SpaceX Must Pay $4 Million for Thousands of Underpaid Employees

[Pipcard]

https://www.inverse.com/article/31478-spacex-settles-underpaid-workers-lawsuit-for-4-million

I already knew about how SpaceX wasn't a perfect company, but this time something is actually being done here.

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

[rockets4life97]

This must refer to hourly employees who are required to be given breaks. I expect the hourly employees are the technicians and operators in the factory. Also, don't forget the stock options -- something most companies with comparable jobs aren't offering.

Arguably, most of innovation (e.g. engine design, reusability, etc.) is coming from the engineers not the technicians. Salaried employees (like engineers) manage their own breaks and hours. It is well known that the engineers at SpaceX work long hours which makes them comparably underpaid. However, it seems like they find the work satisfying and the pay adequate -- otherwise they would go somewhere else.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

$4 million is a pretty small amount for SpaceX. As the article says, the key issue now is will SpaceX change its working practices?

[guckyfan]

$4 million is a pretty small amount for SpaceX. As the article says, the key issue now is will SpaceX change its working practices?

According to a reddit post they adjusted their rules almost 2 years ago.

[Ludus]

https://www.inverse.com/article/31478-spacex-settles-underpaid-workers-lawsuit-for-4-million

I already knew about how SpaceX wasn't a perfect company, but this time something is actually being done here.

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

I don't think this story applies to the idea of SpaceX employees burning out. As the story suggests, California has more regulation and statutory protection of hourly workers than most states. The employees burning out would be salaried with less regulation about hours/pay.

My main take from the story is that SpaceX labor practices are under pretty close scrutiny. This was a pretty minor issue.

[JazzFan]

https://www.inverse.com/article/31478-spacex-settles-underpaid-workers-lawsuit-for-4-million

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

This happens across all industries and has been a practice since jobs were invented.  SpaceX is not the first company to be sued around employee rights and compensation.

[Nomadd]

 During our national disaster responses, we started avoiding the use of California employees when possible because of the rules they worked under. They would consistently claim penalty pay for going past California and union  mandated break and hours rules, which they were responsible for enforcing themselves since it wasn't a factory environment with supervisors telling you what to do every minute. State regulations were often contradictory and impossible to follow. For instance, there was no way to have intrinsically safe generators because of conflicting environmental and safety laws. Just like with EPA and OSHA rules during spills, we'd have to break the laws and hope it didn't come back on us.

[gospacex]

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

I think the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive is <magic>

edit/Lar: on second thought, no.

[Lar]

Asking the same question again is probably not the best way to stay on topic.  Even if you asked it in the thread starter post. If you want to ask it again, ask it in the thread you started it in... with some justification for why you didn't agree with the answers you got, or new info.  The FB version of this thread got somewhat low value, IMHO. Do better.

And try to keep the volcano lair stuff secret ok?

[alang]

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

I think the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive is a secret underground factory with slaves laboring 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for food only.

Go easy on the Mittelwerk jokes or we'll all be moderated.

More seriously, if I was young I'd want to work for SpaceX for a while. Then I'd go somewhere else with that on my CV to make enough money to be able to buy a ticket.

[IRobot]

Motivation is a key to a company's successs and comes mainly from 4 factors:
- enjoying the task
- friendly work atmosphere
- recognition
- money

SpaceX might not pay very well, but I am sure it makes up on the other 3.

[cppetrie]

Motivation is a key to a company's successs and comes mainly from 4 factors:
- enjoying the task
- friendly work atmosphere
- recognition
- money

SpaceX might not pay very well, but I am sure it makes up on the other 3.

Spot on. It is a combination of these factors. Also, many studies of workplace satisfaction find these four are ordered more or less in the order you've put them in.

[gospacex]

To know better what we actually are talking about, how much "ordinary" SpaceXer get paid?
Someone who has no subordinates, but who is doing some work actually related a spaceflight, not the guy who vacuums the office.
Welding some parts of Merlins, perhaps.

[Pipcard]

I only asked this in particular because there seems to be a rising anti-SpaceX sentiment going on now and I'm worried that the company could lose its support for its long-term goals.

Aerospace engineer here.

