Concerned about Elon's and Gwynne's management style - Anonymous employee SpaceX Employee Review

2.0
Jul 10, 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great perks, food, drink, shuttle to/from parking lot, vacation and sick time, paid holidays, paid medical benefits. Fun and casual environment. Very unique industry. Building rockets and space shuttles. Impressive site.

Cons

No work-life balance for the people who work on the production floor. 50-60+ hours per week. The recruiters in the Production Recruitment dept are very rude and bullying. They are not open to any changes and they don't welcome newcomers. They do not even know how many openings they have. SpaceX builds rockets but have no applicant tracking system! People step on their managers and VPs then go straight to CEO or CFO if they have a question or complaint, which is very unprofessional. About 3 months ago, they let many people go in HR and hired new managers and recruiters but they let 10 people go again just this week as well, including the VP of HR who started 7 months ago, a manager who started 8 weeks ago and another one 3 weeks ago. Strangely all these people are over 40. Hmmm.. Looks like Gwynne and Elon do whatever they would like to do. They do not think of the legal implications. Soon, they will be sued by one of these people in the good old California!

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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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