Elon Musk criticizes SpaceX's "tech monastery" location being too remote, making it hard to find employees: single staff members have difficulty finding partners, and Tesla faces similar issues.

Tech Home February 6th News, according to a report by Business Insider today, after relocating SpaceX headquarters from California to Texas, Elon Musk realized that recruiting has become a major challenge.

For those with families, convincing their loved ones to move to the interstellar base (Starbase) is not easy; and for single employees, there are much bigger issues beyond that, including “finding a partner,” because “it’s almost all men.” Therefore, Musk described the area as a “tech monastery,” and said the most difficult problem is employees’ “significant other” living and employment issues.

In a nearly 3-hour interview released on Thursday, Musk mentioned that SpaceX’s South Texas launch site and Starbase headquarters are not very attractive to married technicians, engineers, and scientists because of its remote location, where family members can hardly find work outside of SpaceX. Musk called this situation the “significant other problem.”

Starbase is remote: about a 40-minute drive to the nearest city

In fact, Starbase has been used for rocket manufacturing and testing since 2019. It is located in a sparsely populated area near the US-Mexico border, opposite the undeveloped Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area.

According to Google Maps, Starbase is about a 40-minute drive from the nearest city, Brownsville. Brownsville has a population of approximately 187,000 (based on the latest US Census data).

The report pointed out that this remote environment contrasts sharply with SpaceX’s previous headquarters in El Segundo, California. The latter is close to Los Angeles and is one of the largest employment markets in the United States.

Musk: Tesla faces similar challenges but to a lesser extent

The report also mentioned that Musk said Tesla also faces similar issues, but the situation is not as severe as with SpaceX (Note from Tech Home: Tesla moved its headquarters from California to Austin, Texas in 2021).

Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory is about a 30-minute drive from downtown Austin, which has a population close to 1 million. Additionally, although most Tesla executives have moved to Texas, the company still maintains several robotics, energy, and manufacturing divisions in California.

Musk stated that since Tesla’s engineering team is still mainly in Silicon Valley, employees’ lives have changed relatively little, “commuting is about the same,” and most of Tesla’s engineering team remains in California.

It is worth mentioning that Musk once predicted that Austin would become “the biggest boomtown in the US in the last 50 years.” At the same time, he is also pushing to expand the company’s campus, including planning a company town called “Snailbrook” near The Boring Company and SpaceX.