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?