Pros: Exciting work and endless opportunities for growth and learning

Cons: Difficult and demanding work, and questionable leadership at times.

Pros: - Given a good team and manager, engineers can succeed and learn a lot. However, these are extremely rare. Most people are fired or leave after <3 years.

Cons: Poor Management - The culture of 'extreme ownership' is weaponized against engineers. Engineering teams are severely understaffed, employee burnout is high, and teams face political arguments and drama with other teams. However, managers blame engineers for all negative outcomes, citing 'extreme ownership'. You are on your own to deal with both technical challenges and managerial challenges. Managers do not help employees solve problems or grow. - There is a double standard of work expectations, and many managers work fewer hours than their employees. Expect to work 12-16 hour days to solve problems and have that work go unappreciated by your manager, who instead will blame you for schedule delays despite working at your physical limit. - VP and executive direction is often misguided, forcing employees to work overtime on tasks not worth doing. For example, I was asked to perform technician duties for weeks as an engineer. - Employees have an average 3-year tenure. You hear about a few employees mysteriously leaving the company every month, and managers and employees pretend to ignore this, and badmouth and gossip about former employees. - There is lots of gossip and backstabbing by teammates and coworkers. Certain teammates do no technical work, but instead weaponize gossip. Managers play favorites.

Pros: Stock is really worth it in the long term, and it pays for some of the pain. It is a wonderful place to start a career and learn new things fast.

Cons: 1 year at spacex drains 2-3 years of your life