Pros
It was great and bad. The science behind it all is amazing. Also being able to travel to California, Florida, Texas to work on rockets is pretty cool. I was really passionate about space travel and respected Elon and his mission. You’re part of a very small group, and I mean small, that is selected To work on rockets. You take pride in what you do.
Cons
The bad part about spacex is the pay is terrible. I was in vandenburg (California) only making $25 per hr. Starvation wages. No one I was working with made over $30, that’s including my boss or team lead. The pay was not in line with cost of living. Rent was min $2000 - $2500 a month for a 1 bedroom. The relocation package is a joke. The company makes the new employees front all the cash to move to California. When you actually got reimbursed it was only $2K and it was months later. 90% of the workforce are brand-new graduates, no senior workers. These graduates have an eagerness to prove themselves but don’t have a lot of experience which consequently SpaceX takes full advantage of so they can pay them however low they want, work them as many hours as they want (mandatory 10-12+ hr days), and when they get burnt out just fire them and welcome in the new fresh meat. They are very much still in start up mode and in R&D, so the way they do things is still changing and the process hasn’t been perfected. That causes a lot of issues with paperwork and how the rocket gets put back together. Training is non existent. The way they operate is if you’re smart enough to get a job working on rockets at spacex, you’re smart enough to figure it out. Management refuses to train their workers. Instead making the trainees train the trainees (no one had more than 2 months with the company at the time). At least in Aviation you get Gen Fam courses and paired up with a senior worker to show you maintenance practices and paperwork. Lastly they manage the company and their employees by using SCARE TACTICS. I’ve been told multiple times if you don’t do the job fast enough or make simple mistakes they will fire you. they would even haze their employees if they didn’t like them. I quit shortly after that. My exit interview HR asked me which rocket company was I going to next. I told her I was going back to aviation. Apparently SpaceX employees quit and go work for BO an virgin because the pay and the work environment is better.
