Pros
- There are many incredibly smart, talented, and passionate people here. I've been told by many that these are the best, brightest, and most passionate people in the industry and I do not doubt it at all. - If you are the self-motivated type, you will have an environment where you can learn nearly endlessly - You will have access to experts in a huge variety of fields who can help you develop your skills and are generally willing to do so - There are countless opportunities to make an impact on a large project, and a wide variety of challenges for an aero company - The mission is very exciting and Bezos is a very inspiring leader - The company brings in interesting speakers periodically which can be great for morale - You probably won't have problems getting the engineering resources you need to do your job - If you want to push yourself, it's not unusual to work long hours - but there is not a culture where you are expected or forced to do so. In general, people trust you to get your work done in your own way, and it's ok to flex time to some extent. - Employment here seems to be fairly stable, you shouldn't have to worry about layoffs if you're decent at your job - Nice little perks like a gym, snacks and a bike share program - The main building is a beautiful and inspiring space - The investment in and aspirations for both New Glenn and New Shepard, as well as Engines and many tangential projects, are incredibly exciting
Cons
- The area of Kent is not particularly nice, but you shouldn't expect that from any aerospace company, I suppose. - The company is shifting towards trying to be a big aerospace company. There are a lot of companies that try very hard to avoid that sort of association - for some reason Blue is choosing to move toward it faster. It's not all bad. In some ways, it has made the company seem more legitimate and structured, but it seems to be less the agile, research-oriented hip place that Blue used to sell itself as, and it has upset many of the people who came to avoid that culture (many from actual big aerospace companies). - The culture is missing the spark that it should have for being such an exciting mission. I wouldn't call this a good place to work for young people who are looking to commit themselves to a mission, but it may be a comfortable environment if you're just looking for a place to do your work and develop your skills. To be direct, it won't be as exciting as SpaceX but you'll have time to go hiking after work on a Tuesday. - If you like fast-paced, exciting environments, this may not be for you. The work/life balance and job stability means sometimes things can move very slowly, and people are okay with it. If you want a faster pace, make sure you get into a program that is hardware rich (New Shepard, Engines). - The rapid growth has been the main difficulty of the company recently. Whether this trend will continue is unclear, but the rest of the points are because of this. - Blue can be a difficult place for young engineers to seek guidance or find direction in their careers. The culture before the new CEO was "keep management super lean, and let's all be engineers". Of course, that didn't scale, so a bunch of management layers were added that promoted a bunch of senior engineers who don't believe management is necessary to be the managers of all these new employees. If you want to explore options in your career, you may have to do the exploring yourself, but it is possible. - Currently, nearly half of the company is located in leased office space in a corporate office park. Think "Monthly Dilbert comics in the elevator", "irish flute music in the bathrooms", "I think I saw this carpet in a hospital", "why are the walls at blue origin green?", and "could these fluorescent lights be any brighter?". It's completely comfortable and many people don't mind but it is completely antithetical to the environment you maybe came here to be in. To be fair, the main building is incredible - very nicely designed and covered in interesting artwork and space memorabilia - most of which is incredibly impressive and rare. And, the company is planning a new building, but the pre-fab construction technique has raised some eyebrows. There has been very little effort made to make an exciting environment in the "temporary" office park, and I spent nearly two years in it with no indication of plans to move my group elsewhere. It would not seem that the company has high standards for having an exciting work space, if that's important to you. Overall this is my main complaint, but it's mostly because this is very important to me and I was hired with the assumption that I would be working in the main building, but showed up on my first day to find my desk was a shuttle ride away.