Blue Origin reviews

While Blue Origin has a very exciting mission it is definitely not without its drawbacks. I've been an employee for seven years, and have seen the company grow from 150 when I started to almost 2,000. This growth has been very poorly managed and the company has suffered because of it. The original culture simply does not scale; when I started, the company only hired seasoned, experienced professionals, and management really only facilitated interaction between groups. The organization was *extremely* flat, with only two layers of management between employees and the company's president. Employees were all peers, with very little pecking order. This worked out *really* well during the company's early years, but began to fall apart as the organization grew and more junior people were hired. The complete lack of oversight has led to many, many bad technical decisions which were jumped into blindly. In most organizations these decisions would have been subject to review, risk assessment, and approval, but this approach runs counter to Blue's culture. This haphazard approach has led to the development of many unstable, unreliable, and virtually unmaintainable systems.