I work at a FAANG with partial week RTO. I’m seriously considering pursuing a role in one of the SpaceX Redmond teams (mostly Starlink). How rigid is the 5 day RTO? I can come for the 5 days but it’s difficult to remain in office for 8 hours straight. Work wise I can do 55-60 hours work weeks, no problem. But I have kids who need my time to enable some extra curricular activities and some studies. Is Redmond office too rigid about that? Can I come to office for 6 hours during the day and then return at nights/weekends to cover the shortfall while still meeting 40 hours inside office requirement? Also is it true that occasional appointments like medical, etc. requires one to take PTO? Although TC is important it is not my main priority in the big picture sense.
Pursue the role and ask during interviews. the employees are not afraid to tell you that they work 12 hours a day + occasionally weekends and they aren’t fucking around about it Whether you can do like 8 hr in office then go home and finish up work via VPN is an option hopefully somebody there can respond.
lol at everyone who doesn't work at SpaceX telling you what it's like. Some teams are more flexible than others. In crunch time for product deadlines you'll have less flexibility. Mature products are more flexible than new products. Bottom line is you need to get your work done, even if you have a crazy deadline. I've done some weekend work but no more than I did in FAANG when I had deadlines to meet. Ask the hiring manager and your recruiter about your specific situation. They'll be honest. They don't want to lie, hire you, and then have you quit because it didn't meet expectations.
Thanks. Good tip to ask upfront. I work at Amazon and live the ebb and flow of intense work. Want to know if there are teams in Redmond that prioritize getting your work done over things like badge in before 9 and badge out after 5. I appreciate companies that define core hours like 10am-3pm and leave the rest flexible.
Depends on your team, my manager doesn’t care if we work remote or not all be it my team is primarily in office most of the time. I see a lot of people do mornings from home and coming in the afternoon/evening to show face or do testing on hardware. Gwynne said something like you should badge in 90% of days though, but mostly varies based on your team.
If you can’t do a 50-60hr work week and up to 80hrs when there’s something launch critical to get done I wouldn’t pursue SpaceX. The companies very young, and has a “on the grind” sort of culture, a SWE 2 will blow you out of the water if you’re a senior only doing max 8 hours, since they’ll gladly work 12 hours a day.
Are you kidding me? It’s spaceX. They’re known for shit pay and 70 hour work weeks for the chance to say you took some monkeys to space. Though I heard now in days they’re giving a lot of paper money.
OP, nobody at SpaceX cares about your kids LMAO. You are in 5 days 10-11 hours per day at least or you're out