Elon Musk Looks Like a Bond Villain But Acts Like a Superhero

Elon Musk is one badass facial scar away from becoming the prototypical Bond villain.

Wikipedia describes Musk as a “South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, engineer, inventor, and investor,” and his net worth is reported as roughly $13 billion U.S. dollars. Of the numerous companies and organizations he’s founded or led, one is currently disrupting a century’s worth of automotive design and energy storage; one handled $228 billion in 26 currencies across more than 190 nations in 2014 alone; and one is a space transport company with the ultimate goal of colonizing Mars.

Also, this:

(Photo Source: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr)

I mean, c’mon. That’s a face begging to be punched by Daniel Craig!

The thing is, Musk seems to be more superhero than super-villain, as Stephen Colbert pointed out in an interview on The Late Show last year.

On his companies’ websites, Tesla describes its mission as, “(accelerating) the world’s transition to sustainable transport.” SpaceX was founded to, “revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.” And PayPal believes that, “by transforming money, we’re powering the potential of people all around the world.” All good things.

On top of that, according to PayScale’s recent Tech Employers Compared report, employees of SpaceX and Tesla feel more like superhero sidekicks than SPECTRE henchmen. When asked whether their job has meaning, 92 percent of employees at SpaceX said they believe their job makes the world a better place, followed by 89 percent at Tesla; comparatively, on average, 57 percent of employees of the companies in our report believe their job has meaning.

Interestingly, SpaceX and Tesla rank near the bottom of the list when it comes to pay, particularly early career median pay (defined as “…the median pay for workers with 0 to 5 years of experience): average early career median pay at SpaceX is $78,500, and it’s only slightly higher at Tesla, at $81,400. Both figures are relatively low for the uber-competitive tech industry. (Perhaps new employees at Musk-owned companies are offered a generous stock packages as an incentive to come on board. Much like Musk’s endgame—bettering the planet and the human race, or complete galactic domination—we can only speculate.)

Work stress is also higher than average at SpaceX and Tesla, with 88 percent and 70 percent of employees, respectively, answering “Fairly stressful” or “Extremely stressful” when asked “How stressful is your job/work environment?”

Turns out saving the world is a taxing endeavor.

Or is it… ?

Maybe Musk has us all fooled. Maybe he really is scheming for global domination! Let’s not forget, on The Simpsons, Hank Scorpio’s employees enjoyed their jobs, too.

(GIF Credit: Giphy)

See how other tech companies—like Google, Facebook and Amazon—stack up in PayScale’s Connecting the Dot-Coms report. We compared 18 tech employers on nine different data points. Which employer looks like the right fit for you?

Tell Us What You Think

We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter.