An exciting and fun experience with significant drawbacks - Senior Launch Engineer SpaceX Employee Review

3.0
Nov 16, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You will get to work on interesting projects and be a part of an exciting mission.

Cons

Your job demands 100% of you so it's really hard to de-stress and leave the work at the office. Work/life balance is not really a thing. You more or less are buying into Elon's mission and, as a result, whims. There is an absolute breakneck pace of all projects where everything is late from the point of inception. There are high levels of organizational chaos/uncertainty where the turnover is severe and important people with disappear very abruptly. Overall I'd say that it's a very young organization chocked full of super intelligent, idealistic young people. This is great, however, there is a severe lack of engineering wisdom that comes with experience. Hubris is a thing. Safet.

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5.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredible benefits, career movement is based on merit, stocks, mission focused, jobs with a measurable purpose, and incredibly passionate individuals

Cons

Clout-chasing and prestige among certain management and team members, greatly underestimate the magnitude of scale often.

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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