really get tiny homes as the option that are in an inconvenient location. Interns don't even have the option to get on campus housing, they give you 3k in a housing stipend and expect you to find a place in Brownsville. I'd say its very hard to maintain a relationship while working here if you don't have an understanding partner, the work schedule is brutal and you really can't slack off.

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