He can get away with paying below market rates to Tesla engineers for the same reason video game companies can do it: people think it would be cool to work there. It doesn't seem plausible to me that if Musk can't get people to work at Twitter for cheap he wouldn't just offer more rather than let it die.

Waymo is working in the same "cool" field as many of the Tesla SWEs and pays much better than equivalent positions at Tesla, with less stress from impossible constraints and deadlines. He can get away with it because either he doesn't think he needs the top talent or some engineers are willing to make sacrifices to work for their idol

Well, either way, the fact that he's getting what he wants for a lot less than Waymo has to pay doesn't mean he can't or won't pay more if he has to. And if there are engineers who idolize him so much, why do you think he'll have trouble recruiting for Twitter? I think it's Tesla they idolize, not Musk, so he'll need to pay a lot more to get people for Twitter.

High status != high pay

This is the relevant part of the "Fork in the road" email:

> Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.

Most companies put engineers _below_ design and product management: the designers and product people make decisions, and programmers just implement.

Once you're past the $120k/year mark does a higher salary matter that much really? It only matters if you don't find anything fulfilling about your job.

What would you rather?

$180k/year with great say over the product or $220k/year with little say on the product?

An extra $900/month on DTI adds $140K to a mortgage you can qualify for. You might be choosing between say over someone else’s product, or a house.