SpaceX reviews

*SpaceX isn't a small company any more. There are layers of bureaucracy and politics that make real work difficult. Worse, the management is really young and many have never worked outside the company. Fresh engineers are frequently thrown under the bus by eager Leads looking to impress. *Hawthorne employees don't want to work on Starship. While the Company has stated our priority is to build this new vehicle, there are few willing to relocate to the build site in Texas. SpaceX dangles a lot of carrots to entice the Hawthorne crew out, with various "Boca site improvements" directed squarely at visiting staff. Once a person transfers to Boca, however, their needs are promptly set aside to make room for the visitors. This is important concept to understand: Accepting a job at Boca means you are filling in for an engineer in California. And they will be enjoying the Hawthorne Barista while you sweat. *Work environment. (Boca Specific) We have the money to build a booster bay and an orbital launchpad, but not air conditioning or toilets. Build engineers sit in trailers and use dirty porta-potties. The factory floor is often 90-degrees (F) / 90% RH and your clothing is completely drenched in sweat after 15 minutes. Only one of the 2 parking lots is paved, and there isn't enough space so many employees park on the highway. Your vehicle will be covered in dust, mud, and rock dings unless you are lucky enough to get a paved spot. Mosquitoes... so many mosquitoes. Someone planted a bunch of palm trees and that's considered improvement? Perhaps if everyone in the company had to struggle this way it might be bearable. *Doing a good job here just means you get more work. *Staff read Elon's tweets like tea leaves. If the CEO tweets he will have a new Superheavy update by Monday, be prepared to cancel your vacation because your Manager is drafting an email about how it might be possible to build one if we all work extra hard. *Speaking of Elon, he actually does threaten to fire people. Employees seem divided on this topic. Some think it's awesome/inspirational when a person is given the ultimatum "achieve this by X or I expect your resignation." Some find it horrifying. Either way, if you work for said person, your life is about to become miserable. *Wasted effort. Prioritization is a serious problem in the Starship program. There are many competing needs on site and it seems personality is the largest factor in determining who gets resources. I cannot tell you how many times we have spent serious effort on some new, totally unvetted idea that received funds because the requester had good connections. Often these projects will consume several engineers' bandwidth and then end up in the dumpster without explanation. Even when the idea *is* really sound, the execution may be rushed as "fastest path to Mars" and the end product doesn't achieve its function. *Engineers get pressured into working nights and weekends. This is a peer thing, really. New guys come in and attempt to have a life, which sadly fails as they succumb to pressure, losing their time with family/friends. The hourly employees think Engineers are nuts. No... they just aren't capable of pushing back. *Finally, there is less to learn here than you may think. New engineers constantly reinvent the wheel as experienced engineers leave for greener pastures. If you are the new engineer this is actually quite fun- you may even think you're blazing a path.

Once I got the job offer from SpaceX, I thought that would be the best work place for me but it turned out to be the worst so far. It may be cool for a recent graduate with no advanced degree and no family. There is absolutely no work life balance and everything is about how much money they can make out of you. Often you have to work 60-70 hrs a week and weekend with no compensation. and why is that? simply because they don't value their employees. They are spending a lot of money every single day , so employees are treated as robots and not human. The worst management team I have ever seen. The environment often looks like kindergarten where manager is chasing you to criticize you about something which he or she has no idea about. Many of engineering people at SpaceX have the illusion of they are very smart and it is because of them that SpaceX is getting attention these days despite their lack of deep technical knowledge. I graduated from one of the best schools with a PhD and I am pretty confident that you don't need to be smart to work at SpaceX, you just need to know how to please your manager. I am not saying good people are not there anymore, there are still few of them but from my view credit goes to early employees who developed Falcon 1 technology for SpaceX and then left the company. The rest is just typical everyday boring engineering work. There is nothing new, rocket technology is an old technology, people who have experience in this industry know what I am talking about. People not at SpaceX typically say Wow SpaceX is doing great , they are pushing boundaries of space exploration and looks like they are very proud of their business but with all respect from my point of view this is all illusion. Can you imagine how much money is wasted every single day at SpaceX because of lack of systems engineering, poor management and no documentation?