Inside SpaceX’s Culture of Accountability
Over the summer I was lucky enough to work for SpaceX on their Mars launch site, located in South Texas. I really liked SpaceX’s culture for a few reasons.
The first is that ownership is central to everything. It helped that going in I had knowledge of Extreme Ownership but the concept is pretty simple: if you own something (like a project or a piece of hardware), you are responsible for every aspect of it, regardless of the circumstances. For example, if you order something and the vendor was late in delivering it, that’s on you and you should be looking at a different vendor. In reality, people are a little more understanding than that, but the theme is constantly present- you don’t blame other people for the stuff that you own.
The main benefit of this idea is that the important stuff gets assigned an owner, so there’s not much of the bureaucracy navigation BS that often comes with trying to hunt down the person who did a previous project or something. People put their names on stuff. It’s common knowledge that the engineers at SpaceX work very hard, and we did, but it was mostly just on stuff that actually moved the mission forward.
Another big consequence of ownership is that engineers aren’t just holed away in the main office building, cranking out designs that they have no connection to afterwards. Elon calls this “ivory tower engineering.” Instead, you’re expected to design, build, and test whatever you own. This is a real incentive to get stuff right- you can’t just crank out a bad design, shrug, and say “that’s someone else’s problem.” Due to the way it’s structured, it’s your problem.
I think this also encourages people to avoid the dumb inter-departmental conflict that happens in large organizations. I’m sure that’s present in SpaceX to some extent but I didn’t see much of it. I think a large driver of that conflict is that sometimes people don’t feel that they get adequate credit and thus they try to make sure that their department gets a spotlight. But when ownership is such a priority it’s obvious what you’re responsible for and how you’re doing at making it happen.
That brings me to another aspect of the company culture that I liked- focus. SpaceX doesn’t have that many revenue streams. It basically just sells real estate on rockets and will soon be providing internet to people. Because of that, it can focus on dominating those sectors rather than spreading itself too thin. And when you get down to the individual sites, the focus is even sharper. South Texas has one goal: get to Mars. That’s it. If you’re doing stuff that doesn’t get us to Mars, you’re wasting your time. I remember one time in my first few weeks I overheard a meeting where someone said, “Does this get us to Mars faster? No? Then let’s skip it for now.” That kind of talk makes it very clear what the priority is.
Kind of related to these two was the candor with which people spoke. People aren’t too afraid of hurting feelings or saying what they really thought. It is expected that if you have something that is keeping you from working (we called them “blockers”) you tell the relevant people about it and if you need help you ask for it. I was never shamed for asking for help because ultimately it moved the needle forward on several projects.
What’s kind of neat is, because SpaceX focuses on these important areas, it can afford to spend time and energy on other things that some companies struggle to. For example, there is a real focus on making things beautiful and making sure the office space is tidy. We had a fun work environment where people were often making immature jokes or discussing hypothetical engineering challenges. Care is taken to make sure that the engineers feel at home with free food and snacks. When I left, they were even putting in palm trees to give the place a more resort type feeling. All this felt earned- because SpaceX put in the effort to get the basics right.
If you have read this far and like what you hear, you might be wondering if you’re the right fit to work at SpaceX. From what I can tell, you should be an extremely hard worker who can describe technical things that you’ve done in detail. If they ask about your experience, they won’t be satisfied if you say “I worked on a water project in Ecuador.” They want to hear “I designed a concrete pad to hold a 3000-gal water tank by figuring out an appropriate mixture of cement to aggregate, applying tank dimensions, and getting my material costs from that. I then led the installation and the tank is currently sitting on the pad.”
Aside from this, you need to be personable. I met few people at SpaceX who fit the “nerdy STEM dude” stereotype. And I didn’t meet that many obnoxious people either (SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell enforces a “no A-holes policy”). Most people are intense about getting their work done and if you don’t deliver on something you’ve promised you will be held accountable. But true A-holes are typically universally hated and from what I can tell, management is serious about getting those people out.
It also helps to have a strong skill or interest that is totally unrelated to engineering or whatever job you do there. I don’t know why (something to do with a Scott Adams-style skill stack?) but most people on my team had something outside of school and work which they were really passionate about. Examples include cooking, water polo, theater, and, for me, the outdoors. I think maybe these interests indicate that you can be competent in multiple domains, which helps a lot at a job where you’re constantly going outside your comfort zone.
Working at SpaceX was a big dream of mine and it’s still surreal to me that it happened. If you have any questions about the process to make it happen for yourself, feel free to DM me on LinkedIn and I’ll give you advice that’s more specific to you.
