“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,” Tim Higgins and Dana Hull report for Bloomberg. “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.”
“He likely won’t be the last Apple executive poached by Tesla,” Higgins and Hull report. “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,” Higgins and Hull report. “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.”
Higgins and Hull report, “Apple’s influence at Tesla is apparent in the Model S full-size sedan, which went on sale in 2012…”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Tim should just buy Tesla and stop giving away money to shareholders
er…
the shareholders can fire Tim.
(shareholders elect the board who hire the CEO)
besides Tim spent more on buybacks to reduce number of apple shares than on dividends, and the cash pile is still pretty big now (178b – 43 b debt).
You must not be a shareholder or understand how stocks work. Otherwise you would realize that he isn’t giving money away to the shareholders… It is our money. We own the company. Our votes at the annual shareholders’ meeting give direction to the board of directors who help management determine policy One policy decision was to pay dividends.
Yes! Thanks for stating the facts so clearly?
Yes thats what made SJ a genius at building and running the company doing what the shareholders tell him. Lets make a camel of the wonderful stallion that Steve left us, after all its what all those other companies do isn’t it that makes them so amazingly successful. The best companies are not run by committee even less so by those who invest their money into the vision of those who know better and then decide to run it themselves. If that happens then Apple truly is doomed, at least as a leader and innovator because safety is the order of the day and they become IBM or worse still Microsoft. I wonder how the stockholders would like that, actually if it paid them out regularly for many years then they would likely ignore that the company itself is eventually going to go down the pan in terms of being relevant.
Yes, as the committee adjourns for tea, the question heard is “one hump, or two?”
(Douglas Adams)
Love to have the Model X when it comes out…drove a Model S and it was amazing! My only complaint was the lack of CarPlay…the computer display is powered by android 🙁
You sure its based on Android? I thought it was the typical blackberry backend.
Tesla uses a customized version of Ubuntu Linux in their Model S. They use Qt for the graphical layer.
Thats interesting because thats not the first time I have heard that Tesla uses Android. I hope you are right.
Ubuntu and Qt? That’s interesting.
My impression was the center console was a 17″ piece of crap.
It’s the slowest, worst scrolling, most poorly designed interface (for a car) you can imagine. Try hitting the environmental controls (like the fans) while going 75 down the highway (you’ll need autopilot then!).
Speaking to the car is a joke, “Navigate Fred’s house” will find (after an excruciatingly long time) something similar but wrong. And the maps are horrible – based off google, they’re not updated very often, if at all.
Whatever Tesla is getting from Apple it isn’t software and design.
Well, that eliminates Tesla from the list of companies I’d ever consider working for. Qt is shit, and I will not put up with it.
-jcr
Baby, you can drive my car
How many vehicles does Tesla produce? It seems like 6,000 employees is a lot for a niche auto maker, or am I missing something?
Well if you’re going to be in it I won’t be missing much, asshole.
Ahh, the subtleties of WS. Planted stories to benefit a stock price (guess which one?). Hint: what company gets paid in advance by a government entyity (NASA) of delivering a product? Same CEO runs the car company that shows profit only due to carbon credits.
This type of news is enough to justify 10 points, 20 points … 50 point increase in the stock price. While the other company’s stock price is kept flat because all those personnel being poached are a big brain drain.
About the buy backs mentioned in the thread here. Jobs would never have done it. These are games of WS that Cook and everyone else succumb to. (by the way , I believe Jobs would never have hired Ahrendts. Jobs rightfully believed in homegrown talent.). Buy backs do not benefit long term investors. Just take a look at FCX among others. Even XOM would be better of not having done those billions in buy backs. Buy backs are again another form of payola to the WS bankers. Buffet (Berkshire) would never o a buy back.
Another off topic, if our venerable representatives in government want to stop the volatility in the commodities market, they would reduce the insane leverage the WS shysters have (20 to 1). But they will not since the masters of the univers (aka shysters of WS) lord it over them. The manipulation in the currency market is even worse due to an astronomical 120 to 1 leverage. The guy who nearly brought Malaysia to its knees a few years back, really loves these representatives of the people.
Like any technology Apple has disrupted, to disrupt the automobile market, they would buy a small nice player like Tesla, improve it, and then delivery the category defining product to go after marketshare of the big automakers.
Apple should buy Tesla.
Tesla has a market cap of $30 billion.
Apple paid $3 billion for Beats.
I know I will get down voted. It’s easy for me to spend other people’s money and I am really not that smart of an investor. But I do respect Tesla and think both companies have a similar spirit.
I have wondered why Musk is not on the Apple Board? Makes perfect sense unless there is some unknown compelling reason not to.
Great to have this cross-pollination between these two great companies! The more they work together the better.
Another author that doesn’t understand percentages. Tesla poaches more employees from Apple than any other company because Apple has more employee than most any other company. 130 employees? I bet more voluntarily retired during the same period. But you got your hits by mentioning Tesla and Apple.
As Nelson would say…Ha Ha