SpaceX

Engineers have the final say. This company has a great culture of finding and following the truth, taking accountability, and picking things because they are the best.

The big picture is very exciting, and you are surrounded by others who are all excited to push the boundaries of rocket technology.

You get to work with some of the leading experts in aerospace on projects that have never been done before.

Good pay fresh out of college.

Employee stock awards provide incentives for individuals to improve the company.

Management does not care about you. They care about the work getting done at all costs.

A team's best individual contributors are the ones promoted to managers. These are usually the people worst suited to managing others. Managers range from enthusiastic but inexperienced, to incompetent.

It's not a sustainable workplace. Most people are here for under 2 years. To make it here longer than 5 years, you have to be a little crazy.

Long hours, but I assume you already knew that.

Your experience here will depend entirely on your manager. Some teams are very relaxed, have good management, and have fun. Often the teams working with the government are this way (Dragon, Starshield, HLS). The teams driven entirely by internal pressure are the worst (Starship mainline, user terminal, etc.)

They give performance bonuses in the form of stocks that vest over the next few years, and they WILL try to cheat you out of them.

I was fired due to performance reasons when a brand new manager came in, and they let me go 2 weeks before the bonus I had earned a year ago vested. This is not unheard of, and I know of several others who were treated the same way.

Train new managers on how to lead people.

Hire people: this company is extremely strict on filling positions and willing to leave a position open for over a year in order to find the perfect candidate. The result is when one person leaves, the other members are forced to take on their work, and it creates a chain reaction where more and more people leave. Managers see that the team, who at this point is working overtime and weekends to make up for the deficit, still seems to be producing the work it needs to, and decide not to hire in the name of 'staying lean'.

This company has boatloads of money and isn't afraid to spend it to speed up operations, but they are afraid to spend it on increased headcount.

Work on employee appreciation. Working in many roles is very thankless. It's SpaceX, so everyone expects you to do a kickass job, and their only question will be 'can you do it faster next time?'.

The company does so many incredible things, and I wish this could be sustainable. The things needed to make this a sustainable place aren't things that would jeopardize the mission, they just take effort. A sustainable workplace doesn't mean 40 hours and remote work. I mean a place where employees feel valued, are able to make real measurable contributions to the company, and are treated with integrity.