I had one for around 6 months and always found it frustrating to use. Eventually gritted my teeth and started to use it all the time and it's been a huge relief on my hands. Considering getting another one for home so I don't have to lug it back and forth to the office.
We seek to accelerate the course of human history by developing the technologies necessary for multi-planetary civilization.
Most people think of us as a hardware company, but SpaceX has a strong software group that contributes to everything from vehicle design to literally launching the rocket.
The Flight Software Automation team is looking for accomplished full-stack engineers. The automation team serves as the bridge between the vehicle and the rest of the company. We write python primarily, and we interact with everything from rocket code to websockets.
> To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about ITAR here.
> Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed
I know this happens in pretty much all software based companies but SpaceX is the only one I have seen which explicitly states that on their hiring page.
Of the three companies I've worked for in Seattle--one Fortune 500, one small consulting firm, one slightly bigger than startup SaaS--none of them expected more than 40 hours. And only the SaaS had an on-call rotation, but off hour work even for the on-call person has been very rare.
It's fairly common, and it's not anything like slavery when there is effective management and the "as needed" is genuine emergent situations, not routine failures to plan predictable work within a reasonable work schedule.
The fact that this is common means nothing - what kind of argument is that... law breaking and human exploitation is also fairly common - does that mean it OK to do it?
> "Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed".
I also had some emergency situations where I had to fix something or help someone - and it is normal for me - but I can count that using fingers of one hand during a year.
What is NOT normal and should instantly raise red lights is that this is part of job description. Stop pretending it OK to do this in a company that is managed properly it should not take place.
There is a lot of room between "it's okay" and "it's slavery".
In this case, if "as needed" means "during the occasional launches of our experimental rockets, because launch windows happen at sometimes awkward times", it's quite a bit more understandable than "pretty much every deliverable, because we poorly set arbitrary deadlines."
Your initial point was good - it does not happen at "pretty much every" software company. I am not sure it's a red flag here, depending on the actual intent.
Sure, the only problem I see here than some people that work on startups think it's OK to force people to work overtime all the time - and for them it's the norm - where it should be an exception.
I saw it multiple times it even sometimes ends up with lawsuits like @ LinkedIn. I truly believe people can succeed without creating this kind of bad work culture.
As always SpaceX and it's mission is just _cool_ (in a geek sense). However, to be honest, Python + rocket code in the same sentence perturbs me somewhat. Python is great for web automation tools and simple scripting situations, but for the love of humanity (seriously, because space travel & exploration), I shudder at the idea of Python being used in a complex rocket control system. Does the team use other tools for embedded or distributed controls?
That makes much more sense, the job posting seemed more likely a fit for internal user interface tools. Python certainly is a good fit there, but adding in the parts about touching the rocket code seems... well I just can't comprehend the idea of running Python on a rocket at launch time. Then again, maybe all the cool rocket systems will start having REST APIs. ;)
`curl -X POST rocket10.falcon-9.spacex.com/engine/ignite -d '{"countdown": 10}'`
Would both be amazing and terrifying!
P.S. @parent: I admire the work y'all are doing, Dozbog!
Python has had for a very long time both NASA and JPL as marquee customers/users, eg. http://montepy.jpl.nasa.gov/ for mission planning and control applications.
From the MONTE brochure:
The story of MONTE begins in 1998, when JPL’s navigation section commissioned an update to the aging DPTRAJ/ODP library. The goal was to translate these time-tested navigation algorithms from Fortran into a more maintainable, extensible, and better tested C++/Python application.
At the end of the day, if Python/C++ is effective for their team and works, then it gets the job done. Personally, I just dislike writing math/simulation code in Python. The syntax is too limiting for that topic and I've run into rather annoying delays when parsing CSV data due to utf8 vs byte vs ascii handling differences when mixing Pyhton 2/3. But mainly, deploying Python code to other users is a pain.
Python is very popular for doing mathematical modelling in every domain you could possibly imagine. Even when the core algorithm isn't done in python, python is great for pre-,and post-processing the results, analysis and gluing everything together.
It's a shame -- and slightly surprises me -- that ITAR applies to roles like this. Does it apply to entire orgs, or is SpaceX to small to be worth the trouble of creating separate legal categories of employees?
One of the great things about this job is that we have to interact with a lot of teams across the company - so the clearance is definitely necessary and reduces red tape.
Unfortunately just opening a subsidiary in another country doesn't help, one of the 'features' of ITAR is that it is extraterritorial, so even if you open a subsidiary in another country all the ITAR provisions apply in that country, as well as all the export controls of that country. It's tons of fun even working for a Canadian company.
