Gives space a bad name.. - Engineering SpaceX Employee Review

1.0
Jan 21, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Not sure..too hard to say..

Cons

The beloved leader is surrounded by a lead team of lackeys. The lead team got their minimal experience by hiring and firing experienced staff then calling themselves chief engineers. New engineers come in and face a roulette wheel-type scenario - try to complete tasks and hold onto possible stock options or get a miscalculated assignment from management and go down with their project so that the lead tem can tell the leader they fired the responsible party. Or if they dont like you they will give you a task way outside your proficiency to cut your tenure short. Miss-use of staff experience and bungled assignment length estimates mean that engineers are lucky to see eight months. Graduates come in by the droves as they all believe they wont come up short on this roulette wheel and experienced staff who wonder at any 30 year old calling themselves the chief engineer are sure not to last long. After each flight the staff get numbered patches. From this you can work out the 15/20% staff turn over between flights. Yeah its that bad. I know that they dont want waste but it seems more systematic for the core team to abuse assets while securing government funding - obviously smells of some .com labor pyramid scheme. SPACEX itself rather than having innovated have cherry picked all the NASA studies that NASA didnt have the funds to exploit themselves and are calling themselves revolutionary. Smart graduates are to advised to either start their own business or go to real aerospace companies that try to get the best out of their employees. Experienced aerospace professionals should be advised that your thoroughness will bring ire from management and you wont last long. Gives a bad name to the word space.

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5.0
Apr 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of fun work to do! Your manager will make or break it for you!

Cons

Burnout culture Depending on department learning is very much a self guided journey

1
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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