Category: Business

• Nandita Gupta became an accessibility product manager at Microsoft after starting her career in a factory.
• Inspired by her grandfather's loss of sight, she returned to school and paid her way with scholarships.
• After connecting with a Microsoft recruiter, she landed a job paying double what she used to make.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nandita Gupta, an accessibility product manager at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm an accessibility product manager at Microsoft. I have electrical engineering and human-computer interaction degrees, and my internship experiences were in manufacturing and robotics research. I decided to pursue human-centered computing with a focus on manufacturing as a career.

I worked as a process controls engineer at a factory that made baby wipes for three years before quitting and returning to school in the fall of 2019.

I started working as a product manager on internal tools at Microsoft in March 2021. Since December 2021, I've worked as an accessibility product manager for Accessibility Insights, a suite of products that helps developers code with accessibility in mind. I lead the product direction, plan future initiatives, and work with teams to create enjoyable and accessible experiences for developers.

Landing my first job at Microsoft doubled my income, and I'm doing what I always wanted to do — make an impact.

In 2019, I found myself at a crossroads as a process controls engineer

As a young girl, I saw my grandfather lose his eyesight, which left an indelible mark on my career choices. I yearned for a purpose beyond manufacturing and dreamed of helping people like my grandfather. There came a moment in my manufacturing job when I asked myself, "What am I doing? What happened to helping people like Grandpa?"

I took a leap of faith and left my stable job to pursue my passion for accessibility. I invested my savings into a single semester of graduate school with plans to apply for scholarships and assistantships, a decision that was both terrifying and exhilarating.

I was determined to apply for every scholarship to earn my degree. When my bank balance headed toward zero, I secured a graduate assistantship and received my first scholarship. In February 2020, I earned the Google Lime Scholarship, worth $10,000, which covered the rest of my graduate program.

As they told me I had been awarded that scholarship over the phone, I cried tears of relief. I had been sinking into depression the previous few months and was consumed by financial worries. Receiving this scholarship was one of the most emotional moments of my life.

The COVID-19 pandemic added new uncertainty

My journey to Microsoft was not easy, but I wouldn't change anything about it.

When the pandemic hit, the summer internship I had lined up was canceled, and my job prospects seemed bleak. I tried to connect with companies and finally connected with a Microsoft recruiter at a virtual networking event. I shared my passion for accessibility and inclusion with the recruiter, and they said it was something they needed at the company.

The meeting led to a quick screening with HR, followed by a four-round interview loop and, finally, a job offer. Taking the Microsoft job doubled my earnings from my last job — my annual income was around $75,000 in manufacturing, and the move to Microsoft brought my total compensation to over $170,000. My work schedule is flexible, and I typically work around 50 hours a week.

Accessibility resonates deeply with me

Accessibility is not just personal — it's a fundamental human right. My mission is to inspire others to design and deliver products that are accessible and inclusive, ensuring individuals like my grandfather feel seen and valued.

One of the most impactful accessibility initiatives I've been involved in is my collaboration with Zoo Atlanta as a graduate researcher. Our team crafted an inclusive experience for Zoo Atlanta visitors, particularly emphasizing those with visual impairments.

Another exciting project I worked on was Shifting Left to Get Accessibility Right at Microsoft. The case study showcases the importance of proactive accessibility and how the organization implemented a culture of accessibility.

Don't leave a single stone unturned in your pursuit of your dream

It's important to embrace a life-long learning mindset. When trying to pivot my career, I used resources like TED Talks, the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, and MasterClass to gain insights from experts. I then gave my own TEDx Talk through the TEDx Georgia Tech organization.

It's better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all. Every decision you make will teach you valuable lessons, and even if you don't end up where you originally intended, there will be something to gain.

Have you doubled your income by pivoting your career and want to share your story? Email Lauryn Haas at lhaas@businessinsider.com.

• At WWDC, Apple unveiled "Apple Intelligence."
• It will power useful and friendly features like being able to prioritize notifications. 
• This is a gentler, less scary version of AI. It's for regular people. 

Does AI freak you out? If it doesn't, does a little part of you wonder … shouldn't it? Is AI going to replace you at your job? Will it enable state-run misinformation campaigns? Will artificial general intelligence instigate some World War III scenario that leads to the destruction of the human race, like some AI doomers think? Will it tell you to eat glue?

Don't worry — Apple is here to smooth over your fears about big bad AI, give you a cup of warm milk, tuck you into your cozy bed, and stroke your hair until you fall asleep. At the keynote presentation for its yearly developer conference on Monday, Apple finally unveiled its AI intentions.

Unlike Google's recent event that showed off futurist things like AI search results (which ended up an embarrassment) or OpenAI's keynote in May — which caused a scandal over the similarity of the company's voice assistant to Scarlett Johansson's voice, and where the abilities of its technology seemed uncanny and freaky — Apple's demonstration was familiar and seemed practical, like something you could actually use.

