Tesla engineer lived in a van for 5 months and paid off his $14k student loans

"At the same time as I was developing those thoughts, I met a guy who works at Tesla, who at the time was living in his Subaru Forester," he says. "He'd been doing it for a year."

Not great job recruitment material for Tesla.

I think it says more about the employees of Tesla then Tesla itself.

Suppose you have a job like this and you are looking at saving $15k/yr plus 8% student loan interest by being intentionally homeless.

Looking at your 5yr career trajectory, is it worth it, financially? (besides the character builder aspect, which is cool)

I did a lot of stuff to save money when I was younger , and now I have enough assets that I wouldn't mind paying my past self rent to avoid some hellholes.

Bay area home prices being what they are, I would do this in a heartbeat if I wasn't worried about safety.