Elon Musk: no college degree required

Elon Musk

There are loads of Elon Musk interviews on YouTube, but a team from the German magazine Auto Bild skipped the usual questions, and concentrated more on aspects of Elon’s personal life and his philosophy of business. 

Describing his process for interviewing a potential new hire (around 8:30), Musk said, “I ask them to tell me the story of their career, what are some of the tougher problems they dealt with…and how they made decisions at key transition points. That’s usually enough for me to get a very good gut feel about someone. What I’m really looking for is evidence of exceptional ability. There’s no need even to have a college degree. If you look at Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs…these guys didn’t graduate from college, but if you had a chance to hire them, it would be a good idea.”

Asked if he has any major regrets, Musk says he wishes he had taken Tesla’s CEO position from the beginning (the company’s first two CEOs, Martin Eberhard and Ze’ev Drori, each had a rocky relationship with Chairman and majority investor Musk).

Another regret, which Musk has discussed in other interviews, was the “false idea” of building the Roadster on a Lotus chassis and an AC Propulsion powertrain, instead of designing it as a native EV (an error, if it was one, that was more than rectified with the design of the Model S).

 

Source: Auto Bild