Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them?

If they do eventually be the first then all is forgiven (i.e. Fritz Haber is known for the Haber-Bosch process, and not for inventing mustard gas). If they don't, they'll slowly fade into irrelevancy and they'll end up as an MBA case study in 50 years.

If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives and you're a razor-sharp freshly graduated engineer, wouldn't you want to be on that train with ideas that you will actually significantly contribute to self-driving vehicles instead of...increasing Google's/Meta's Ad Revenue?

I'm not defending Tesla's approach, but interested if there's a bit more reasoning behind the inconsistency in the claims ("we're one year away, you better join us to matter!") and not just capitalism gone wild?