SpaceX and Elon Musk get endless amounts of adulation on Reddit because they do cool things, but it's well known in my field (aerospace engineering) that SpaceX is basically the sweatshop of the aerospace industry.

I've posted on this topic a few times in the past and always get downvoted into oblivion by armchair rocket scientists who counter with some line like "the sacrifice of the employees is the cost necessary to make us a multiplanetary civilization!" I always think "easy for you to say, bud, our industry isn't the Kerbal Space Program game you downloaded off Steam." It's hard to speak out against the massive cult of personality Elon Musk enjoys on Reddit.

I have known over a dozen of my peers who took jobs at SpaceX, none of them stayed with the company for more than 2 years, and most of them were gone after 1, feeling as if they've nearly been worked to death. They went on to companies that pay better, treat their employees better, and still let them work on cool stuff. Others have countered "well... they get such great experience there that they can get better jobs when they leave SpaceX!" This is also a load of shit because way more of my peers found great jobs with great benefits and great career growth prospects without serving time in the sweatshop.

I would never recommend working there to any engineer coming up, there are plenty of great opportunities out there that will let you feel happy in your life, happy in your work, and proud to build a career with the company. You work damn hard in school to become an engineer so that you can be happy by being the nerd you love to be, not by having your love of engineering exploited so that you can be worked to death to enrich a corporation.

Edit: I hope you read this post in Morgan Freeman's voice.

[philw1776]

It's not just SpaceX.  There are different work cultures.  Thankfully.
Lawyers in the top firms work insane hours for many years in a quest to make Partner.  Those who don't have little to show for their sacrifice.
Training to become MDs, young doctors work insanely long shifts and long hours qualifying to become doctors.  Thankfully, most make it.
Then there's the Silicon Valley startup culture that most nearly approximates SpaceX.  Though SpaceX is no longer a startup, it exudes that culture.  As a young engineer I worked SpaceX type hours on my first jobs.  Developed a reputation that got me jobs later as those initial companies crashed & burned.  Most engineers do not choose to do this. People are different.  Even after I stopped working SpaceX hours I still in many jobs worked long weeks.  I was motivated by the excitement of working on stuff that nobody else had yet built.  That was my personal motivator, never the paycheck.
Bottom line there are people in this free country who choose to work brutal weeks because they choose the goal and are motivated to do it.  Most have enough of this after a few years or after they have a family.  I see nothing wrong with this and do not understand the hostility towards these choices people make.

[mme]

https://www.inverse.com/article/31478-spacex-settles-underpaid-workers-lawsuit-for-4-million

I already knew about how SpaceX wasn't a perfect company, but this time something is actually being done here.

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

No.

Then how do you explain this?

Aerospace engineer here.

SpaceX and Elon Musk get endless amounts of adulation on Reddit because they do cool things, but it's well known in my field (aerospace engineering) that SpaceX is basically the sweatshop of the aerospace industry.

I've posted on this topic a few times in the past and always get downvoted into oblivion by armchair rocket scientists who counter with some line like "the sacrifice of the employees is the cost necessary to make us a multiplanetary civilization!" I always think "easy for you to say, bud, our industry isn't the Kerbal Space Program game you downloaded off Steam." It's hard to speak out against the massive cult of personality Elon Musk enjoys on Reddit.

I have known over a dozen of my peers who took jobs at SpaceX, none of them stayed with the company for more than 2 years, and most of them were gone after 1, feeling as if they've nearly been worked to death. They went on to companies that pay better, treat their employees better, and still let them work on cool stuff. Others have countered "well... they get such great experience there that they can get better jobs when they leave SpaceX!" This is also a load of shit because way more of my peers found great jobs with great benefits and great career growth prospects without serving time in the sweatshop.

I would never recommend working there to any engineer coming up, there are plenty of great opportunities out there that will let you feel happy in your life, happy in your work, and proud to build a career with the company. You work damn hard in school to become an engineer so that you can be happy by being the nerd you love to be, not by having your love of engineering exploited so that you can be worked to death to enrich a corporation.

Edit: I hope you read this post in Morgan Freeman's voice.

