Hi, I am getting interviewed at Relativity Space. If any of you know this company please could you share insight on the company, WLB, pay and benefits.
I’m a SWE at Relativity. It’s definitely the most interesting company and domain of problems I’ve worked on. However, not all the work is interesting and can be very menial & manual task intensive depending on your team and the project you’re working on. Pay is decent. It’s definitely not FAANG. It’s about middle of the pack in comparison with my friends who work at other companies. They don’t give much stock options now from what I hear from new hires. Benefits seem pretty standard 20 days PTO (sick & pto same bucket). WLB varies between teams and goes in waves. It used to be better but as we work towards first launch there has been a big push to get everything ready. We have quarterly goals that give us an extra day company PTO day. These were really good for the first couple quarters but last 2 quarters the goal was completely unattainable timeline wise. The company needs to improve this aspect. We are better than spaceX in WLB but we’ve been slipping for the past year as we get ready for launch.
Having worked at spacex and relativity, WLB is about the same
Rel space sucks I just left, Scott the IT/Software VP is cool. It's insanely disorganized and there are too many cooks in the kitchen everywhere you go.
Hardware Test Engineer -- company is currently in a period of uncertainty where the degree of success on TM-1 (first launch) will decide whether the next priority is a rapid second launch (TM-2), a complete mothball of Terran-1 in favor of Terran-R, or some point in between. WLB is generally great, but there's a tendency for serious crunch to push towards milestones that often put uneven pressure on specific teams. That said, given my background in Test, I'm used to flexing weird hours and occasional weekends to make sure I'm available when the hardware needs me, but I try to keep weekly hours between 45-55. Pay is good, but definitely not the strongest in the market. Offers tend to lean heavily on the option grant, which is a back-weighted 10-20-30-40 vest over 4 years (1st year cliff, rest monthly). No other comp (e.g. bonus or annual stock) until reaching management or >4 years at the company. Rest of the benefits are good, particularly relative to old aerospace (ULA/Boeing), with the only real weak point being a 401k match that is laughably small.
Uh 45-55 hr/wk is not great WLB
45 is most typical, but 55 is what I've done during crunch weeks. Don't typically go over that though, which - from what I've heard - is better than SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, and Blue Origin. My prior experience was ULA, and this is generally the same or better than I had it there, usually because it's my choice to do more rather than an expectation from on top.
45-55 isnt great wlb? Tell us you never worked at SX without telling us you never worked at SX.
Does anyone know what the compensation is like at Relativity Space? I haven't seen any posts about that.
Better than spacex
L5 has a midpoint around $120k. Other comp is decent, but nothing special since stock is a wildcard if/when it's actually sellable. 401k match is pitiful.
How much stock option do they gift out?
I think new offers have gotten smaller amounts than OGs. Obviously anything is negotiable to an extent especially if you have prior applicable experience
Haven't heard award amounts for new hires recently, but my signing offer back in mid '21 was 5500 options ($7.62 strike) with a 4-year back weighted vesting.
Does relativity offer a mega back door 401k?
Lol, no. They provide "2% of the IRS annual 401k contribution limit" to each employee, aka a $450 lump sum for '23.
Can an employee put in more than the irs limit into the 401k though a back door 401k? Blue Origin has that option. Basically you can contribute up to 66k a year into your 401k including your matching and your own construction. Any amount after the 22500 irs limit is after tax money. Not sure if relativity has a backdoor to offer even through they only match a little bit.
Relativity is pretty bad in terms of what they offer for options. For one, they try to low ball their offers with really low options count, but then they also have this weird backloading of vesting as some kind of power play to keep employees here longer. So basically you don’t have a 25% first year cliff. I’m halfway through my vesting period and I just vested like 33% for example, instead of 50%.
The back weighting is atypical for the industry, sure, but it counters the problem Relativity had of people rotating through every couple years invested of sticking around a bit longer to actually build out a stable talent base.
@QfpA20 What is the median option award value over 4 years?
How much pay raise do you guys get at Relativity? What percentage?
This most recent round (took effect in March) was 4% personally, though I recall my manager mentioning the company average was 3.5%.
How much are your stock options worth? Are stocks better than regular 401k matching of 5%? Thanks
I'm sure WLB sucks if it's like any of the other space startups. You better really love space
ya can't imagine it at other rocket companies just glad the wlb at Firefly is getting a bit better (being orbital helps too), especially with our new CEO starting to set a more long term outlook for the company that might be trying to veer away from the burnout culture