Want Elon Musk to hire you at Tesla? Work for Apple

Tesla has hired more workers from Apple than from anyplace else
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By Tim Higgins and Dana Hull, BLOOMBERG

Doug Field never considered leaving Apple. From the summer of 2008 to the fall of 2013, Field, a former chief technology officer for Segway and development engineer for Ford, oversaw product and hardware design, working on the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the iMac. He earned a generous salary and was excited by the work. Then Elon Musk and Tesla Motors came calling, and Field agreed to become vice president of its vehicle program.

In the October 2013 announcement of his hiring, Field said joining Tesla was "an opportunity for me and many others to pursue the dream of building the best cars in the world—while being part of one of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley."

He likely won't be the last Apple executive poached by Tesla. The company has hired at least 150 former Apple employees, more than from any other company, even carmakers. The former Apple staffers work in many areas of the 6,000-employee automaker, including engineering and law. "From a design philosophy, [Apple] is relatively closely aligned," says Musk, Tesla's co-founder and chief executive officer. Apple declined to comment for this story.

 As cars become more like computers, and traditional U.S. automakers struggle to  attract Silicon Valley talent, Tesla's ability to lure people from Apple gives it an edge in developing cars of the future. "It's almost an unfair advantage," says Adam Jonas, an auto industry analyst at Morgan Stanley. "As software goes from 10 percent of the value of the car to 60 over 10 years, that disadvantage [for traditional carmakers] will intensify."

Employees who have worked at Apple say their decision to join Tesla was based on its cars and its CEO. Musk has a reputation, like Steve Jobs did, for a mercurial temper and an obsessive attention to detail. A former Tesla worker who didn't want to be named says that Musk is enamored with Apple and relishes comparisons between himself and its co-founder. Tesla, says one Silicon Valley recruiter who asked not to be named, attracts the same kind of employees that Apple does—driven, hard-charging, and drawn to a strong leader.

Apple's influence at Tesla is apparent in the Model S full-size sedan, which went on sale in 2012. The luxury electric car, priced from about $70,000, has a 17-inch touchscreen that controls most functions, from opening the panoramic roof to turning on the air conditioning, and has Internet access. As with an iPhone or an iPad, Tesla's operating system gets frequent wireless updates.

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