How do I explain the statement of someone that never worked at SpaceX bad mouthing SpaceX supposedly based on "dozens" anecdotal stories? I don't bother. I scanned that reddit thread and for all the agreement that SpaceX was a horrible place to work, I didn't see anyone who had actually ever worked there. I did see a lot of "people are saying," "I knew a guy," "I'm tired of all the SpaceX/Elon Musk hype" comments though.

I'm not saying there aren't people that hated working there. It's a big company and we know it's aggressive so we know people do work long hours. Some people will hate that. Some people will have bad managers. Some people will not fit in and will blame the company for what is a bad fit. Some people will suck at their jobs and blame the environment.

For every person that hates working at SpaceX and tells a story to a guy that tells a story to a guy, how many think it's a fine job? How many think it's a pretty good job? How many think it's an amazing job? You won't hear from most of them. They're too busy doing what they want to do.

I've worked in plenty of high pressure jobs and some people hate that and some people love it. The haters tend to be the vocal ones.

[alang]

I only asked this in particular because there seems to be a rising anti-SpaceX sentiment going on now and I'm worried that the company could lose its support for its long-term goals.

Aerospace engineer here.

SpaceX and Elon Musk get endless amounts of adulation on Reddit because they do cool things, but it's well known in my field (aerospace engineering) that SpaceX is basically the sweatshop of the aerospace industry.

I've posted on this topic a few times in the past and always get downvoted into oblivion by armchair rocket scientists who counter with some line like "the sacrifice of the employees is the cost necessary to make us a multiplanetary civilization!" I always think "easy for you to say, bud, our industry isn't the Kerbal Space Program game you downloaded off Steam." It's hard to speak out against the massive cult of personality Elon Musk enjoys on Reddit.

I have known over a dozen of my peers who took jobs at SpaceX, none of them stayed with the company for more than 2 years, and most of them were gone after 1, feeling as if they've nearly been worked to death. They went on to companies that pay better, treat their employees better, and still let them work on cool stuff. Others have countered "well... they get such great experience there that they can get better jobs when they leave SpaceX!" This is also a load of shit because way more of my peers found great jobs with great benefits and great career growth prospects without serving time in the sweatshop.

I would never recommend working there to any engineer coming up, there are plenty of great opportunities out there that will let you feel happy in your life, happy in your work, and proud to build a career with the company. You work damn hard in school to become an engineer so that you can be happy by being the nerd you love to be, not by having your love of engineering exploited so that you can be worked to death to enrich a corporation.

Edit: I hope you read this post in Morgan Freeman's voice.

In some ways the criticism of the working culture is encouraging. People are stopping saying what is being attempted is impossible and just criticising the method. In that sense Musk has already partly succeeded.

I don't know how old you are but if you were born in the early 1960's I suspect you would see this differently.

[RedLineTrain]

I only asked this in particular because there seems to be a rising anti-SpaceX sentiment going on now and I'm worried that the company could lose its support for its long-term goals.

SpaceX is ranked extremely highly by its employees at Glassdoor.  Equivalent to Google, superior to Apple, very superior to ULA and Arianespace.

[cppetrie]

https://www.inverse.com/article/31478-spacex-settles-underpaid-workers-lawsuit-for-4-million

I already knew about how SpaceX wasn't a perfect company, but this time something is actually being done here.

Let me ask this question again - is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

No.

Then how do you explain this?

Aerospace engineer here.

SpaceX and Elon Musk get endless amounts of adulation on Reddit because they do cool things, but it's well known in my field (aerospace engineering) that SpaceX is basically the sweatshop of the aerospace industry.

I've posted on this topic a few times in the past and always get downvoted into oblivion by armchair rocket scientists who counter with some line like "the sacrifice of the employees is the cost necessary to make us a multiplanetary civilization!" I always think "easy for you to say, bud, our industry isn't the Kerbal Space Program game you downloaded off Steam." It's hard to speak out against the massive cult of personality Elon Musk enjoys on Reddit.

I have known over a dozen of my peers who took jobs at SpaceX, none of them stayed with the company for more than 2 years, and most of them were gone after 1, feeling as if they've nearly been worked to death. They went on to companies that pay better, treat their employees better, and still let them work on cool stuff. Others have countered "well... they get such great experience there that they can get better jobs when they leave SpaceX!" This is also a load of shit because way more of my peers found great jobs with great benefits and great career growth prospects without serving time in the sweatshop.

