Elon Musk Says, ‘You Don’t Need a College Degree to Work at Tesla’
He says that hiring people like Steve Jobs without having a college degree would have been a good idea.
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Most industry greats have one thing in common, they have either not completed their graduation, or they decided to drop out of college before pursuing their studies. And Tesla founder, Elon Musk seems to subscribe to the same idea, which he has followed for hiring in his own company as well.
Replying back to a user on Twitter earlier this month, Musk said that “you don’t need a college degree to qualify for working at Tesla”.
This isn’t the first time when Musk has shared his opinion on the value of education to succeed in life. In fact, in this interview with German publication Auto Bild, he even points out that “there’s no need to even have a college degree or go to high school” to be eligible to work at Tesla.
Musk cites examples of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and said, even though they didn’t complete their college, hiring them would have been a good idea, he says.
So, if Musk doesn’t consider college degree as the mark of a person’s credentials, what does he seek in a prospective hiree at Tesla? In the same interview with Auto Bild, Musk points out, he looks for people with “evidence of exceptional ability” instead of what and how many degrees they’ve earned.
He prefers to hire people who’ve been involved in problem-solving measures at their previous employer and how they go about fixing issues at hand. In order to keep the process transparent, Musk resorts to asking detailed questions to the interviewee, which he believes is a good way of making sure the person isn’t taking credit for someone else.
While Musk has emphasised this “no degree to work at Tesla” point multiple times, it will be interesting to see if the Tesla founder actually manages to walk the talk.
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