Apple Poaches Tesla Employees to Work on Apple Car, Battery Technology
Aug. 24, 2018But Tesla is also facing another problem, and that is employee exodus courtesy of Apple. According to a CNBC report, dozens of engineers and supply chain managers have left Tesla to work for Apple on different projects such as Apple’s secretive‘Project Titan’car program, battery technology and optics among others.
Tesla employees, whose former colleagues are now working at Apple, have revealed that they were attracted by better stock benefits and thehigher pay offered by Apple, which is nearly 50 percent higher at Apple compared to what technicians and software engineers make at the Elon Musk-led company.
Regarding the report of Tesla employees leaving for Apple, a Tesla spokesperson said, “We wish them well. Tesla is the hard path. We have 100 times less money than Apple, so ofcoursethey can afford to pay more. We are in extremely difficult battles against entrenched auto companies that make 100 times more cars than we did last year, so ofcoursethis is very hard work.”
The departure of Tesla employees for Apple is quite ironic because Musk once claimed that Apple is jokingly called the ‘Tesla Graveyard’ at the company.“They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the “Tesla Graveyard.” If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding”, Musk said in an interview withHandelsblattthree years ago.
