Why Tesla Veterans Dominate the EV and Battery Industries

In 2013, Landon Mossburg, then 29, was hired by Tesla to work on its supply chain team. Tesla threw him into negotiations with the senior executives of cellphone, internet and tech companies to secure internet connectivity deals that would feed Tesla’s over-the-air software updates. Mossburg had a bachelor’s degree in business and had worked as a consultant for Accenture and KPMG. But business wasn’t really a passion for him—writing code was. So on nights and weekends, Mossburg began writing code to resolve issues he noticed in Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., factory: Among his first projects was a simple program that helped the early Autopilot team label stop signs and stop lights in images of intersections.

Soon Mossburg persuaded his boss that he was of more use to the company running an engineering team for the supply chain unit, rather than negotiating internet deals. In 2016, that gave Mossburg a role in tackling Tesla’s “production hell.” To save money, the company kept few parts in inventory. But no one had adequately organized Tesla’s supply chain, so workers frequently had to stop the production line for lack of the right part. “Even when the parts got into the warehouse, they would again get lost,” he said. Mossburg wanted to slap huge QR codes on all the parts and install cameras around the warehouse; connected to a computer program, the cameras would inform the supply team where any part was at any time. But Mossburg discovered that industrial cameras at the resolution they needed were “crazy expensive, like $10,000 a camera.” Someone suggested something simpler—smartphones. Google had recently introduced the Pixel, and Mossburg ordered hundreds of them. “We just rewrote a custom version of Android that basically lobotomized the phone and turned it into a glorified QR code reader,” he said. “We put them on forklifts and around the factory.” Parts went missing less frequently.