I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at SpaceX (Hawthorne, CA) in Mar 2021
Interview
Three phone screens (one with a technical recruiter, and two with managers on the team). Then, a final technical presentation to the Build Reliability Engineering team on a past project, as well as breakout interviews with each team member.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you tell me about a time you had to improve throughput of a process
I had 2 rounds of interview for this position. The first one was with the recruiter, which was alright, just some typical HR questions. The recruiter seems cool besides the fact that he had a AI generated picture for his LinkedIn profile pic.
The second round was awful; I interviewed with a person who graduated from college a year ago. I am not questioning his ability or qualification as an engineer, I am just saying that he is a horrible interviewer. I was scheduled for an 45-60 minutes interview, but he said he had to leave after 33 minutes. But that was the least of it. In the beginning of the interview, he asked me to give an elevator pitch about myself, however, he would just keep interrupting me and did not actually finish my introduction. Then he asked me about my specific experience, and again he would just cut me off in the middle of the sentence and sometimes he wouldn’t even let me finish and would just jump to what he wanted to ask next. Then it was the technical portion, which AGAIN he would just jump to conclusions and not let me actually give the full answers. The last part of the interview was him letting me ask my questions, which was typical for an interview, what is not typical was that he would not let me finish all the questions I had until he said he had to leave early. But in the very end, he asked my if I would still want to work at SpaceX if I only have 5 years to live. What kind of interview question is that to be asked at an interview.
The whole second interview was just horrible and I did my best with the interviewer that was given to me. However, the last question gives me the vibe that if you are not willing to overwork and die (figuratively for the dying part) for a billionaire that believes his employees need to work 80 hours a week, there is no way you will get a job there. I also really think that SpaceX needs to do more training for their employees/engineers that are conducting the interviews and not just let some person with little to no interviewing experience to ruin someone else’s career opportunity.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Would you still work at SpaceX if you only have 5 years left to live?