I did some great work today. I coded something pretty cool and useful. I built a little deck to explain it. My coworkers loved it. My job security went up. I enjoyed it. The journey is the reward.
But these guys are making rockets in tents.
Should I be rethinking life? Because that's how it feels. I love it. I admire them. But it feels unobtainable. I want to make that kind of a dent in the universe. And yes I know it's thousands of people working there.
It sounds like you're passionate about your work and that's an important quality. As gorgoiler points out, "Making a difference in the world is what counts."
Same here. Understand they need to somehow weed through their applications. Experienced engineers are costly to assess and having a cheap test to remove the obvious negatives helps them at the cost of a few false ones. :-(
I'm also not a US citizen, so that's another cheap test I can't pass.
> I'm also not a US citizen, so that's another cheap test I can't pass.
Unlike other "cheap tests", that one is imposed by US government regulations, not SpaceX's own decisions.
I imagine SpaceX would be quite happy if ITAR was loosened, but I doubt that will happen.
I honestly can't see why ITAR applies to citizens of friendly countries such as Canada or the UK. The point of ITAR is to stop unfriendly countries like China, Russia, Iran or North Korea getting access to technologies with sensitive military applications. The US trusts its closest allies in so many other ways (e.g. UKUSA "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing agreement, the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement under which the UK and US share nuclear weapon design information), why not in this?
A country is friendly until it isn't. I understand it's not a requirement imposed by SpaceX, but it also prevents them from getting a lot of applications they wouldn't be able to turn into hires.
Read the details; it wasn’t free exchange of information. It was basically a way for the US to allow sales of some nuclear plants and material, and sharing of design work only when it overlapped significantly with what the UK already did.
> The Americans disclosed the details of nine of their nuclear weapon designs: the Mark 7, Mark 15/39, Mark 19, Mark 25, Mark 27, Mark 28, Mark 31, Mark 33 and Mark 34. In return, the British provided the details of seven of theirs, including Green Grass; Pennant, the boosted device which had been detonated in the Grapple Z test on 22 August; Flagpole, the two-stage device scheduled for 2 September; Burgee, scheduled for 23 September; and the three-stage Halliard 3. The Americans were impressed with the British designs, particularly with Halliard 1, the heavier version of Halliard 3. Cook therefore changed the Grapple Z programme to fire Halliard 1 instead of Halliard 3.[85] Macmillan noted in his diary, with satisfaction that:
>> in some respects we are as far, and even further, advanced in the art than our American friends. They thought interchange of information would be all give. They are keen that we should complete our series, especially the last megaton, the character of which is novel and of deep interest to them.
> An early benefit of the agreement was to allow the UK to "Anglicise" the W28 nuclear warhead as the Red Snow warhead for the Blue Steel missile.[87] The British designers were impressed by the W28, which was not only lighter than the British Green Grass warhead used in Yellow Sun, but remarkably more economical in its use of expensive fissile material.
Wikipedia doesn’t appear to support your version of events. (Of course, Wikipedia is sometimes wrong; but if you think it is wrong, which of the above claims it makes is wrong specifically?)
It seems rather silly to me to worry about the knowledge of a few UK citizen SpaceX engineers, in the event of a hypothetical US-UK breakup, considering how much information the US and the UK already share in the fields of nuclear weapons and SIGINT. Surely knowledge about the later two is a much bigger concern than the first? Yet, if they are willing to risk the later, why not risk the former as well?
Besides that, the risk of a US-UK breakup has always appeared to be low, and Brexit arguably makes it even less likely.
I would presume it depends on whom you're asking. E.g. Elon's stated multiple times that he believes requirements of degrees on many of Tesla's job postings to be "absurd"[0][1]
Having a degree or not is different from having a degree with a low or high GPA. Having a low GPA at a University is a worse signal for hard working person than having no University background.
> Why would a person with 20 years of experience want to work for a company with no work-life balance?
The initial comment by bfieidhbrjr already answered that very nicely: out of the desire to actually do something that is important re work. Important being subjective to the person in question obviously.
A lot of people already work meaningless jobs with no work-life balance and they would find it to be a substantial improvement to work somewhere with meaningful work even without a proper work-life balance.
