Pros
Exposure to some truly exceptional people. Experience is tremendous for career growth if opportunities seized Direct team is great. Social aspect is good, most staff are a joy to work with and hang out with - although still lukewarm on RL organised events (30 minute queues for food, 45 minute queues for drink). Sink or swim environment is good for building resilience.
Cons
Want a "barrister" made coffee? Join the queue! And then make it yourself. We empower you to make your own coffee despite advertising barista coffee as a work perk - just like the unlimited fruit and snacks that run out before morning tea! Enjoy them at your desk if you're lucky enough to find a bowl, otherwise just hold them in your hand I guess. Afterwards, you'll find queuing for the toilet is a right of passage! Expect an up-to 10 minute wait when you need to make your post-coffee deposit. We have 8 toilets shared by 300 male staff - so at least they're always warm! Signed up for lunch? How about a 10 minute wait to be served in our a severely over-capacity lunchroom. Assuming we haven't run out of meat and you have to come back. Our COVID policy introduced staggered break times - for safety and whatnot - yet we still can't cope with the number of staff to feed at any one time. It's almost like our facility hasn't expanded appropriately to accommodate our massive increase in staff numbers. We keep biting off more than we can chew - signing up for missions with no clear ability to deliver them within the agreed time frame - and just somehow accepting that working both engineering and production staff to the bone is the way to deal with it... Despite not having sufficient supporting staff and processes to facilitate it. Significant delay is introduced when going through the "proper process" for things that are somehow meant to be part of a fast paced R&D environment. Salaried staff have shares opaquely dangled as if it's anywhere near a sufficient carrot for significant amounts of overtime. These seem to be proportional to how well you get on with your manager and how well your manager gets on with the executive. Contrasted to waged staff now earning pay-and-a-half for overtime, on top of already significant "incentive" shares for achieving production milestones, there's a clear divide in reward for similar effort depending on who you're employed under. Various teams apparently exist solely to warm the aforementioned 8 toilets. Top performers will have their career progression delayed or deferred for doing anything other than toeing the line. Retaliation in the form of punitively influenced remuneration reviews will be handed out in a letter signed by absentee managers. Any perceived "slacking" - even if it involves reducing weekly contribution from 65 hours to a still commendable 45 hours - will result in performance based formal warnings due to the drop in work output. Rocket Lab has a severe problem with incompetence in management and lack of consequence to management for missing the unrealistic deadlines they set. Let's not forget the various employees who have literally been marched out the door for getting offside with management - some on their first day! Others in publicly drawn out sagas to the tune of $100,000 penalties. Peter Beck's motto of only employing "the best of the best" does not hold true. Likewise his approach of promoting good engineers into management roles, rather than promoting people who would actually be good managers, is hindering rather than helping. The business needs systemic change which will only be achieved by a top-down refresh and a complete re-think in order to treat people like people. For a company struggling to recruit people fast enough, you'd think they'd put more effort into retaining existing staff.