I would never recommend working there to any engineer coming up, there are plenty of great opportunities out there that will let you feel happy in your life, happy in your work, and proud to build a career with the company. You work damn hard in school to become an engineer so that you can be happy by being the nerd you love to be, not by having your love of engineering exploited so that you can be worked to death to enrich a corporation.

Edit: I hope you read this post in Morgan Freeman's voice.

How do I explain the statement of someone that never worked at SpaceX bad mouthing SpaceX supposedly based on "dozens" anecdotal stories? I don't bother. I scanned that reddit thread and for all the agreement that SpaceX was a horrible place to work, I didn't see anyone who had actually ever worked there. I did see a lot of "people are saying," "I knew a guy," "I'm tired of all the SpaceX/Elon Musk hype" comments though.

I'm not saying there aren't people that hated working there. It's a big company and we know it's aggressive so we know people do work long hours. Some people will hate that. Some people will have bad managers. Some people will not fit in and will blame the company for what is a bad fit. Some people will suck at their jobs and blame the environment.

For every person that hates working at SpaceX and tells a story to a guy that tells a story to a guy, how many think it's a fine job? How many think it's a pretty good job? How many think it's an amazing job? You won't hear from most of them. They're too busy doing what they want to do.

I've worked in plenty of high pressure jobs and some people hate that and some people love it. The haters tend to be the vocal ones.

Exactly. Their workplace practices of long hours and less pay will only be an issue if their is a shortage of people to fill the jobs they have (no evidence of that ATM) or public opinion sways so hard against them for it that they have a public relations issue (no evidence of that either ATM). We really don't know what their compensation practices are. Stock options that are potentially worth millions in a few years could be part of their packages. And as stated, it isn't just about $. Many of us work countless hours on projects because they matter to us individually. Most of us actually spend money to be able to spend countless hours working on stuff that matters to us. They're called hobbies. Some people are lucky enough to get paid for their hobbies by making a job/career out of them. Lucky are those few.

[Ekramer]

is burning out young, underpaid workers the real reason why SpaceX is able to be so competitive and innovative?

Sorry, the article doesn't doesn't support your assertion.  Getting underpaid by $500 over the course of a few years is not much more than a rounding error in time sheet calculations.  A worker could claw that time back by taking a couple extra bathroom breaks a week.  The lede of the article is "after an extremely detailed investigation, SpaceX gets a 9.9 out of 10 for compliance with the strictest employment laws in the country."

[MATTBLAK]

I know two people who work there and the anecdotes about blisteringly hard work, long hours and burnout are true   I want this great company to succeed in every way, for a long time to come. And because they have built an amazing team - Elon and his management team need to work just as hard to reward and retain them.

[Elvis in Space]

I don't know how old you are but if you were born in the early 1960's I suspect you would see this differently.

Born in 1963 and I was thinking about what you said exactly. When I got my first "real" job after my second time through college I went to work for an enormous blue computing entity known around the world. It was a dream come true and I can't say enough good things about working for them. I knew one way to get ahead there was to work harder than everyone else and that's what I did. The year before I left I was away from home three weeks out of every four. That work ethic was taught to me by people who had worked hard not just to get ahead but to survive depression and war.

Somewhere deep in the culture at Spacex I suspect there are those who see their goals in similar fashion. It's not about success in a material sense but about overcoming the forces that have kept us glued to this rock. Money isn't the only motivator. Not everyone will get that.

As others have said this is no great amount of money for the numbers involved.

[IainMcClatchie]

I suspect long hours have been common for young people in hot projects forever.

I worked at Silicon Graphics in the 1990s, for the first two years, I worked on the R8000 project, which was the CPU that finally sunk Cray Research.  CPUs take five years to design and sometime during the final year you have the deathmarch to tapeout.  Ours was nine months long.  Nine months of 6 days/week, 100 hours/week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work, lots of Sunday work.  Many of the single guys were working closer to 120 hours/week.

My girlfriend at the time worked at Bain Consulting.  6 days/week minimum.  If you count the travel time (she commuted weekly from Boston to Texas), she was around 100 hours/week too.  We used to compare notes to see who was making less per hour.

