Pros
My favorite aspects of working at SpaceX as a full-time (salaried) propulsion engineer are: - You get to take on challenging, important, and exciting missions that enable global communications, remote sensing, manned spaceflight (near future), and critical national security assets (near future), which gives nearly every day's work a sense of importance and purpose. - It's almost cliched to say, but there is something incredibly fun and exciting about working with rocket engines so much on a daily basis that you begin to take it for granted. - You can (and must) constantly push yourself and advance your knowledge to deal with technical challenges, which keeps even the longest days engaging. - Leadership gives you the resources and authority to work autonomously (and/or within a small group) to accomplish the company's goals, which frequently means that even junior engineers are given opportunities to contribute meaningfully to the company right out of the gate, which gives you an intense feeling of ownership and responsibility. - You get to work with a passionate, friendly, and diverse team that is committed to the goals of the company and also acts as a personal support network - people here really do care about each other and are almost always willing to help out, whether it's with work or personal challenges. - The company provides an incredible array of benefits ranging from big items such as competitive healthcare access, to small things like subsidized meals and free coffee (not to mention a number of other extras such as access to discounted airport parking, movie tickets, etc.) - This is often overlooked in reviews - as an employee based out of the headquarters, you get to live in Los Angeles! There will never be a lack of things to do or people to meet with the free time that you have.
Cons
Like anything else in life, there are trade-offs to working at SpaceX: - Because you are entrusted with a huge amount of responsibility, the length of a work day varies wildly. Sometimes you can leave on Friday at 4pm (really, it happens more than you might think), and sometimes it means that you need to put your weekend plans on hold to drive the team's goals to completion and meet tight deadlines. The key is to make sure you are always cognizant of your efficiency; if you can get something done twice as fast in the morning than late at night, it's important to allow yourself to leave work and have a life - if you don't let yourself leave when there is still work to be done, you will never leave at all. By and large, managers and peers recognize the need for balance - the long hours are driven by the amount of work that needs to get done, not by an internal expectation that all employees will work a ridiculous amount of hours to seem important/busy. - The work can be stressful. Testing engines, dealing with production issues, and operating "on-console" for flights (as a personal example) is incredibly demanding and can wear you out quickly. If you aren't 100% committed to "getting it done", and importantly, if you don't rely on your team to help you when you're stretched too thin, it's very easy to burn out. As previously mentioned though - there are enormous pay-offs to the hard work, and it's important to keep the end goal in mind!