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Elon Musk has issued an open invitation for more people to join Tesla’s manufacturing team. During the Q2 2020 Earnings Call, the Tesla CEO emphasized the importance of manufacturing, which unfortunately gets a bad reputation at times.
The conversation about Tesla’s manufacturing team was sparked by an inquiry about Elon Musk’s Alien Dreadnought concept, which involves a massive automated factory that could function with very little human help. While discussing this topic, Automotive President Jerome Guillen and CEO Elon Musk mentioned that there is still a great need for more people to be in manufacturing.
“We want to be super respectful of people’s labor. If we’re asking somebody to do something, are we sure it’s useful, are we exponentially spend their time in a way that is respectful of their time. But it’s like, wow, the potential for improvement is tremendous and like that’s why we want to be clear, here at Tesla, we love manufacturing, it’s awesome. And I really think more smart people should be working in our manufacturing,” Musk said.
Credit: The Science Channel
Following the CEO’s statements, Jerome Guillen followed up by stating that Tesla has manufacturing jobs available across the globe. As the company expands its operations and as it establishes production facilities in regions such as Europe and China, the opportunities for manufacturing positions in the company will only get bigger. That said, the President of Automotive emphasized that challenging work awaits those who work at Tesla.
“If people are interested in designing new lines and trying to do things differently, Tesla has got a job for you. And now we’ve got jobs everywhere. It’s not only in California. We got jobs in China, in Berlin, in Austin, Texas, and in California. If you — so there’s plenty of exciting places and all these places will do original work and challenging meaningful work,” Guillen said.
Elon Musk later chimed in, describing how manufacturing has a lot of opportunities for innovations. According to the CEO, production jobs tend to get a bad reputation for being boring or repetitive, but this could not be any further from the truth. Manufacturing could be very exciting.
Credit: Tesla
“It’s actually extremely exciting… Actually there’s far more opportunity for innovation in manufacturing than in the product itself, order of magnitude. Like if there’s one thing that comes out of this call, it’s like, ‘Hey, if you want to help us invent amazing new manufacturing techniques and have input into the product itself.’ It’s not like you just get to toss the product and say, ‘Hey, make this product and it’s a kind of a lousy design.’
“If you’re in manufacturing, you get to change the product design and say, ‘Hey, this product you asked me to manufacture is dumb.’ And we’ll be like, ‘Great, let’s fix it.’ If you work in our manufacturing community, you don’t just get force-fed a tuna sandwich, you get to change the product design. So it’s super exciting. And we evolve the lines even after they’re built. There’s a rapid evolution of the production system,” Musk said.
Elon Musk is known for his love of engineering and building things. This was emphasized during his previous conversation with members of Hack Club, where the CEO expressed his full support for the Maker Movement. Musk's love for manufacturing or tinkering with machines was also observed by Tesla community members during the Model 3 production ramp, when the CEO was spotted torquing bolts with his workers at the GA4 line in the Fremont Factory.
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