Google is more like 50 or 60 hours/week, but no breaks.  At SGI, once we taped out, my boss told me he didn't want to see me at work for about a month.  From a time POV, that doesn't even out, but it was pretty great anyway.

It's a very team-specific thing.  I have a hard time believing all 10,000 employees at SpaceX are doing this.

[MATTBLAK]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

[IanThePineapple]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

SpaceX has that goal too

[okan170]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

[Space Ghost 1962]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

I've yet to encounter any launch vendor/provider that doesn't work hard. Please enlighten me otherwise, I'd love to hear how they accomplish it.

[cppetrie]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

This isn't just some billionaire's dream. It's their dream, too. It is shared by many. He just happens to be one of the few on earth with that dream and the means to fuel chasing it. The employees share that vision, or they wouldn't be there working that hard. That's true for all companies. Either you share the vision and work to support it or you don't and you leave (or preferably from the company's point of view, you never start working there).

[Lar]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

(fan)
It's the dream of a LOT of people, and the deadline isn't arbitrary, it's before the window closes. We don't know how long we have before we descend into resource scarcity driven savagery, or whatever. But it's a possibility that it's not too long.

Like Elvis, I worked for that blue company (and I'm back, it's my second stint)... Passion is a thing. How much passion you want to devote is a personal decision but "dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline" is kinda snarky and misses the point.

[Nomadd]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

I think you miss the point. They aren't working to make his dreams come true. They're working to make their dreams come true. Most of these people have probably been dreaming of space and other worlds since they came across their first science fiction book at 8 years old.
 A lot of people seem to think of work as an unavoidable necessity, and that the key to a good life is to get things with as little effort as humanly possible. That's a luxury you have when times are easy. It doesn't matter. They don't matter. The dumb suckers who put in 12 hours a day to make their dreams something besides wishful thinking and the ones who put more into the world than they take matter.

[AncientU]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

(fan)
It's the dream of a LOT of people, and the deadline isn't arbitrary, it's before the window closes. We don't know how long we have before we descend into resource scarcity driven savagery, or whatever. But it's a possibility that it's not too long.

Like Elvis, I worked for that blue company (and I'm back, it's my second stint)... Passion is a thing. How much passion you want to devote is a personal decision but "dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline" is kinda snarky and misses the point.

Tom Mueller, possible the best rocket engine designer in the US, interviewed last week:

“Who do I find inspirational?” Hmm. Elon, of course. <laughter from crowd> He’s a huge influence on me. When I left TRW, I thought, “If we fail”--- which at the time I thought was a high probability because nobody had done this— “I’ll just go back to TRW.” So I didn’t burn any bridges. But once I saw how he thought and how he operated and— I became an entrepreneur. He influenced me so much, you know, there was no way I could go back to working for a big, bureaucratic company like Northrop Grumman. So it was quite profound. And the way that I deal with life, I think much differently now, just because of the Elon influence. And I, uh, you know, I live a lot bigger. I make bolder decisions, I take higher risks, and, you know, I’m not this conservative TRW engineer that I was that I was when I first met Elon. I’m an entrepreneur. So Elon’s probably my biggest influence, for sure.

Some are content with being that TRW engineer working in a big bureaucratic company...
Some are not.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42923.0

[ArbitraryConstant]

I've yet to encounter any launch vendor/provider that doesn't work hard. Please enlighten me otherwise, I'd love to hear how they accomplish it.

I was just reading a thread over on the ULA forum with well attested references to mandatory unpaid overtime and burnout. Probably less regulation in the states where ULA has most of the workforce, so it's not even necessarily better, just not a winnable lawsuit.

Seems to be where the industry is at right now. Not a lot of money to go around and even bigger demands. SpaceX doesn't need anyone not on the payroll to defend their labor practices and if the employees think they can improve their working conditions and recover some lost wages, that's their call.

The one observation I have is that people have been commenting on people burning out and leaving SpaceX after 1-2 years for a lot longer than 1-2 years. Whatever their employee churn is they've been sustaining it for quite a while through worse times than this. Whatever combination they have of hiring fast enough to replace and knowledge retention in spite of the churn does seem to be working, or at least, not failing often enough to derail the company.

