In the spring of 2004, when SpaceX was rushing to produce its first rocket, Elon Musk wanted to hire Turkish engineer Bulent Altan, who was studying at Stanford. Altan was reluctant to leave the San Francisco Bay Area because his wife, Rachel Searles, worked at Google. During the interview, Musk mentioned that he had spoken with Larry Page, who would transfer Searles to the Google office in Los Angeles, and then asked Altan how he would decide now.

After a moment of silence, Altan accepted the job offer, becoming one of the early employees of the company (publicly acknowledged as about the 42nd employee). The next day, Searles went to work, and her boss informed her that Page had called, allowing her to work in Los Angeles. Altan later led the avionics for Falcon 1, was promoted to Vice President of Avionics and Guidance Navigation Control, expanding the department from about 7 people to over 200, and participated in Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft; he first left in 2014, returned from 2016 to 2017 to oversee Starlink satellite mission assurance, then went to Germany to serve as co-CEO of laser communication company Mynaric, and is now a founding partner at Alpine Space Ventures, managing about $184 million in funds, and serves as chairman of Isar Aerospace.

This recruitment story was documented in a 2021 article by Eric Berger and Walter Isaacson's biography. At that time, Musk and Page were still on friendly terms; in 2015, Google invested about $900 million in SpaceX, holding about 4.9% equity. The target of the talent competition was someone who could transfer CubeSat experience into reusable rocket avionics, with the leverage not being salary increases, but relocating the spouse's job to the launch site.

In market terms, the buyer was SpaceX, which lacked a leader in avionics, and the seller was an engineer family that had not yet decided to leave the Bay Area. The driving force was the schedule for the first rocket, not a public salary war. Resources flowed from the founder's personal relationships into internal Google reassignments, locking the engineer in Los Angeles. The beneficiaries were the rocket company filling key positions; the pressure was on dual-career families unwilling to relocate, as well as competitors later poaching talent from large companies and laboratories using the same network.

Source: Public Information