Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

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I think maybe the difference here is the fact that SpaceX probably treats software as a first class citizen; just like Tesla does, and is likely to have a modern view on how to build and evolve software. Additionally, software is a key component for them that is very much determining the abilities of the hardware. Tesla even ships pure software features that they charge money for. That's unheard off in the car market. And I would expect, Elon Musk to drive a similar strategy in SpaceX.

I suspect Boeing maybe treats software the same way as they've always done, just one of many boxes that need to be ticked in a long waterfall like process. They just throw more people at it hoping it gets done on whatever time line they imagine it needs to be done. They are likely to be very conservative with respect to tools, technologies, and practices (i.e. not much has changed there in decades).

The fact that SpaceX is able to come up with a new design for Starship and can then get it and the software working for several successful hovers & hops in around 9 months, tells me they are able to iterate quickly and adapt to quite major design changes. They launch a lot of rockets and they seem to be learning a lot every time they do this. I don't see how they'd be able to do this without very solid software development practices. I'd expect lots of CI & test harnasses, probably lots of emulators and other tools, and I have a hunch they probably use a lot of static code analysis etc. to prevent preventable bugs from happening.

It also helps that there is no union stopping SpaceX from driving it's engineers and technicians to tens of hours of unpaid overtime.

I really don't understand this line of thinking.

Any engineer or tech at SpaceX is likely worth their weight in gold at any other company due to the company's perceived high bar. Additionally, I don't hear complaints about their pay either, which is likely extremely good.

No one is locking them into cages and telling them they can't leave. I would bet most everyone who is there strongly believes in the mission.

EDIT: Eh. They aren't paid fantastically but not slave wages either. Additionally this is spread out over three very different cities.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/SpaceX-Engineering-Salaries...

> No one is locking them into cages and telling them they can't leave. I would bet most everyone who is there strongly believes in the mission.

That's true for a lot of other companies where people here have advocated the employees would benefit from unionization.

For the record, I am conflicted on engineer unionization, and my original statement was intended to be neutral.

As to this specific example, on one hand I understand the drive that comes from having a real mission (as opposed to an MBA-concocted "mission") and how a team who share that drive can execute with amazing speed; conversely, I have seen how poorly teams of clock-punchers putting in the bare minimum can perform.

On the other hand, I have also seen "the mission" used as a means to guilt trip people into overwork or accepting substandard compensation.

Of the two, I lean towards the SpaceX approach being the better one. In the absolute I don't particularly like either of them.

> EDIT: Eh. They aren't paid fantastically but not slave wages either. Additionally this is spread out over three very different cities.

> https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/SpaceX-Engineering-Salaries....

Those salaries look to be in line with what equivalent engineers at Raytheon, Lockheed, and Boeing are making in those same locations, maybe a bit higher. Thus, if the WLB reports from SpaceX are to be believed, their per-hour pay is much lower. It's hard to tell, though, without a proper breakdown by years of experience. Also, there are certainly teams within those companies where the engineers put in just as much time and effort as SpaceX engineers. Boeing is the only one I am aware of that has unionized engineers, though.

Eh, I wouldn't say that there's a perceived high bar at SpaceX or Tesla. At this point they're mostly known (within my corner of the aerospace world anyway) for working their employees to the bone. Very few people I know who have worked for SpaceX have lasted more than a year or two there.

Logic says that would negatively impact the quality of the software. If you are working 50+ hours a week in software development, a lot of what you do will be done when you are too tired to properly reason about what you are doing.

Not that it's impossible, but you'll need tooling that prevents you from making the mistakes you'll unavoidably make when tired.

Sorry but anyone who has worked in a professional high-tech environment should be aware of that an 8 hour days is not productive. You NEED to spend you entire day on this, you mind always needs to be on it to work on that level.

Einstein would certainly not have solved relativity by saying "Uh I guess from 9 to 5 I will work on this with a one hour break in between and then I am heading off to the fun stuff called leisure time".

No... Only if you think about these problems day in and day out you can work at in the top percentiles and this is the kind of people that get hired there.

This is getting cause and effect totally screwed up.

People want to work on cool stuff (in the sense of rockets or in the sense of making the world better, or both). They will accept lower pay (per hour) to do that. Therefore, working on cool stuff demands longer hours and lower pay compared to less glamorous things. It's not an inherent requirement of the field; it's a side effect of human preferences.

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