Doomed by incompetent upper management and toxic culture
Pros
- Lots of people who are really passionate, smart, and good at their jobs (although many of them are looking to leave if they haven't already left) - I personally align with Blue's long-term mission and ideals of building out life sustainably in space, even if that mission isn't a profitable one (although the current senior management doesn't seem to prioritize this) - Definitely a lot of opportunities to get involved, you will be doing a lot of work and getting good experience
Cons
- The culture at the company, which was very strong before 2025, is in shambles. This started with a 10% layoff of the entire workforce with no prior notice and immediate terminations within an hour. Many employees now exist in "survival mode" and worry about pleasing management and avoiding blame if a project fails or misses deadlines. After leaving Blue, I kept in touch with ~10 people in my business unit, and every single one of them either left within six months or are unhappy in their current position. Many people who left either went to big tech for a significant pay raise or took a pay cut to work somewhere actually fulfilling. - Upper management seems hellbent on turning this company into Amazon, and the CEO and most of upper management at this point are former Amazon employees. This includes cutting down on costs aggressively (although not in middle-to-upper management, the company is heavily bureaucratic), attempting to replace much of the software effort with AI in ways that are fundamentally flawed, and setting unrealistic deadlines/underdelivering (you cannot underdeliver when building something going into space, it will not work). I do not know a single person who works/worked at Blue and believes that upper management knows how to run a functional space company. - Compensation is not competitive with other big tech companies (no equity, base salary is lower than comparable positions in big tech), which is about the only thing that differs between how Blue and Amazon are run now - The Engines business unit is failing. If you choose to work at Blue, do not go to Engines. Almost every software engineer at Blue with 2+ years at the company has been laid off, quit, or demoted, so basically nobody understands the software. Middle management values butt-in-chair over quality work and is extremely toxic -- engineers were told to "toughen up and move on" in meetings after layoffs.