At first I thought him trying to engage the community as a whole for technical contributions was good and upbeat. But it also makes me question- then what is he bringing to the table then? His celebrity, to engage those people? Is his internship to be a technical manager? Is he actually going to credit these contributors, let alone ask Musk to give them internships? It's not managing if these people are just random volunteers he's using ad hoc.
Passionate hackers love to solve technical challenges, sure, but it does feel weird that he posted this open-ended call to action. I'm not saying they must be paid, as per the free work detractors, but even in FOSS you get credited and on Stack Overflow you receive karma.
> did anybody expect Hotz to sit down and write search from scratch in complete isolation?
Based on his reputation, people sure act like he is some sort of supercoder polymath who is able to pick up on any stack.