[MATTBLAK]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

Ian Pineapple is right, but yours is the context I meant.

[IRobot]

Motivation is a key to a company's successs and comes mainly from 4 factors:
- enjoying the task
- friendly work atmosphere
- recognition
- money

SpaceX might not pay very well, but I am sure it makes up on the other 3.

Spot on. It is a combination of these factors. Also, many studies of workplace satisfaction find these four are ordered more or less in the order you've put them in.

Glad to know that! I just spent the weekend coming up with this list to argue my boss on Monday for a better salary raise!

[AncientU]

I've yet to encounter any launch vendor/provider that doesn't work hard. Please enlighten me otherwise, I'd love to hear how they accomplish it.

I was just reading a thread over on the ULA forum with well attested references to mandatory unpaid overtime and burnout. Probably less regulation in the states where ULA has most of the workforce, so it's not even necessarily better, just not a winnable lawsuit.

Seems to be where the industry is at right now. Not a lot of money to go around and even bigger demands. SpaceX doesn't need anyone not on the payroll to defend their labor practices and if the employees think they can improve their working conditions and recover some lost wages, that's their call.

The one observation I have is that people have been commenting on people burning out and leaving SpaceX after 1-2 years for a lot longer than 1-2 years. Whatever their employee churn is they've been sustaining it for quite a while through worse times than this. Whatever combination they have of hiring fast enough to replace and knowledge retention in spite of the churn does seem to be working, or at least, not failing often enough to derail the company.

Sustain?
They are growing by leaps and bounds.

[Oli]

It's not just SpaceX.  There are different work cultures.  Thankfully.
Lawyers in the top firms work insane hours for many years in a quest to make Partner.  Those who don't have little to show for their sacrifice.
Training to become MDs, young doctors work insanely long shifts and long hours qualifying to become doctors.  Thankfully, most make it.
Then there's the Silicon Valley startup culture that most nearly approximates SpaceX.  Though SpaceX is no longer a startup, it exudes that culture.  As a young engineer I worked SpaceX type hours on my first jobs.  Developed a reputation that got me jobs later as those initial companies crashed & burned.  Most engineers do not choose to do this. People are different.  Even after I stopped working SpaceX hours I still in many jobs worked long weeks.  I was motivated by the excitement of working on stuff that nobody else had yet built.  That was my personal motivator, never the paycheck.
Bottom line there are people in this free country who choose to work brutal weeks because they choose the goal and are motivated to do it.  Most have enough of this after a few years or after they have a family.  I see nothing wrong with this and do not understand the hostility towards these choices people make.

Isn't it a shame that people have to stop working at such exciting places because they are burned out or have a family? Why must they sacrifice life for work? I'm not opposed to the choices these people make at all, I just think everybody would be better off with reasonable working hours. 20% lower labor costs won't make or break a good idea and I'm sure SpaceX' success is not based (exclusively) on low wages, in fact to the extent it is it is undeserved, IMO.

[gospacex]

I only asked this in particular because there seems to be a rising anti-SpaceX sentiment going on now and I'm worried that the company could lose its support for its long-term goals.

Aerospace engineer here.

SpaceX and Elon Musk get endless amounts of adulation on Reddit because they do cool things, but it's well known in my field (aerospace engineering) that SpaceX is basically the sweatshop of the aerospace industry.

I would say that I need actual substance to this claim before I can judge this statement. What is "sweatshop"? You think that if you work for more than 4 hours without a break, it qualifies as "sweatshop"? If you need to be at work on Sunday because launch day happened to fall on Sunday, it's now a personal sacrifice?

I have known over a dozen of my peers who took jobs at SpaceX, none of them stayed with the company for more than 2 years, and most of them were gone after 1, feeling as if they've nearly been worked to death.

I have an IBM support center nearby which has a ~14% annual turnower rate for employees, since working atmosphere there is ridiculous (boring, over-formalized, "procedure is everything", not to mention having to deal with irate customer calls). I take it IBM is now a "sweatshop"?

I would never recommend working there to any engineer coming up, there are plenty of great opportunities out there that will let you feel happy in your life, happy in your work, and proud to build a career with the company.

