A company culture that helps SpaceX launch rockets
Innovating since 2002, SpaceX is headquartered in Hawthorne, California with 9,500+ employees that helped the launch of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets, alongside the Dragon spacecraft. Their reusable rocket technology redefined how rockets get made.
Innovation that’s valued at an annual revenue of $2.0 billion needs to move fast and push the boundaries of the possibilities in space transportation. SpaceX’s commercial space competitors are not even close to the level of unfunded innovation the company has already contributed to. 1231 SpaceX employees vouch for the innovation-centric culture in MIT Sloan Management Review.
The secret to the success of an organization is largely in its company culture so here’s how SpaceX is changing spaceflight forever with an innovative company culture.
A decade of innovation
Musk has his vision with every endeavor he undertakes but Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX works out the steps for implementing these visions. She shares how the company keeps its startup culture in a 2014 article from Forbes.
Gwynne has the technical expertise from her engineering background. In an interview, she said, “I don’t think I was nerdy but I definitely was doing things other girls weren’t.”
SpaceX tells hiring managers to hire people better than themselves
That’s the smartest way to ensure that with every new hire, the organization gets better.
SpaceX doesn't heavily value experience as much as it values passion, drive, and raw talent. Instead, they focus on a more holistic approach to understanding who the candidate is beyond the paper. This involves practical examinations tailored to the job, such as engineering tests, along with team interviews and one-on-one interactions.
Moreover, SpaceX taps into its existing talent for recruitment through an employee referral program. This initiative trusts that top performers know what top talent looks like and can help identify promising individuals who they know, can vouch for, and would like to work alongside. The company also leverages its internship program, which welcomes around 700 interns each year, being a significant talent pipeline.
SpaceX also engages in engineering competitions like Formula SAE, Baja SAE, Design-Build-Fly, RoboSub, and RoboBoat. These contests are fertile ground for discovering candidates who are not only passionate but also thrive in solving real-world engineering challenges. The success of these initiatives led SpaceX to create and sponsor its own Hyperloop Contest, to keep finding and nurturing innovative talents.
The startup spirit
SpaceX’s early days have been about keeping things simple, fast, and focused. Elon has a design process for how SpaceX does everything.
- Efficiency Over Everything: It starts with “making requirements less dumb” to keep processes lean and mean. Musk tackled a production snag with the Model 3's battery pack, only to discover a miscommunication between two teams about a fiberglass panel's purpose—the actual tests showed, it was unnecessary. Musk says, "Everyone makes mistakes, no matter how smart they are", so questioning everything should be second nature.
- Delete the inefficiencies: Removing the fiberglass meant $2 Million in savings instantly. When your goal is to go to Mars on a tight margin, any excess can be the difference between a successful and failing mission.
- Simplify and make things go faster: When you have the most efficient process identified, simplify it further and you can always make it go faster. Everyone should be pushing boundaries unless they’re hitting a fundamental limitation in physics.
- Automate: Start a process from scratch, make it efficient, and delete all inefficiencies and excesses. Simplify yet again and automate the refined process. A culture of flat title structures At SpaceX, there’s less of a corporate hierarchy and anyone can talk to anyone. Here, the best idea wins—that’s it. Doesn’t matter where it comes from, if it’s innovative and works well it will be executed.
According to Jeff Burke, the title structure looks something like: Level #1: Engineers / Individual contributors
Level #2: Team leads / Managers
Level #3: VPs / Department heads
Level #4: Elon
In chatting with Shotwell, it's clear: SpaceX is more than just a company. It's a place where you can help make history. And yes, while the work is hard and the challenges are big, but the opportunity to be a part of something this monumental is once in a lifetime.
Inside SpaceX’s Culture of Accountability
Ownership and responsibility
SpaceX fosters a culture where ownership is integral to its operations, emphasizing the importance of taking complete responsibility for projects and outcomes. Employees, like Paul Cipparone, highlight the company's practice of "Extreme Ownership," a concept where individuals own their projects entirely.
This principle eliminates blame-shifting and encourages proactive problem-solving. For instance, if a delivery is delayed, the responsibility falls on the SpaceX team member to seek alternative solutions rather than blame external parties. This approach ensures that critical projects move forward without bureaucratic delays, as team members personally endorse the work they are responsible for.
Hands-on engagement
At SpaceX, the traditional concept of detached engineering—sometimes pejoratively called "ivory tower engineering"—is replaced with a hands-on approach. Engineers are not just designers; they take complete ownership of building, testing, and optimizing what they make. This ensures high involvement and accountability, as the quality of work directly impacts the individual.
