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I 100% get where you're coming from, but allow me to offer a counterpoint to your counterpoint. I don't know anyone who works at SpaceX, but a bunch of my class

I 100% get where you're coming from, but allow me to offer a counterpoint to your counterpoint. I don't know anyone who works at SpaceX, but a bunch of my classmates went to work for ULA (their competitor). I imagine that SpaceX is better managed, but the nature of work is the same - you're either calculating things using conventional wisdom, or you're writing simulations or coming up with other ways to achieve higher performance or save money. Either way, the work is slow and highly co-dependent on a million other moving parts. Once a project is complete, your ownership is unlikely to be higher than a tiny fraction of 1 percent. Also, at least at ULA, you better excel at selling your work internally. On the other hand, SV is littered with names of people who single-handedly turned unprofitable late-stage tech companies into major successes. There's less regulation, stakes are lower, capital requirements are lower, less of the available landscape has been claimed, and the industry lends itself well to the power of computation. It's a little bit like trying to get rich in 18th century England vs 18th century USA. Would it be fair for US farmers to claim that they are doing "radically different" work compared to their English counterparts? Perhaps the work looked similar ("put food on the table"), but the rules and opportunities were vastly different and created different outcomes for individuals (as in - the smartest/most fit/hardest working people got more out of their work).

mdorazio 6y ago
I respect your perspective, but it's one I mostly see in younger people. It's basically that personal achievement and being able to single-handedly deliver things are the most meaningful outcomes of work. The perspective that I've come to accept is that very few things that actually impact the world can come about this way. We didn't put men on the moon because some genius did all the calculations and fabrication himself (even von Braun was only one part of a very large organization), we did it because thousands of smart and determined people set aside their personal ambitions to work together on something great. The downside of this, of course, is that everyone is effectively a cog in the machine and it's easy to get demoralized that your contributions don't mean much. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want to actually change the world, you're unlikely to do actually do it at a tech startup. You're instead likely to talk a lot about it while the real world-changing things are happening elsewhere. But you'll probably be happier at the startup because you get more of that magic combination of autonomy, teamwork, and quickly tangible results. I just personally get frustrated that almost every startup and its employees act like they're working on the biggest problems in the world when they just... aren't. Edit: forgot to mention. I know two people who left ULA for similar reasons to you and went to SpaceX. They loved working at SpaceX in comparison to ULA because the level of company ambition, speed, and impact was so ridiculously higher. However, one of them left SpaceX to go to a smaller aerospace startup and the other is now at Raytheon for the superior work-life balance. I'm not sure what the lesson is there...
- kaitai 6y ago
  Won't address SpaceX though I know people there, but I too used to be on a track with an emphasis on individual accomplishment (academic mathematician) -- a lot about single-handed delivery. Sometime in my late 30s I realized that unfortunately, haha, the most impactful accomplishments are team efforts. To do big work, I realized I should find the right team. I am still working out what this means for my own career, but it's a huge change in mindset. And I'm working at a large, old-ish corporation now, and I think we are slowly & painfully changing how something very practical gets done.
njarboe 6y ago
ULA is definitely not like SpaceX and is not a competitor at this point. ULA is failing due to the exact problems that you describe and if your rocket is not reusable, it cannot compete outside government launches at this point. The only other rocket company that I see competing at the moment is Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin (and we are still waiting for the first New Glen launch). SpaceX is different with Elon Musk leading the engineering. Move fast, iterate, everyone working on the project should understand the whole vehicle so that people can see when making radical changes is the way forward. SpaceX was building carbon fiber pieces for their next rocket after the Falcon 9/Heavy, and completely scrapped that idea and went with a steel hull instead. About a year later the new design is going to launch up to 15km and land in the next few weeks. Elon Musk comes from the start-up world and he is hoping to get to Mars himself, so he is in a hurry. I would say if you can get a job there, you should. If you have not already, check out reddit/r/spacex for lots of interesting stuff about the company and what they are doing. You might want to apply to work there if you are looking for a fast paced aerospace company. There is also the startup called Boom that is working on building a supersonic passenger plane. They have just finished a smaller human-piloted supersonic test plane to prove out their ideas and hope to have the commercial airplane in service by 2025. These companies are both run by people that started in software and then moved to aerospace without any other real prior experience in the field. Maybe you can have a similar route with founding a successful software company and then, with that success, found an aerospace one of your own. Good luck.

mdorazio 6y ago

I respect your perspective, but it's one I mostly see in younger people. It's basically that personal achievement and being able to single-handedly deliver things are the most meaningful outcomes of work. The perspective that I've come to accept is that very few things that actually impact the world can come about this way. We didn't put men on the moon because some genius did all the calculations and fabrication himself (even von Braun was only one part of a very large organization), we did it because thousands of smart and determined people set aside their personal ambitions to work together on something great. The downside of this, of course, is that everyone is effectively a cog in the machine and it's easy to get demoralized that your contributions don't mean much. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want to actually change the world, you're unlikely to do actually do it at a tech startup. You're instead likely to talk a lot about it while the real world-changing things are happening elsewhere. But you'll probably be happier at the startup because you get more of that magic combination of autonomy, teamwork, and quickly tangible results. I just personally get frustrated that almost every startup and its employees act like they're working on the biggest problems in the world when they just... aren't. Edit: forgot to mention. I know two people who left ULA for similar reasons to you and went to SpaceX. They loved working at SpaceX in comparison to ULA because the level of company ambition, speed, and impact was so ridiculously higher. However, one of them left SpaceX to go to a smaller aerospace startup and the other is now at Raytheon for the superior work-life balance. I'm not sure what the lesson is there...

kaitai 6y ago
Won't address SpaceX though I know people there, but I too used to be on a track with an emphasis on individual accomplishment (academic mathematician) -- a lot about single-handed delivery. Sometime in my late 30s I realized that unfortunately, haha, the most impactful accomplishments are team efforts. To do big work, I realized I should find the right team. I am still working out what this means for my own career, but it's a huge change in mindset. And I'm working at a large, old-ish corporation now, and I think we are slowly & painfully changing how something very practical gets done.

njarboe 6y ago

ULA is definitely not like SpaceX and is not a competitor at this point. ULA is failing due to the exact problems that you describe and if your rocket is not reusable, it cannot compete outside government launches at this point. The only other rocket company that I see competing at the moment is Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin (and we are still waiting for the first New Glen launch). SpaceX is different with Elon Musk leading the engineering. Move fast, iterate, everyone working on the project should understand the whole vehicle so that people can see when making radical changes is the way forward. SpaceX was building carbon fiber pieces for their next rocket after the Falcon 9/Heavy, and completely scrapped that idea and went with a steel hull instead. About a year later the new design is going to launch up to 15km and land in the next few weeks. Elon Musk comes from the start-up world and he is hoping to get to Mars himself, so he is in a hurry. I would say if you can get a job there, you should. If you have not already, check out reddit/r/spacex for lots of interesting stuff about the company and what they are doing. You might want to apply to work there if you are looking for a fast paced aerospace company. There is also the startup called Boom that is working on building a supersonic passenger plane. They have just finished a smaller human-piloted supersonic test plane to prove out their ideas and hope to have the commercial airplane in service by 2025. These companies are both run by people that started in software and then moved to aerospace without any other real prior experience in the field. Maybe you can have a similar route with founding a successful software company and then, with that success, found an aerospace one of your own. Good luck.