Exactly. If your goal is to "make a career", don't go to SpaceX. Go there if you are crazy mechanic or crazy software guy who wants to do amazing and historic stuff, but does not particularly like becoming a manager (the "career").

You work damn hard in school to become an engineer so that you can be happy by being the nerd you love to be, not by having your love of engineering exploited so that you can be worked to death to enrich a corporation.

Again the "working to death" bs. I already joked about "secret factory where people work for food" to ridicule this phrase.
Does anyone REALLY claim that working at SpaceX even in a slightest way comparable to "working to death"?
SpaceX _does pay the salary_, right?
And this salary is _much larger than minimum wage_, I suspect? (even though I still would be happy to see actual numbers)

[alang]

I only asked this in particular because there seems to be a rising anti-SpaceX sentiment going on now and I'm worried that the company could lose its support for its long-term goals.

Aerospace engineer here.

SpaceX and Elon Musk get endless amounts of adulation on Reddit because they do cool things, but it's well known in my field (aerospace engineering) that SpaceX is basically the sweatshop of the aerospace industry.

I would say that I need actual substance to this claim before I can judge this statement. What is "sweatshop"? You think that if you work for more than 4 hours without a break, it qualifies as "sweatshop"? If you need to be at work on Sunday because launch day happened to fall on Sunday, it's now a personal sacrifice?

I have known over a dozen of my peers who took jobs at SpaceX, none of them stayed with the company for more than 2 years, and most of them were gone after 1, feeling as if they've nearly been worked to death.

I have an IBM support center nearby which has a ~14% annual turnower rate for employees, since working atmosphere there is ridiculous (boring, over-formalized, "procedure is everything", not to mention having to deal with irate customer calls). I take it IBM is now a "sweatshop"?

I would never recommend working there to any engineer coming up, there are plenty of great opportunities out there that will let you feel happy in your life, happy in your work, and proud to build a career with the company.

Exactly. If your goal is to "make a career", don't go to SpaceX. Go there if you are crazy mechanic or crazy software guy who wants to do amazing and historic stuff, but does not particularly like becoming a manager (the "career").

You work damn hard in school to become an engineer so that you can be happy by being the nerd you love to be, not by having your love of engineering exploited so that you can be worked to death to enrich a corporation.

Again the "working to death" bs. I already joked about "secret factory where people work for food" to ridicule this phrase.
Does anyone REALLY claim that working at SpaceX even in a slightest way comparable to "working to death"?
SpaceX _does pay the salary_, right?
And this salary is _much larger than minimum wage_, I suspect? (even though I still would be happy to see actual numbers)

I've dealt with an IBM support centre. One chap probably thought he was being helpful by saying something like "I'll close this ticket now but you can always call again and ask questions about this issue" . I foolishly tried that and got a surprised voice condescending to me that it was a closed item.
The point of this is that the advantage of procedure for the customer supplier relationship is consistency. Even if it's consistently not very good you know what you are getting, and that's good for some aspects of life. I only use their online form every couple of years to raise a ticket when desperate, when I can remember how to do it, so it works for them as well.
IBM provide a relatively stable product compared to others and that is what is being paid for. I suspect that the workers and customers of spaced out up with the instability because they think the overall future potential benefits outweigh the present wild ride.

[mulp]

I know two people who work there and the anecdotes about blisteringly hard work, long hours and burnout are true   I want this great company to succeed in every way, for a long time to come. And because they have built an amazing team - Elon and his management team need to work just as hard to reward and retain them.

Is it worse than farm labor, food processing like slaughterhouse and fresh produce processing and packaging, and food service like busboy and kitchen staff?

[RotoSequence]

I know two people who work there and the anecdotes about blisteringly hard work, long hours and burnout are true   I want this great company to succeed in every way, for a long time to come. And because they have built an amazing team - Elon and his management team need to work just as hard to reward and retain them.

Is it worse than farm labor, food processing like slaughterhouse and fresh produce processing and packaging, and food service like busboy and kitchen staff?

If putting in the time and effort to get a degree in engineering only bumps up your paycheck without reducing your expected labor input or improving your work-life balance, something has gone terribly wrong.

