Are you looking for a career change? Do you feel held back because you don’t think you have the right educational background? Well, here’s a bit of good news that might give you some hope about the future.
None other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk is hiring for his company and he said on Twitter…
A PhD is definitely not required. All that matters is a deep understanding of AI & ability to implement NNs in a way that is actually useful (latter point is what’s truly hard). Don’t care if you even graduated high school.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020
Yeah, that’s right. He actually said,
“A PhD is definitely not required. [I] don’t care if you even graduated high school.”
Musk is talking about opportunities with Tesla’s artificial intelligence department. Musk said he’s looking for candidates with a “deep understanding” of artificial intelligence and that all applicants have to pass a “hardcore coding test.”
This isn’t the first time that Musk has talked about what he thinks about college degrees. In a 2014 interview, he said, “There’s no need even to have a college degree at all, or even high school.” You don’t hear that very often from CEOs out there, do you?
He added,
“If somebody graduated from a great university, that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things, but it’s not necessarily the case.
If you look at, say, people like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, these guys didn’t graduate from college, but if you had a chance to hire them, of course that would be a good idea.”
Musk said that instead, he looks for “evidence of exceptional ability”, regardless of what kind of education a person might have. Musk said he would ideally like his new recruits to work either in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Austin, Texas, but they could also work at one of the three Tesla Gigfactories where the company makes it electric motors and battery packs. The factories are in Buffalo, New York, Sparks, Nevada, and Shanghai, China. A fourth factory is planned for Berlin, Germany.
What do you think? Are you going to give it a shot?
Tell us what you think in the comments, please!
