Tesla gave a warm welcome to Chris Lattner, the creator of the Swift language, to its workforce yesterday. He is the second Apple worker that Tesla has grabbed this season. Matt Casebolt, a senior Mac engineer, also joined Musk’s ranks last month.
Lattner will be the company’s new Vice President of Autopilot software, while Casebolt currently serves as the carmaker’s Senior Director of Engineering for closures and mechanisms.
Tesla has a history of snatching Apple employees, holding a number that might be in the hundreds. A handful of the company’s current executives all have Cupertino roots.
Tesla goes where Apple can’t
One of the likely reasons for this phenomenon has been the recent outburst suffered by Apple’s only auto division. Their ‘Titan’ project, bent on creating a self-driving car platform, is currently on hold pending further review in late 2017.
This situation, allegedly, prompted many software and hardware engineers that were working on Titan to leave the iPhone’s home. Many of them turned to the electric automaker in search of a viable option to continue their line of work.
Besides, Apple did not just suffer from individual leaves. Some sites report the company itself enforced many jobs cuts.
The ‘poaching war,’ as some news sites call it, is not one-sided. Apple has made significant efforts to lure Tesla employees as well. Last year, they reportedly offered significantly high bonuses and salary increases to deserters.
Tesla is capitalizing on Apple’s dry spell
Most news sites argue that Lattner is one of Apple’s most significant losses. The executive not only created the Swift programming language for the company’s apps, but he also worked on XCode (the app-building software for Apple), and CPU and GPU compilers.
He was at Apple for more than eleven years, two more than Casebolt, who designed the Mac Pro CPU and a full range of MacBooks, including the latest addition with TouchBar. The ForceTouch trackpad, the Retina MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air all appear in his resume.
A third loss for the company is one of Tesla’s new UI engineers, Timothy Hatcher, also an Apple eleven-year worker. His main project included the WebKit engine, which makes Safari function on iOS and MacOS in essence.
With Apple suffering from a dry spell in iPhone sales and other internal conflicts, most people expect this trend to continue. Tesla, on the other hand, is currently experiencing a time of steady growth, with most projects running the way they should.
Source: Tesla
