Blue Origin reviews

3.2

46% would recommend to a friend

(1,205 total reviews)

Dave Limp

35% approve of CEO

40% positive business outlook

Blue Origin has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 1,205 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
5.0
Aug 21, 2020

Tough but amazing place to work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

First, I might be biased in my positive experience, I am not sure. But, I've been here a bit over a year and I've had possibly the best experience of my career. I'm new to aerospace/space but had been looking to land in this industry long term. When I joined, I had read all the reviews here, many of which are negative. My previous job (a startup) had absolutely awful leadership, so I was very sensitive to those reviews and on the look out for those type of signals during my interview and first few months after I joined Blue. But I just haven't really seen them - nothing out of the norm, anyway (no company of 3000 employees is going to escape having a few duds in management, unfortunately). My manager in particular has been exceptional and I've gotten a decent amount of exposure to mid to mid-high level management and no real obvious red flags. Is Blue trying to figure out better ways of operating and shifting a decent amount? Yes, absolutely - that's not a bad thing, though. I think some reviews here (complete conjecture on my part) might be conflating the difficulty and complexity of work that is entailed by working at Blue with poor management. It's a really big system engineering challenge (on top of all the other challenges) to do this sort of highly detailed and complex work, needing to make several disparate systems and disciplines all fit together, let alone make everyone apprised to it. There's a reason the saying "it ain't rocket science" is a thing - it's damn hard, but so satisfying to be a part of. Another pro: the work/life balance is really reasonable (for the most part, I hear some departments are struggling a bit due to being understaffed). I have occasional bouts (maybe 2-3 weeks worth total over a year) where I put in 60-70 hour weeks, but by and large I'm working under 50 a week (probably average about 48). Other rocket companies (who are doing awesome work, too) have a bit of a reputation for grinding employees with consistently high hour work weeks. Extra pro: getting to be in a meeting with Jeff B who was reviewing the work your team was involved in was pretty neat :)

Cons

The work is really challenging. I get exposed to a lot of different teams and systems, and everyone has difficult problems to wrangle. It can be really frustrating some times, but that's part of what you're signing up for. I personally like the challenge, but recognize not everyone will. It can sometimes bring morale down temporarily when things hit a wall, but good teams over come that with ease. Being understaffed is felt, too. There's a lot of great ideas and projects floating around that simply don't have the staff to execute fully. That's true of every company, for sure, but there are some critical pieces that need attention and do t have it yet. Again, all part of the challenge that is surmountable. Some of the business strategy doesn't make a ton of logical sense to me, but I'll place my trust in the guy who spun up a trillion dollar company from his garage on that front...

2.0
Aug 16, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Almost all great working-level colleagues all passionate about space, nearly unlimited funds if you can make the business case for it. Colleagues are eager to help in different business units without asking you for a chargeline. Projects in development related to Artemis Moon Landing are exciting and inspiring: BE-7, Blue Moon (Lunar Lander). While I was working it was great to be able to have your own purchase account to be able to order some much needed supplies costing less than $500 without needing multiple layers of approvals. If you have a great direct manager, they will enable you with much autonomy to be awesome (but not my personal experience)

Cons

Some managers who can make a really great chart with meaningless data are driving some really bad business decisions, especially in Operations sectors of the company. They honestly likely feel like they are helping but have no foresight as to what elements of these processes worked successfully, were just wasteful and others necessary (for certification) but also wasteful. I have no doubt both the positive and negative reviews on Glassdoor are true. Blue Origin's mission is truly extraordinary. Some good advice I can give to candidates further along the hiring process: Ask the hiring manager about rates of retention in their direct organization, ask if you are replacing anyone, ask if you can interview multiple employees if you do not get an interviewee lunch. I didn't listen to the red flags when I got hired on because I really wanted to work in the space sector and for Blue Origin, and that is on me. For example, when I asked my manager what his biggest challenges were for this year during the interviewee process he said "hiring people who do what they say they can do". Two weeks in, my manager is badmouthing previous employees for their current problems without looking inward. Keep in mind, these employees were not fired, but either reassigned or got a promotion elsewhere in the company. After a few months, it became clear they wanted "yes" men who could increase their bonuses for the short term but bad for long term. This is in spite of shared concerns you raise about quality of product and ultimately longer schedule delays to rework defects or in some cases, scrapped parts that already had about 3-6 months of work put into them. Ultimately I left for ethical reasons a little under a year of employment. I could probably have tried to stick out the year and move elsewhere in the company, but I wasn't confident enough with the exponential increase of executive management layers that this would not spread to other areas of Blue.

4.0
Aug 14, 2020

Fun startup aerospace company

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Hands on approach to getting things done

Cons

Pay transparency and slowly loosing small company feel.

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Glassdoor has 1,379 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.