Tons of potential but very stressful - Production Supervisor SpaceX Employee Review

3.0
Oct 21, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You are involved with some amazing programs and opportunities. The results of your hard work pays off when you get to see the results in orbit. The work pace is really fast and depending on your team's dynamic, could work really well together to achieve some awesome results. If you are willing to put in the time and effort, the company stock is really nice and has made many of the long-time employees fairly wealthy. But you have to put in the hard work and effort. Too many newer employee's join and then expect to be handed a massive handout for just being there. It doesn't work that way. Diversity is a thing. See below. There are some really great teams with a great dynamic. You will learn a lot and be able to really increase your skill sets. If you put in the effort, there is a ton of opportunities to acquire knowledge.

Cons

Almost no loyalty to hard working employees. You are just a number. Overall contributions don't mean much in your overall career progression. If you don't play the game, you will be left behind those who are not as effective but play the game much better than you. You can definitely observe other employees who are sick of their working environment, but stay very quiet in fear that it will affect their reviews or future promotions. Reviews are ineffective. They are written by the person above you. If you don't have a good relationship with them, don't expect a great review regardless of how well you performed or how well you work with those around you. The 360 feedback system is useless and they swear by it. I have been writing reviews for over 5 years and can count on one hand how many 360 feedback reviews which were useful. There is no way to change your review once it is approved by higher management. They take months and months to write and the only thing that matters is the score as it has everything to do with your raise. The review period is by far the most stressful time(s) of the year. Engineers get higher priority for promotion to manager and above positions. Supervisors are mostly non-engineers who have to be that leadership buffer between non-leadership managers and the direct labor hourly employees. Engineers think they understand what leadership is, but the vast majority don't have a clue beyond the one leadership class they took in college. They tend to struggle in these positions and there is no insight to it. Manager survey's are conducted every year, but they only target your first line manager. So your team can appreciate you as a supervisor, but despise their manager. Senior management won't know because survey's don't ask about skip level management. Management survey's have little to no affect on reviews. HR is terrible. They only care about two things, making sure the company doesn't get sued and that the hourly employee's don't organize. It's really difficult to terminate employees who should not be there. Beyond that, they don't really do things to improve the overall environment. Which makes the ability to lead/manage your teams really difficult. The directors and above in HR will show you a false impression they care, but mostly side with your senior leadership. Retaliation definitely occurs. HR goes through great lengths to make it clear that retaliation isn't allowed, but tend to turn their backs when it is obviously happening. Did I say that HR is horrible already? There are so many subtle ways retaliation occurs there without HR doing anything about it. Diversity is starting to sway into the opposite direction. Many years ago, the hiring objective was to hire the "best of the best" (with no distinction other than being the best), but due to some diversity initiatives, the hiring objectives has shifted to focusing on hiring from specific community groups vs focusing on hiring the "best of the best".

Explore other reviews about SpaceX

4.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You learn so much because the work is so freaking intense, its a lot of fun if you're the type of person who loves to get emerged in hard problems. The hours for me were not too bad but I was the exception, all the other interns I was with dealt with 60-70+ hour weeks, some interns came in at 10am and left at 12am, when I say its intense, I'm not joking. This is however very unique to the Starbase location. I've heard Hawthorne is a lot more chill. I honestly despite how challenging the role was always look back on it with a sense of pride in my work, and longing to be back there. It really does feel that you're doing world changing things.

Cons

Very un diverse upper management, I'd say the company is pretty diverse in the lower ranks, but once you start to look at the org chart and see who's in charge, you realize that its mainly just white people. Makes you wonder if as a person of color you too will be able to move up. Housing sucks: there was limited housing on campus for full time employees, you have to wait a year plus to get off the queue and once you're off you only really get tiny homes as the option that are in an inconvenient location. Interns don't even have the option to get on campus housing, they give you 3k in a housing stipend and expect you to find a place in Brownsville. I'd say its very hard to maintain a relationship while working here if you don't have an understanding partner, the work schedule is brutal and you really can't slack off.

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