Blue Origin reviews

3.2

46% would recommend to a friend

(1,212 total reviews)

Dave Limp

34% approve of CEO

40% positive business outlook

Blue Origin has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 1,212 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Blue Origin employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Aerospace & Defense industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
5.0
Aug 21, 2020

Tough but amazing place to work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

First, I might be biased in my positive experience, I am not sure. But, I've been here a bit over a year and I've had possibly the best experience of my career. I'm new to aerospace/space but had been looking to land in this industry long term. When I joined, I had read all the reviews here, many of which are negative. My previous job (a startup) had absolutely awful leadership, so I was very sensitive to those reviews and on the look out for those type of signals during my interview and first few months after I joined Blue. But I just haven't really seen them - nothing out of the norm, anyway (no company of 3000 employees is going to escape having a few duds in management, unfortunately). My manager in particular has been exceptional and I've gotten a decent amount of exposure to mid to mid-high level management and no real obvious red flags. Is Blue trying to figure out better ways of operating and shifting a decent amount? Yes, absolutely - that's not a bad thing, though. I think some reviews here (complete conjecture on my part) might be conflating the difficulty and complexity of work that is entailed by working at Blue with poor management. It's a really big system engineering challenge (on top of all the other challenges) to do this sort of highly detailed and complex work, needing to make several disparate systems and disciplines all fit together, let alone make everyone apprised to it. There's a reason the saying "it ain't rocket science" is a thing - it's damn hard, but so satisfying to be a part of. Another pro: the work/life balance is really reasonable (for the most part, I hear some departments are struggling a bit due to being understaffed). I have occasional bouts (maybe 2-3 weeks worth total over a year) where I put in 60-70 hour weeks, but by and large I'm working under 50 a week (probably average about 48). Other rocket companies (who are doing awesome work, too) have a bit of a reputation for grinding employees with consistently high hour work weeks. Extra pro: getting to be in a meeting with Jeff B who was reviewing the work your team was involved in was pretty neat :)

Cons

The work is really challenging. I get exposed to a lot of different teams and systems, and everyone has difficult problems to wrangle. It can be really frustrating some times, but that's part of what you're signing up for. I personally like the challenge, but recognize not everyone will. It can sometimes bring morale down temporarily when things hit a wall, but good teams over come that with ease. Being understaffed is felt, too. There's a lot of great ideas and projects floating around that simply don't have the staff to execute fully. That's true of every company, for sure, but there are some critical pieces that need attention and do t have it yet. Again, all part of the challenge that is surmountable. Some of the business strategy doesn't make a ton of logical sense to me, but I'll place my trust in the guy who spun up a trillion dollar company from his garage on that front...

5.0
Aug 27, 2019

Machinist

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The pay was good. The people I worked with were a great bunch of guys. ( not management)

Cons

Management needs to learn how to manage. You don’t run a shop as if your king. You need employees to give subjections and you must listen to them. Never think that you are the smartest one in the room because usually your not even close. I was stuck on the same machine and was never t aloud to move around even though others with far less years of experience were. The only reason I could figure for this was because I was HIV positive and that scared them. Why do I say this? Well they never had blood contaminant training until I got there and when they did, the instructor kept looking at me. In all of my forty something years of machining no one has ever contracted HIV from me. NO ONE.

Viewing 274 - 276 of 1,212 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,389 Blue Origin reviews submitted anonymously by Blue Origin employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Blue Origin is right for you.