I find it completely baffling that it's your dream to work for SpaceX but you're unwilling to relocate? I'm stuck in the bay area (which I absolutely despise) because of my job, but I get to write flight software for spacecraft so I deal with it.
0xffff2, you yourself just said, "I'm stuck in <location> because of <reason>." It can't be that baffling to think that h3rsko is also stuck (e.g. because of a family).
Yes, that's because I was using the word "stuck" metaphorically. I choose to be stuck because I actually find the benefits of being stuck to outweigh the costs. If I lost my job it probably wouldn't take me 24 hours to pack my shit and be gone. But as long as I'm here getting to do what I want to do I stay.
If you can't figure out how to move to a different state to pursue a dream, it's not much of a dream.
Hopefully tjtrapp can give you more details, but I have a friend who joined SpaceX as a software developer and they are fully remote if they want to be for the foreseeable future.
Out of curiosity and without any condescention implied, are you saying this because the business you're currently working on seems less important / relevant / urgent, to you, than space exploration ?
Because, "these guys are making rockets in tents", sure ; but, meanwhile, someone is "fixing up human beeings in an hospital", "teaching kids how to read in a school", "writing poetry in a basement", etc...
There probably isn't any objective way to rank pursuits (or at least, no "objective" way that does not end up in a dystopian society and / or Golgafrincham [1].)
And it's not like anyone is actually counting score (unless you're Chinese. Someone is counting score on you at the moment. Deities have mercy on you.)
Those precautions aside, if such an event is triggering you to pause and reconsider you life choices, than go for it ! Maybe you actually need to branch and try and get to work in space exploration after all.
And if you're not clever enough, educated enough, US Citizen-enough, etc... there are opportunities to inspire others, educate others, help others...
And in the end, just plain looking at the sky. This thing is darn cute.
It sounds like you are not working in a field that is intrinsically motivating to you. Perhaps you should find an employer with a product whose end value you can appreciate?
For example I work in CAD. I'm just a software engineer. But the products we make help engineering companies design huge beautiful monsters of steel an concrete.
Sure, they are not rockets, but they are things that impact peoples lives.
Working on a product, that have users who you appreciate is intrinsically satisfying. At least to me.
I feel the code I write is kind of meaningless, but the work my users do is not. Hence I find meaning in their constributions.
> Perhaps you should find an employer with a product whose end value you can appreciate?
If only it were that simple. Sometimes the stars align and that happens yes, but for many people - especially those of us with families that can't just up and move somewhere else - it's not reality.
Let's say you reside in an area with such a job to begin with. First your resume has to be looked at, so let's assume it makes it through the various automated filters. Then it gets picked up by an actual person who glances at it for maybe 1-2 minutes tops and throws you into the "to be considered" pile. Next your resume is competing against a relatively large pool of other resumes. If it makes it through that, you then have to captivate the recruiting/hiring manager enough to move to the next step. Now you're at the dreaded technical interview where all sorts of shit can go wrong (especially since this is a highly sought position); maybe you're a little too slow at figuring something out, maybe you're not a good "cultural fit", maybe they don't like the way you look or dress, maybe you're a genius but your communication skills are abysmal etc. If you somehow make it through that garbage disposal unit then you have to talk to some manager who gauges your personality and how you handle stress; room for more screwing up. You make it through all that, but wait! You're still competing with 10 other folks that are just as good if not better than you. You get lucky and make it and get an offer letter - but the pay is dreadful and doesn't match the cost of living. Now what?
Not at all, rather I see every step on their journey as making easier for people who like space and rockets to get involved in the future, without having to win the "astronaut lottery".
Well, won't your pretty cool and useful code make the lives easier for some people, including yourself? The idea is to leave the World a little better place than it was when we got here, and it sounds like you just did something that will help you achieve just that.
Personally, things like this motivate me. If those guys can send a giant steel tube into space then goddammit I will be able to finish project XYZ on time, and provide a useful service to a customer, thereby contributing to the greater whole.
I did some great work today. I coded something pretty cool and useful. I built a little deck to explain it. My coworkers loved it. My job security went up. I enjoyed it. The journey is the reward.
But these guys are making rockets in tents.
Should I be rethinking life? Because that's how it feels. I love it. I admire them. But it feels unobtainable. I want to make that kind of a dent in the universe. And yes I know it's thousands of people working there.
But still.