Like anything else in life, there are trade-offs to working at SpaceX:
- Because you are entrusted with a huge amount of responsibility, the length of a work day varies wildly. Sometimes you can leave on Friday at 4pm (really, it happens more than you might think), and sometimes it means that you need to put your weekend plans on hold to drive the team's goals to completion and meet tight deadlines. The key is to make sure you are always cognizant of your efficiency; if you can get something done twice as fast in the morning than late at night, it's important to allow yourself to leave work and have a life - if you don't let yourself leave when there is still work to be done, you will never leave at all. By and large, managers and peers recognize the need for balance - the long hours are driven by the amount of work that needs to get done, not by an internal expectation that all employees will work a ridiculous amount of hours to seem important/busy.
- The work can be stressful. Testing engines, dealing with production issues, and operating "on-console" for flights (as a personal example) is incredibly demanding and can wear you out quickly. If you aren't 100% committed to "getting it done", and importantly, if you don't rely on your team to help you when you're stretched too thin, it's very easy to burn out. As previously mentioned though - there are enormous pay-offs to the hard work, and it's important to keep the end goal in mind!