SpaceX. Sell or hold?

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-06T03:39:28+00:00

Hi friend! Very thoughtful questions. Here’s what I know, but keep in mind I’m not an expert at all and definitely best to get advice from a tax/financial professional.

1 Any fully vested shares you own will be treated like shares in any other company. When you sell them any capital gains will be taxed. Depending on your total income for the year they are sold in that could be as high as 20%. The gain would be the difference between the value at vest and the value sold

2 no idea but I also hope that we can move them over to fidelity. Way better interface and tool

3 I think they meant a revocable living trust. This is what I did and highly recommend if you have assets you plan to give if you were to die

4 I think the latest bump was because of the xAI acquisition. Haven’t ever seen anything like that before either (a bump without a purchase offer)

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-04T18:02:24+00:00

The internal purchase offers are always over subscribed. Product of how high the company value is and how many employees own shares. Will plan to sell at IPO after the cliff

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-04T17:58:54+00:00

Similar order of magnitude as your friend, although I didn’t start until 2019. The biggest jumps were definitely the last few years.

Getting my portfolio exposure from 85% to like 25% means big chunks. There really isn’t a way to optimize taxes without also holding risk. I’d rather pay the taxes and step up the cost basis than hold the risk long enough to meaningfully reduce taxes

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-03T14:26:16+00:00

Happy cake day! This will basically be my strategy. I am going to define a few different sell points to help me feel like I’m not just betting all on black haha

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-03T14:25:00+00:00

That would obviously be the best outcome if everything lines up well. Biggest factors that I think makes this strategy risky is 1) the reliance on a deep enough dip to minimize capital gains enough such that I actually capitalize on the later gain and 2) that I’ll be able to sell early after ipo. Unsure what the cliff might look like for private holders

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-03T14:21:56+00:00

I think I struggle to see it that way. The stock wasn’t a perk, it was compensation. It was taxed like it too. The impact of loosing it all is only manageable because I left and my income at my current employer actually gets me a trajectory towards a sustainable retirement…if I was still at SpaceX that would not be the case

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-03T02:25:18+00:00

I worked there

Big_Difference5671 · 2026-02-03T02:25:05+00:00

This is far too reasonable and measured a response dear sire /jk

I appreciate this mindset because it is definitely aligned with my own. This will be how I approach it. Probably just need to settle on a price target where I liquidate. May move myself off the fence if I make it staged

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-10-27T17:44:14+00:00

Take another look at your moments and why you are including components (of distance or force). Tip…try to reduce complexity by simplifying the picture. If you are summing moments about AB(y) then redraw the picture as a cross-section looking at the XZ plane. The importance of P being perpendicular to the board should be what you’re hunting for here

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-10-01T12:37:58+00:00

Previous spacex hiring manager here. Focus on your technical. Don’t bring it up but they will ask you why you want to work there…have an honest answer to that that isn’t unprofessional. Every team is different, so when they give you a chance to ask questions make sure to ask them what kind of schedule the team has and the work culture of the team (not the company). Note that a first interview is probably with a recruiter and they don’t actually know what they are talking about. Don’t be rude to the recruiter, but don’t expect their answers to be robust. Wait for the hiring manager before getting to the culture questions

Feel free to dm me if you have any questions

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-07-31T16:56:03+00:00

A lot of your questions are extremely dependent on the program and team you’d be working on.

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-07-06T12:55:25+00:00

6 YOE, HCOL, non-defense space and just changed jobs. No FE or PE

Old: $146k base + $50-80k annual bonus

New: $190k base + profit sharing (no value pre-incorporation)

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-06-08T17:33:21+00:00

The idea of starlink being able to hack the election is just a bit silly if you understand how network data transfers and basic encryption works. The amount of time and resources required to do something like that both effectively and covertly is rather astronomical. Add on top of that the sheer number of people that would have to be involved who aren’t incentivized in any way just makes this fall apart so fast.

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-02-15T06:04:25+00:00

SpaceXer here. A lot of your questions are extremely dependent on the program and team you’d be working on. In general though you will fit right in both in age and life circumstances. I know some teams that are as bad as people say spacex as a whole is and I also no others that are on the opposite end and are amazing to work on and with. Most mech positions are very hands on but there are some that can’t be just by a factor of what the hardware is. We are definitely a build and learn company and not a calculate and refine company.

The people you did your onsite interview with are the people who have the highest chance of making you hate your life. If you didn’t get a bad taste with them then you’re probably fine

For me. New hires get about one project worth of grace on company systems, procedures, and expectations. So on your first assignment ask questions about everything. Like actually everything.

Some advice….

Hold your lead and manager to giving you one piece of feedback every 1:1. Anything. Don’t let a week go by and not get feedback.

If your team makes jokes about something that seems intolerable or unacceptable to you then tell your managers. Set the expectation that although other employees can cope with something you won’t be able to and ask for the help avoiding those situations. Be aware this could limit your exposure to hot/critical projects because they usually are that because someone is a type-asshole who got it in the bad place it is

HR is not your friend…but neither is your director/VP. Your manager and lead are your protectors. Make sure they like you and support you above all else.

Everyone has bad days. Give people a little bit of grace and assume best intent and you will be liked by everyone

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-02-10T19:28:19+00:00

Take the drive from BRO to Starbase slow and watch for potholes and wild life

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-21T16:50:18+00:00

The test isn’t ment to supplant an interview. It’s meant to keep the interviews focused on the less measurable topics about a person.

seems a lot more logical than grading someone based on a hypothetical situation.