[cppetrie]

I know two people who work there and the anecdotes about blisteringly hard work, long hours and burnout are true   I want this great company to succeed in every way, for a long time to come. And because they have built an amazing team - Elon and his management team need to work just as hard to reward and retain them.

Is it worse than farm labor, food processing like slaughterhouse and fresh produce processing and packaging, and food service like busboy and kitchen staff?

If putting in the time and effort to get a degree in engineering only bumps up your paycheck without reducing your expected labor input or improving your work-life balance, something has gone terribly wrong.

Some people becomes engineers for more than a larger paycheck. Some people just like spending their careers building cool s**t and an engineering degree is an enabler to do that. As an engineering degree holder myself I knew plenty of friends who were just like that, myself included.

[IRobot]

Google is more like 50 or 60 hours/week, but no breaks. 

And in Europe you are praised if you do 30min per day of overtime, i.e. 42.5 h/w...

[MATTBLAK]

I know two people who work there and the anecdotes about blisteringly hard work, long hours and burnout are true   I want this great company to succeed in every way, for a long time to come. And because they have built an amazing team - Elon and his management team need to work just as hard to reward and retain them.

Is it worse than farm labor, food processing like slaughterhouse and fresh produce processing and packaging, and food service like busboy and kitchen staff?

I hear what you're saying, but that is a slightly specious analogy. SpaceX is neither a literal sweat house, food prep place nor a slaughter house. And I've worked in a produce packing and distribution warehouse when I was a young man in the early and mid-80's. Working conditions in places like that have improved somewhat, at least in my country.

[philw1776]

I know two people who work there and the anecdotes about blisteringly hard work, long hours and burnout are true   I want this great company to succeed in every way, for a long time to come. And because they have built an amazing team - Elon and his management team need to work just as hard to reward and retain them.

Is it worse than farm labor, food processing like slaughterhouse and fresh produce processing and packaging, and food service like busboy and kitchen staff?

If putting in the time and effort to get a degree in engineering only bumps up your paycheck without reducing your expected labor input or improving your work-life balance, something has gone terribly wrong.

Some people becomes engineers for more than a larger paycheck. Some people just like spending their careers building cool s**t and an engineering degree is an enabler to do that. As an engineering degree holder myself I knew plenty of friends who were just like that, myself included.

Exactly.  Took most new jobs because it was an opportunity to do something new and what I perceived as cool.
Folks grousing here do not understand the Silicon Valley type engineering culture.   It has produced world class innovative products unequaled elsewhere, well at least before they get copied.  The personal cost can be high.  Thankfully there is a somewhat free market in employment so when you've had enough, if that happens, you can go elsewhere.

Read Tom M's transcript and you'll get a sense of the demanding culture.  I'd put Musk in the top echelon of demanding bosses, but his demands most often lead to paradigm shattering results.  That motivates really creative engineers especially if they share the Get Off This Rock vision.

[mlindner]

The Apollo contractor teams used to work bloody hard. But then again; they had landing on another World as their goal...

The process of working to help your country achieve a goal as a part of an overarching cold war against the Soviet Union is also perhaps a somewhat stronger motivation for this than working to help the dreams of a specific billionaire come true on an arbitrary deadline.

I sometimes wish this forum had a dislike button. You don't go to work at SpaceX because of the dreams of your CEO. People with high job mobility (experienced good engineers) work at companies because they care about making the company vision come true themselves. I would love to work at SpaceX but I am 1. neither good enough at what I do and 2. not driven enough to work that many hours. The true SpaceX-vision fans are the ones who work at SpaceX.

[AC in NC]

I sometimes wish this forum had a dislike button. You don't go to work at SpaceX because of the dreams of your CEO. People with high job mobility (experienced good engineers) work at companies because they care about making the company vision come true themselves. I would love to work at SpaceX but I am 1. neither good enough at what I do and 2. not driven enough to work that many hours. The true SpaceX-vision fans are the ones who work at SpaceX.

Well said. 

Everyone should have something they are passionate enough about that they would be willing to submit to a SpaceX-like regime during the window in their life where such commitments are possible.

[jpo234]

Not directly related, but here you go:
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/6erjqi/elons_letter_about_factory_working_conditions_he/dicrg70/