Exciting mission but chaos reigns supreme. - Anonymous employee Blue Origin Employee Review

3.0
Jun 18, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Exciting company mission, nirvana for space geeks. Good location, near highways, but away from the bustle of the city. Extremely open culture, no compartmentalized information hoarding.

Cons

While Blue Origin has a very exciting mission it is definitely not without its drawbacks. I've been an employee for seven years, and have seen the company grow from 150 when I started to almost 2,000. This growth has been very poorly managed and the company has suffered because of it. The original culture simply does not scale; when I started, the company only hired seasoned, experienced professionals, and management really only facilitated interaction between groups. The organization was *extremely* flat, with only two layers of management between employees and the company's president. Employees were all peers, with very little pecking order. This worked out *really* well during the company's early years, but began to fall apart as the organization grew and more junior people were hired. The complete lack of oversight has led to many, many bad technical decisions which were jumped into blindly. In most organizations these decisions would have been subject to review, risk assessment, and approval, but this approach runs counter to Blue's culture. This haphazard approach has led to the development of many unstable, unreliable, and virtually unmaintainable systems.

Explore other reviews about Blue Origin

5.0
Jun 3, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good team to work with. No complaints.

Cons

No cons at this point.

1.0
Jun 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free coffee and snacks and a slice of pizza when New Glenn launched and landed. They years before Blue gave everyone a 10K bonus for the New Shepard first human flight, they have since shut the entire program down.

Cons

Too many to list. The high performers get hit the hardest. I went 8 months without out missing a day, pick up other incomplete projects. After 8 years I received zero stock options which was promised at time of hire. When I left Blue had 383 people with Director in their title and had 40 VPs. Blue even posted a picture of the Chief Engineers on their Facebook page, they had 42! I was there for 8 years and my title never changed, every year they promised a promotion but they never come. I have 2 Masters degrees my Sr Manager had an A.A in arts, once he made Sr Director he was there for 6 months and moved to Andril. The pad repairs will take a year and they will loose the FCC bandwidth which will make them obsolete.

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