> These firing decisions are not irreversible! If you accidentally fire a 10x programmer, you can re-hire.

Ha! At a significant price premium, or that programmer is a moron.

All of Musk's companies have a reputation for being really sucky places to work. Interesting, but poorly paid, authoritarian and very long hours. It's suffering you accept to learn stuff and then leave, I've heard it described. Not a place to have kids.

Meaning Musk cannot rehire anyone who's left these companies.

>At a significant price premium, or that programmer is a moron.

You're stating the obvious as if it's not implied by my statement.

Alternatively, they might be A-OK returning to their codebase/team without fuss.

Edit: even if you pay an exorbitant premium, that could be cheaper than keeping N other 1x or -X programmers.

Wouldn’t call that obvious - a whole host of reasons exists as to why one wouldn’t rejoin a company that just fired them, many not related to money.

You're mixing and raising new issues beyond rehire price for an individual.

Who are you disagreeing with?

A 10x programmer isn't going to come back to a company that fired him for nonsense reasons.

No true scotsman fallacy aside, firms make this mistake all the time and have to rehire the star/legacy maintainer at contractor rates to keep things running.