Q&A With SpaceX Employees

Work for a minimal pay

Just say yes for a little compensation and long hours. Beware though because they will tell you that you'll make money in overtime but don't tell you how burned-out you'll get by depending on that paycheck filled with overtime to pay your bills. Regular 8 hour days and 40 days a week do not exist at SpaceX

Free lunch

Free lunch

Having a day off to sleep in

How to sided things really are; what you see on one side is not the whole reality of how things are

The real taste of the Spacex Kool-Aid.

about the "Good ol boys" club, and how sinister it is.. its very deep and rooted from HR throughout the site in McGregor Texas, I don't know about Hawthorne.. I can only speak about my own experience.

All rah-rah without the understanding of its true realities

Those who work in the office are nice to each other but this is not an office atmosphere time of company because of office people, launch operations people, and manufacturing people.

General questions

Can you work long hours

I was asked about my technical experience and how that could apply to the position. There were some personality questions such as how you handle disagreements, etc.

Stop being so disconnected from the hourly who only get paid less than $25 an hour. Those people are actually afraid to speak up to their managers because of retaliation for speaking up

Management and engineering think they're great however the rest of the company are not happy with their current situations.

I do not know enough to answer this question objectively.

Divided

Those around me and other locations other than the main office are very low and morale

Already answered this.

No people quit because they're fed up which has been on the increase

Probably

I am currently unaware of firings or layoffs. No opinion.

Immediate supervisor and Lead

A team leader and one week

I met engineers, technician leads and human resources.

Adequate

Fair benefits

health, life insurance, copay you pay so much a month depending on how much you wish.. comes out of your pay.. and stocks after a year, you get 11 stocks vested, and you must pay tax on, then after that you get 5 every 6 months..

Can't wait to get hired by another company who pays better and doesn't require you to work 50 to 60 hours a week

Exhausted and tired

felt like going to hell everyday.. and going home, like going back to heaven!!

Don't have a social life because of SpaceX

Nonexistent because I work too many hours

what social life? unless you are liked and in with the "Good ol boys" you don't get invited to anything!! once in a while, spacex has a party.. for all employees.. but otherwise, you are alone!!

Lot of white folks

Enough I guess

I will say, diversity is quite expansive within spacex.

Elon will gladly knockoff a couple thousand dollars off a Tesla; as if many of us could really afford one which is a joke and quite insulting

you get coffee, chips and peanuts anytime you want...

Nothing that matters, choose where you want to work based on meaningful things like environment, benefits, coworkers and salary

Great at upper management horrible for those technicians at the launch sites

Low, very low

non-existent.. especially within Inventory in Mcgregor Texas..

Adequate but soon fell apart when the real realities of being scheduled driven with minimal pay and required overtime was realized

Okay but soon fell apart due to being scheduled driven rather than quality driven

It's always been a sink or swim kind of place

schedules

Meeting schedule deadlines even though quality suffers

Work hard and say nothing

One day you're there the next you're gone

One day you're there and the next you're gone. Wage increases that were promised never even happened to many that were laid off

They find reason and walk you out the door

Adequate stepping stone for other companies

Stepping stone for other companies

Usually it's because it's a stepping stone to another opportunity. most people will work anywhere if they're desperate for a job and it's easy to drink the SpaceX Kool-Aid at first.

Being able to work through the minutiae and work the required mandatory overtime which will provide you with a undesirable work-life balance

Never disagree even when you know you're right

Ability to adapt, debate (w/o being an a**), comprehend others ideas and work with the team. The most difficult situation one has to deal with at SpaceX is the mashup of backgrounds and personalities. In alot of the rocket industry you tend to notice a trend where as the personnel working together have similar backgrounds, where SpaceX employees could have been sheet metal workers but now work in propulsion. Someone who was a tire tech at a Big O tires is now running avionics. Having the ability to work along side someone who doesn't necessarily hold the same background as you is what makes operations the most challenging and requires a skill set of patience and adaptation. That and when you find out your years of swapping parts, systems and running maintenance for squadrons means you'll start at 18-20$/h, you'll need to bring your skill of sitting down and rotating.

Frustrated

Morale is very low

They were supportive of all projects that the team was involved in. Even if they were not directly assigned to it. In essence, they were very eager to collaborate.

All new programs or developing programs need to have much better discipline. SpaceX at this time should not even try to put people into space because they lack in the real discipline to provide that service

The manifest of flights is growing the fastest but the infrastructure to support development, qualification and acceptance testing was not. There was a lot of juggling priorities on the daily level and is cause for a lot of lost efficiency.

Flight operations is growing fastest. I think the one with the greatest difficulties would have to be the support/Inventory part. I believe the focus has been to flight and not enough on Inventory, which desperately needs help in the management/supervisor, leadership roll especially in McGregor Texas.

Demanding

Non-stop

hard work, and tedious work... you are working to make and keep your supervisor/manager happy, and trust me.. that is impossible!!