Relativity Space

You get to work on some cool hardware and do many different things.

Free food is nice, but it is usually not warm anymore when it arrives.

The people are really smart and great to work with outside of leadership.

Generally liberal/progressive and supportive of minority groups, especially when compared to other companies in the industry. ERGs are good enough, and I have never felt discriminated against.

Laid back culture, and people are very accommodating and appreciative of personalities different than theirs.

Paid time off is good, but new hires only get 15 days instead of the 20 that we used to get.

Stocks might be worth something someday, but they screwed over a lot of people when Relativity 2.0 happened.

The company diverged with the creation of "Relativity 2.0" and has become more and more like SpaceX every day while providing lip service to those who only ever worked at Relativity because we had the opportunity to drive a culture that would be different than the rest of the industry.

• Mandatory 50 hour weeks on manufacturing teams or risk being fired
• Expectation to be available at all times outside of work to unblock production
• Firing team members with no forethought about where their work will go, and then the work is thrown at whoever is most likely to say yes, 6+ months without positions backfilled and no additional compensation, time off, or priority for promotion from additional workload
• No pathway to becoming a Senior Engineer in the manufacturing organization, and the expectation is that you make miracles happen to become a Senior even while day-to-day operations are dominated by forces out of your control
• The work you are excited to do, and that will create career growth, will be deprioritized in favor of sitting on the floor to make sure a part never sits because our production systems are not greased and manufacturing engineers pick up the slack
• Insane turnover. An engineer at Relativity for 3 years is generally one of the most senior on their team.
• I can't remember the last time we celebrated a victory.
• WFH in any capacity is increasingly scrutinized and each instance must now be approved by management.

They are going to continue brute forcing their way into production. "Leverage before grit" no longer accurately describes this company's work culture. I would not recommend working in manufacturing at Relativity at this time.

Your employees are only replaceable like they were at SpaceX once you've done something relevant and documented it thoroughly. Until you do that, you are not losing people; you are losing knowledge and skill. If you do not care more about the well-being of your employees, the rocket will not launch—you can't brute force this.