Horrible Place To Work - Data Scientist II SpaceX Employee Review

1.0
Apr 1, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Everyone at SpaceX is intelligent.

Cons

At SpaceX, employees are stolen from in the form of wage theft constantly. - Your below-industry salary is based on a 40 hour work week. Don't worry, you'll work 60-100 hours consistently, and wont be paid for the additional time worked. - Your boss (or their boss) will tell you to work weekends. You will. And won't be paid for those either. - Stock vests every 6 months after your first year. So when layoffs happen 3 months into a vesting period, you'll have worked the last 3 months for 66% pay. No other tech company does this. Managers consistently fire their subordinates to take heat off of themselves for their own poor decision making. In my two years at SpaceX, I saw this happen 5 different times. Also fair warning, they do mass layoffs on average every 18 months. Don't expect to be promoted. If you're coming in as a Level 1, you can get promoted to Level 2 pretty easily. Beyond that, the most common way to get bumped up to Senior (or anything else) is to threaten to quit. You'll frequently hear about coworkers who go home and cry from stress. You'll also meet plenty of people who persistently feel like they could be fired at any moment. It's a very toxic culture. If you speak up about management's poor behavior - as five employees did in 2022 in an open letter - they'll fire you and then send out a mass email defaming you to the whole company. When a flight attendant complained about inappropriate behavior from Elon in 2022... same deal, mass email to the whole company defaming her. Bonus Detail: Elon will act like a psycho, sending out emails asking employees to buy Twitter subscriptions and submit them as a business expense. He really is a character isn't he?

Explore other reviews about SpaceX

5.0
Jun 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you like working and are dedicated to the cause, this is the place for you!

Cons

Very high expectations with long hours.

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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