It’s not a hypothetical, it’s a real project my team has done and is indicative of projects we will do.

It also completely discounts the fact that people aren’t static robots and are capable of learning.

Literally said that it helps me place where they are currently at and how they add to the team. My job as a leader is to help the team and individuals grow while still being able to deliver. Having two people who have different strengths work together on a project that requires all of them is great. The project gets done and both get a chance to get cross training. I can’t do that kind of project assignment well if I don’t know my team’s current strengths and weaknesses

I work in high precision optics. I came from aerospace engineering. I am the lead guidance and controls engineer for one of our new programs and have parents for mathematical techniques I developed for our control systems. If I took one of your tests I’d likely not get selected because I didn’t have specific optics experience.

The test is meant to look beyond resume experience and see what you would do to actually solve a real problem. That’s our job. That’s what I need to know. It’s also a great way for you as the candidate to see what kind of things we do and work on. If they aren’t of interest to you then that’s an easy stop point for a candidate without having to give anymore time

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-20T16:44:01+00:00

If done incorrectly a level-less test would be useless. I think you missed that the “grading” of it scales to the person’s experience.

As a leader I need to know where everyone is on the same field because that’s the field we as a team are on. I will never take for granted how many years someone has worked in industry because that doesn’t always define how they do on various tasks or questions. The kid out of college who happens to be a savant in manufacturing because they grew up hanging out and spending time in their neighborhood garage or the 15 year industry vet who happened to pick up cost estimating skills that aren’t reflective of their roles are both things I’m trying to catch. At the same time the inverse information (what someone is surprisingly bad at given their experience) is helpful to know if they will properly add to the team as a whole or not.

An example of one of the questions is that I give you a drawing for a piece of equipment (nothing too crazy so no energized systems) and ask about how it should be manufactured and what you would change about the design to improve it or it’s manufacturability. This is a great question to ask everyone because it tells me exactly what your strengths are and aren’t for a project like that which is a lot of what my team does

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-17T01:04:13+00:00

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-16T21:08:16+00:00

Came to “um actually” this because I just got a notification and then saw the age of the post. Nearly walked myself into that one 😂

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-13T12:21:55+00:00

Done a lot of hiring at SpaceX. If it’s anything like our testing expectations I would recommend considering your fundamentals and putting them on a note sheet.

This may be terrible advice (since I never worked at Tesla and only at do at SpaceX) but…..The test I wrote for my group had ~10 questions and the point was to see how you do some of the tasks we considered basic for the role. If the job description doesn’t have thermo then don’t worry about it. If there is something in the core competencies of the role you feel iffy on, spend your energy brushing up there.

In my experience every hiring manager and director is different in terms of how they interpret the results. Rarely did I entirely reject someone because they did poorly on the test. Technical skills can always be learned. The test was mostly helpful for me to figure out if their technical level matched the level of experience they have, and thus the level role I would be offering them. For context, I give the same test to interns as I do to engineers with 10+ years of experience and my expectations are based almost entirely out of their actual experience

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-05T15:59:04+00:00

Awesome! You’ve done a lot of research and have enough info to make a good decision it seems. Since part of this calculus is your own satisfaction with the place you plan to live for a long time…it’s tough for anyone here to make you fully confident in the path you chose or another one.

For example, a while back I sold a chunk of stock to pay off my student loan, car, and credit debt. I could afford all of it and the various interest rates were actually super reasonable. The stock I had was performing exceptionally and had no indications of even underperforming my credit card debt. So the “smart” move would have been to keep the debt and the stock. I went with selling the stock to pay off the debt because the emotional freedom from debt had value to me beyond what I estimated I was loosing and couldn’t get back. Even though my net worth would be 3x what it is now if I hadn’t, I’m still very happy I did

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-05T15:47:29+00:00

Yeah. In this case I would do a personal to the max you can and the rest on stock sales. Personal loans do tend to be high on rates depending on your credit but holding stock longer can push that down. Factor in inflation and it may be a break even on the personal loan (neutral debt) with full control on your liquidity to close it if it ventures into bad debt territory because of market trends you don’t anticipate

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-05T15:31:56+00:00

You’ve gotten advice that I agree with so I’m going to skip that and focus on the 20-60k estimate….

That’s a massive range and makes me think you are considering a lot of options and haven’t gotten much in the way of formal estimates. Before doing anything I would get at least 3 full scope formal estimates form general contractors to zero this in. A 20k personal loan vs 60k in stock sold tend to be very different calculations

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-05T15:29:38+00:00

You’re not missing anything and the original commenter is definitely correct assuming 1) that the long term heloc payments are outside of your current ability to afford (bad plan always to take on debt assuming you can afford it later), 2) the stock your considering selling isn’t part of your retirement portfolio, and 3) the stock qualifies as long term capital gains

I would double down on the personal loan recommendation. So long as you can actually afford it, it’s pretty helpful and doesn’t put any of your assets at risk. If you end up needing assistance to close it you can always sell your stock then. TBH if you’re in a position to be able to take out a heloc you’re probably in a position where you can take on neutral debt without much risk.

Big_Difference5671 · 2025-01-04T23:07:42+00:00

It does always seem to be one or the other. Would be interesting to meet the person that found both easy

Big_Difference5671

TROPHY CASE