In a call for new employees, Elon Musk says he doesn't care if applicants have a high-school degree as long as they're best-in-class at coding or developing AI.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made his priorities clear in a Twitter thread advertising a 'super fun AI party/hackathon' at his residence that will include other employees who work for Tesla's AI team.

Musk said invitations for the party will be sent out soon. In response from one Twitter user who asked whether they will have to get their PhD in order to secure an invite, Musk said education wasn't the priority.

'A PhD is definitely not required. All that matters is a deep understanding of AI & ability to implement [neural networks] in a way that is actually useful (latter point is what’s truly hard). Don’t care if you even graduated high school.

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

Elon Musk says education is secondary when it comes to hiring employees for his companies

While Musk says he doesn't care about an academic pedigree, he set the bar high in other areas of interest for Tesla, tweeting 'Educational background is irrelevant, but all must pass hard-core coding test.'

He also added that Tesla is 'obviously' seeking 'world-class chip designers to join our team, based in both Palo Alto & Austin.'

Musk's Twitter musing were characteristically met with a mix of agreement and skepticism.

While some users applauded his mentality toward educational pedigree, others questioned whether the CEO actually lived by his credo.

'It can be proven if you can show me the ratio of Phd to High school grads among tesla employees. Otherwise, it is another cliche motivational talk.' said one user.

Others lauded Musk for his attitude toward hiring.

'Thank you for being literally the most sane company leader out there! Picking talent based on talent, not simply following the heard,' tweeted one of his followers.

Whether rhetoric or not, the attitude does seem to reflect Musk's background. The entrepreneur famously dropped out of Stanford after a couple of days to start his first company.

The calls for hiring come at a time when Tesla appears to be rapidly on the rise.

Last month, Tesla overtook Germany's Volkswagen as the world's second most valuable car maker behind Japan's Toyota, as the meteoric rise in the U.S. electric vehicle maker's shares reshuffles the global market.

The change was driven by Tesla's stock value, which has more than doubled in value in the last three months.



