Blue Origin reviews

3.2

47% would recommend to a friend

(1,199 total reviews)

Dave Limp

34% approve of CEO

41% positive business outlook

Blue Origin has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 1,199 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Blue Origin employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Aerospace & Defense industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
1.0
Jul 11, 2017

Dream Job or Nightmare

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* You get to work on rockets. * You get to work with very smart people. * You rarely have to worry about budget. * The work can be very challenging. * You can have many different roles.

Cons

Don't let the Pros fool you, there are some major Cons. The reviews on here are all over the place mainly because trying to describe the culture at Blue is very, very difficult. They're also all over the place because management at one time wanted employees to inflate the reviews (check the "rating trends" for the suspicious bump in positive reviews). These are just a few of the issues: * People that are incompetent/not good at their job rarely get fired. In fact, many of them have been promoted. The culture is VERY split between those that have been at the company more than a few years and all the new hires. * Management has ballooned and has lost sight of what matters. They mostly write memo's and powerpoint's, but rarely focus on what matters. They lack clarity at seeing the essence of issues. And even if they do, their manager will not be convinced the issue actually exists. * Everything is schedule driven. Except management says it isn't. Except that it really is. At the cost of everything else. (This is a common theme. Management says one thing, and does the exact opposite). * Politics are starting to come into play as we scale. People are jockeying for position as new roles become available. * The 80/20 rule greatly applies here. That is, 20% of the workforce produces 80% of the results. The rest are just joyriding writing memo's (and positive reviews on here). This is why some people have it good at the company, while others are absolutely miserable. * Communication is extremely poor at every level of management. Middle managers in particular have little to no experience and lack the social skills to effectively lead teams and encourage employees. * They're trying to change the company from R&D to production; but all the people who barely succeeded at R&D are in charge of figuring out production. They may get there, but it will be very inefficient and a very long time before that happens. * They rarely hire smart people to hear what they have to say. They hire smart people who are experts in X, and put them in Y, and then wonder why schedule slips. * Jeff has no idea the above is going on. He's surrounded by "Yes" people who are too timid to tell him what the deal is. This will continue until a major event rocks the firm. And then it will be too late.

2.0
Jul 17, 2023

Save yourself the trauma

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Salary is great for some roles Your friends think you are cool Your parents are proud

Cons

The worst company I have ever worked for, full stop. I have never felt more proud than the day I accepted my offer after an arduous interview process and months (yes, months) of waiting to hear back from TA. I was going to work for one of the most notable space companies in the US and move on from the mom and pop company I’d been with. Hands down the most regrettable career decision I have ever made. There are no procedures. There are no guidelines. There is no accountability. There are no schedules. There is no leadership. The CEO is laughable. We win new contracts with NASA when we can’t even produce an engine in the timeframe we proposed. The morale of the entire Huntsville factory is hanging on by a thread. Human Resources support is non-existent. The only conversation anyone cares about is getting to rate, which we are nowhere near, and leadership doesn’t support at all, instead pinning the responsibility of doing that on the individual contributors. I can confidently say my happiest day at Blue Origin will be the day I turn in my badge.

1.0
Apr 16, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Most engineers are really smart, and friendly/easy to work with. Pay is slightly higher than other aero companies in the area

Cons

First line managers are doing their best with what they get, but senior management does not understand a thing that we’re doing at the bottom line. They keep adding new senior VPs and managers hoping that it’ll fix the problems. Nope. So much attrition. More than any company I know in Seattle. It’s ridiculous. I always dreamt of blue as a dream company, but as I’ve worked here I’ve realized it seems like that from the outside only. The equity plan is worthless. It’s the opposite of equity. The current CEO has now lost all of the major government contracts, we’ve pushed all of our program schedules out. Slowest decision making I’ve seen at any aerospace company. Significant technical debt results in tons of rework and more complex solutions later on. Super frustrating.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 1,199 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,373 Blue Origin reviews submitted anonymously by Blue Origin employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Blue Origin is right for you.