I had a few interviews with technical managers. The interviewers were all quite nice to talk to; however, it seemed like they were looking for more busywork-oriented people to hire. You just don't have to be that smart to do a lot of the jobs; you just have to work very hard.

For example, they always spout something like, "I just want to see how you think," in interviews. Once, when asked if I knew an equation (because I had all of the equations from years of engineering degree classes memorized, apparently), I said no. I then started to literally derive the equation from scratch, in my head and over the phone, but the interviewer stopped me. I guess he didn't really want to know how I think.

To me, that was a red flag, as I personally value intellectual work over busywork. In another interview, I was just plowing through the questions. I mean, I was literally doing math and solving equations in my head, and fairly certain it was all correct. At the end, there was one more complicated question I wasn't able to derive an answer for before time ran out. I didn't get called back, and jeez, after all I did in that 30 minutes, I can't help but wonder why.

The answers I gave were all certainly more in-depth than the interviewer was expecting. After explaining my answer, he would literally just say "nice" and state the answer he was clearly expecting, which was always a very short version of mine.

For most teams at SpaceX, they are looking for people fanatical enough to do all of the heavy lifting in the form of mind-numbing (for those who are research-oriented) busywork. After having friends who had always wanted to work here get jobs only to quit due to the constant busywork, grinding, and stress, I am staying far away.

That doesn't matter for SpaceX because they will always have more such people to choose from. A shame, because the mission is great, but the employee model is questionable.