It also mitigates interdepartmental conflicts and fosters a focus on collective success rather than individual recognition.
Strategic focus
With limited revenue streams primarily from launching rockets and upcoming satellite internet services, SpaceX channels all efforts into dominating key areas without spreading itself too thin.
Such as the Mars launch site in South Texas has the singular goal of facilitating travel to Mars. The motto is to streamline processes and eliminate inefficiencies.
Communication and collaboration
Candor is highly valued at SpaceX, with an organizational culture that encourages straightforward communication. This transparency is crucial in identifying and addressing project "blockers"—issues that hinder progress.
Employees are encouraged to speak openly about challenges and seek assistance when needed; it's an environment where help-seeking is seen as a strength, not a weakness.
Work environment and perks
SpaceX invests in creating an engaging and enjoyable workplace. The company's offices are designed to be aesthetically pleasing and functional, promoting a positive work atmosphere. Benefits like free meals, casual gatherings, and special events contribute to a community feeling.
Josh Boehm, a former SpaceX employee said, “We'd frequently see celebrities getting tours, for example, I saw Jennifer Aniston having lunch with Elon at the table across from me, ran into Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the bathroom, and had other people like Will Smith and Morgan Freeman come through the factory while I was working.”
Notably, the presence of celebrities and private talks by notable figures add an element of excitement to the work environment, enhancing employee motivation.
Work ethics and flexibility
There’s definitely 2 am texts and 6 am calls. Despite the demanding work, Josh Boehm on Quora said, Elon doesn’t enforce long hours; instead, SpaceX hires self-driven individuals who are passionate about their roles.
In his answer, he says, “So I frequently did work 12+ hour days and pulled many all-nighters at the office, but this wasn't because I was forced to, but because I loved my work and saw the value I was bringing.”
Josh mentioned flexibility in work hours and the ability to work remotely when needed was granted to him but might be different for different departments, accommodating personal needs and promoting work-life balance. This autonomy is balanced with high expectations where results are prioritized over hours spent in the office.
Diversity of interests
SpaceX values individuals with diverse interests outside of their technical expertise, reflecting a belief that well-rounded personalities contribute to a dynamic workplace. This diversity in interests suggests that employees who engage in varied activities bring unique perspectives and skills to their roles, enhancing creativity and problem-solving capabilities.
Gwynne Shotwell wore multiple hats while at SpaceX before becoming the COO. She had a decade of experience in aerospace engineering which made it easy for her to understand the space inside out, to be able to contribute to anything and everything.
Musk has a cutthroat and tireless management style
Carl Medlock, former territory manager of Tesla says “We kind of lost track of our families, our passions but we loved what we were doing.”
Garrett Reisman, Former Director of Space operations at SpaceX says “After seven years of SpaceX he wanted to work somewhere less intense.”
Tim Higgins WSJ reporter says people he talks to about Elon talk about how he is incredibly inspiring on the one hand but on the other hand, he was also exhausting and after a while, they just couldn't keep up with him. Musk is also known to quickly make his companies leaner, when he took over Twitter he laid off 50% of the staff and more than a thousand Twitter employees self-resigned.
This cutthroat approach to choosing who to work with and how much to expect of them makes people believe that anyone working for Elon is the ‘best of the best’.
He would rather hire one key engineer who’d deliver more value than 100 other engineers. He is working on some very hard problems that need top talent for deployment. With SpaceX Musk wants humans to be an interplanetary species & for us to live on Mars, with Twitter he wants to protect free speech, with Tesla he wants to innovate and redesign electric automotive vehicles.
Mask avoids the traditional corporate hierarchy, if he is interested in something you working on he will directly come talk to you instead of going through a bunch of different layers to communicate some messages.
Musk believes smaller companies are faster and better at innovating than their larger counterparts. His answer to ‘Why is SpaceX more innovative’ is just that “we have got a super engineering-driven culture.”
Principles Musk devotes himself to:
- Move fast
- If it's impossible do it anyway
- Constantly innovate
- First principles: Reduce things down to fundamental truths and take it up from there
- Go all in: Musk put his money in these companies during economic downturns when he believed the probability of them succeeding was small, but he wanted to do something and he did it going all in.
Musk was the highest-rated CEO in 2017
Securing the 8th spot on the 2017 Employees Choice awards for highest-rated CEOs, Musk is no stranger to success after heading Tesla, SolarCity, and PayPal in addition to SpaceX.
With Gwynne’s planning to align SpaceX with Elon’s vision- he's hopefully got fewer things to worry about.
And SpaceX has more innovations to achieve with a company culture that's fueling limitless innovation and growth.