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      SpaceX

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      Engineer 1 Interview

      May 11, 2021
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at SpaceX

      Interview

      I had a few interviews here with technical managers. The interviewers were all quite nice to talk to, however it seemed like they were looking for more busywork oriented people to hire. You just don't have to be that smart to do a lot of the jobs, just work very hard. As an example, they always spout something like "I just want to see how you think" in the interviews. Once, when asked if I knew an equation (because I had all of the equations from years of engineering degree classes memorized, apparently), I said no. I then started to literally derive the equation from scratch *in my head and over the phone*, but the interviewer stopped me. I guess he didn't REALLY want to know how I think? To me, that was a red flag, as I personally value intellectual work over busywork. In another interview, I was just plowing through the questions. I mean, I was literally doing math and solving equations in my head, and fairly certain it was all correct. At the end there was one more complicated question I wasn't able to derive an answer for before time ran out. I didn't get called back, and jeez, after all I did in that 30 min, I can't help but wonder why. The answers I gave were all certainly more in-depth than the interviewer was expecting (after explaining my answer, he would literally just say "nice" and state the answer he was clearly expecting, which was always a very short version of mine). For most teams at SpaceX, they are looking for people fanatical enough to do all of the heavy lifting in the form of mind-numbing (for those who are research-oriented) busywork. After having friends who had always wanted to work here get jobs only to quit due to the constant busywork, grinding, and stress, I am staying far away. That doesn't matter for SpaceX, because they will always have more such people to choose from. A shame, because the mission is great, but the employee model is questionable.
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