Pros
- There is no risk of losing your job, especially during COVID. - There are some really incredible people at this company. I've made a lot of friends at my time at this company. Most people are always willing to take time for you to answer questions or help you out.
Kontras
- Beware to those applying straight out of college, you start off at a low salary and are given no opportunities to get any major salary increase or promotion without getting an external offer or threatening to quit. I'd recommend going somewhere that would provide better early career development opportunities. My friends who work for big aerospace companies have better compensation, promotions, development opportunities, mentorship, and work/life balance. Management and HR don't seem to have any desire to help develop early career employees and instead hires more experienced engineers at higher salaries to develop. - For mid level engineers applying, beware when managers promise to promote you early on when you come on board when they are hiring you for a lower level position. I have coworkers who this happened to and have gone 2+ years without a promotion adjustment, with various excuses from managers. - On paper, the mission "Millions of People Living and Working in Space" sounds great and humanitarian. Unfortunately, none of the company actions or goals really reflect this. The company has transitioned to another big aerospace company who desperately seeks government contracts, despite claiming to be "agile" and having essentially limitless funding from the richest man in the world. - Company morale is soul-sucking. It's toxic, and leadership's solution is to point to a list of "Leadership Principles" and tell us to be better. From my peers and my perspective, Senior Leadership doesn't understand why the company is failing and don't want to take any steps to fix it. People try to make change from the ground up. People try to form focus groups to push for major change in the company. But nothing comes of it, we continually don't meet the overly aggressive schedules that upper management mandates, and the company morale continues to plummet. - Every process at this company is hostile. Nothing is easy to accomplish. There is nothing fast or agile about this company. And schedules are so aggressive that senior leadership blocks more wide scale changes that are needed, but would take "too long" to implement. People try to push for change, but just end up frustrated. - There is a ton of bureaucracy and the organization is matrixed, so there are a lot of communication misses and as an engineer you can end up reporting to over 4 people. Even critical program updates don't get communicated properly to the people on the ground floor. - The total compensation is very minimal if you take into consideration the cost of living in Seattle. Benefits are bad, no tuition reimbursement or incentives beyond "Passion for Mission." Even the company merchandise is expensive and is cheap quality. - At this point, I'm embarrassed to say I work for Blue Origin: A company that has everything going for it, but still can't function. And a lot of others are as well. There is a disconnect in the company: people who relentlessly praise our minor victories and say that we are the greatest company, and people who are burnt out and are just biding their time before they quit.