Pros
-you get to design things that will go into space -competitive salary
Cons
The management is not taking the Covid-19 pandemic seriously. They do not enforce their own safety protocols (just lip service) and are not fully in compliance with health regulations. Many employees are in close contact with each other and do not wear masks. They even pushed all employees to gather together masks-off for a marketing photoshoot. Temperature checks are "do-it-yourself." They won't tell you if somebody in the office has gotten sick with Covid. Employees have mysteriously disappeared with no explanation. I tried to reason with them and express my health concerns many times over the last several months, but I came up against a brick wall every time. Every time my concerns were either ignored or not adequately responded to (I just got emails back restating the company policy, as if I couldn't read). I put in my two weeks notice because I was worried for my safety and that of my family (which I explained in my resignation letter), and I was terminated the next day out of retaliation (after a meeting they disingenuously set up to extract information from me under the guise of a "two-week plan"). Now the project I was working on is left unfinished without a clean hand-off and the job of my former teammates will be made more difficult. Extremely unprofessional. Run. Some other cons: -Profit is king. Don't expect grand visions of space exploration and the betterment of humanity à la SpaceX and Blue Origin. -More bureaucracy and inefficiency than the DMV, yet somehow manages to be incredibly disorganized and chaotic. -Company solutions for remote collaboration are quite lacking. Expect to need to come into the office during the pandemic to get things done quickly. -They don't trust their employees to not go off and play video games or goof off when working remotely, so expect extensive reporting requirements daily even as a salaried engineer. -A decent portion of people at the company feel threatened when you suggest ideas that are not their own, bring up possible improvements, or offer to lend your expertise in a certain area. Everybody is very protective of their own little bubbles and there is not a whole lot of cross-pollination of ideas. This might be a culture-driven job security thing. Whatever it is, it's not a good quality for a space company. -There are many processes and ways of doing things that have been adopted over the years, yet many of these are barely understood or incorrectly applied. Everybody is expected to pick up and pass down the "tribal knowledge" but the understanding of the underlying principles is lacking. -Even before Covid-19, the lunch room was a sad, sad place. It was as quiet as a cemetery and everybody would sit at separate tables. -HR is literally one person. -They'll have you thinking that you'll get stock options or some sort of ownership in the company by virtue of being an employee, but unless you negotiate for it in your offer, you won't get it. Not a big deal though, because the stock is basically worthless anyway. -Low budgets and unrealistic schedules for projects (makes it easy for Space Micro to get business but difficult for it to make a profit). -Purchasing what you need to do your job is a nightmare. Expect it to be months before you get hardware, software, etc. -Company software (mail, MRP, chat, etc) is a hodgepodge of dirt-cheap and open-source software. -Not enough licenses for engineering software to go around -IT policies are ridiculously restrictive (to the point of impeding work) and arbitrary (I came from a major defense company before this, so I am familiar with the requirements). -Some other unsavory business practices where the company's attitude is, no joke, "we'll just wait until we get sued." -Some of the senior people have been at the company since fresh out of school (or the vast majority of their experience is at Space Micro), so they don't know there are greener pastures and better ways of doing things elsewhere. -Getting benefits information is like pulling teeth (both when you get an offer and after you join the company). This is because the benefits are quite poor and they are hoping you won't use them if you don't know about them anyway. -No 9/80 schedule, yet there is an implied expectation that you work 9 hours a day or more -No 401k match. -No real interest in innovation, happy doing things the way they have always done -Company "subsidized" health insurance is quite expensive -Hardly any paid holidays -Company shutdown at the end of the year. Either use all your PTO or don't get paid. Look it up, it's legal (doesn't mean it's right).