(One couldn't help notice Apple actually had the real Scarlett Johansson in its keynote — in clips for "Fly Me to the Moon," her upcoming Apple TV+ movie.)

It's not 'artificial intelligence,' it's 'Apple Intelligence'

And in Apple's new AI world, we start with one rule: Don't call it "artificial intelligence." It's "Apple Intelligence."

What's the difference, you ask? Haha! Don't worry about the details or Apple's deal with OpenAI! Just focus on the nice, pleasing things it can do.

Apple Intelligence can perform simple and useful functions. One demo involved someone needing to pick up her mom from the airport. Siri can pull up flight details from an email, pull up tracking, and find lunch reservation details that were messaged in a text. Helpful! Not intimidating!

Another feature is in the Mail app. Apple isn't suggesting that it can write an email for you; rather, it can help you lightly revise an email to be in a different tone. (Options include "professional," "concise," or "friendly.")

Apple is giving you the baby steps of generative AI here — not trying to suggest it can do the work of humans, just brush it up a little.

It will also be able to sort your emails into categories: primary, transactions, updates, or promotions, which is great (but also … Gmail has been doing this for a decade). Additionally, it will use AI to prioritize your notifications and allow you to enable a "reduce notifications" mode (ahhhh, yes!).

Apple Intelligence wasn't mindblowing

Still, some of the other generative things were purely goofy/cutesy, like the AI version of Memoji. With this tool, you can create a cartoon image of your friend to wish them a happy birthday. It's truly stupid. Please know that if you send me a generative Memoji of myself, we are now enemies.

These are small enhancements, and a lot of them already could exist in other ways, like recording and transcribing phone calls or photo-editing tools to remove an object from the background of a picture. (Android users are probably laughing right now.)

Nothing was mindblowing or a totally radical new way of using artificial Apple Intelligence. There was no "wow" feature or jaw-dropping moment. It was just a bunch of small, helpful things that will make iPhones and computers a little more convenient to do things they're already doing.

AI for normies

And that's probably a good way of introducing AI to the iPhone-owning normies of the world. People are — rightfully — a little skeptical of AI and worried about extreme advancements that could harm humanity. And with this, Apple gets no embarrassing bad results from AI-generated answers!

Apple was, of course, very proud to thump its privacy bonafides over its competitors — explicitly suggesting that you can't trust other companies. (Well, they might have a point there.)

And all of these new AI features will require an iPhone 15 or the upcoming 16 when it launches later this year. Which, of course, leads to the question: Will any of these new AI features make you want to actually upgrade your phone?

• Apple unveiled a new iPadOS 18 with Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developers Conference.
• The update includes a long-awaited calculator app with Math Notes, a whiteboard-style tool.
• Despite these updates, it's uncertain if the new features will boost iPad sales significantly.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference was a big moment for the iPad, its less-loved flagship product.

The tablets will come with iPadOS 18, which means they will include Apple Intelligence, a redesigned Photo app, new notes features, and new messaging functions. The new OS18 also brings a calculator app to the iPad — a feature the device never had.

The app looks a lot like the iconic orange and white calculator users have long seen on the iPhone. But the app also comes with a new, iPad-only feature called Math Notes: It supports the use of the Apple Pencil and allows people to write down math problems and helps solve them.

The app looks like it comes with some cool features.

According to the tech giant, users can use the whiteboard-like tool to solve algebraic equations, calculate a budget, and create graphs from text "with just one tap." Math Notes will automatically be accessible in the preexisting Notes app.

The app also has a history function to view past calculations and a feature to convert height, weight, and currencies.

The launch not only brings a much-awaited app to a bigger screen but also improves it, which may make the iPad popular with students and those in finance.

But it is unclear if the new OS18 features will boost sales for the tablet, which can cost up to $3,000. iPads made up only 6% of Apple's sales, while the iPhone was more than half of sales, according to the company's last earnings report in May.

The features may also do little to calm critics who say that Apple is playing catch-up with other Big Tech companies when it comes to AI. Apple's calculator seems less impressive than OpenAI's GPT-4o, which can look at a math problem and verbally talk the user through the solution step-by-step.

But the overall conference and a list of other releases, including Apple Intelligence, impressed analysts.

Apple "did exactly what they needed to do, which is show the world that they mean business when it comes to AI," Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said.

• China's central bank has paused gold buying after prices reached record highs.
• China's gold holdings were unchanged in May, halting an 18-month purchasing streak.
• Gold prices are up 11% this year due to geopolitical tensions, but have softened from a record high.

China's central bank gold-buying streak has been a major driver of prices that hit record highs recently.

However, it looks like gold has gotten so expensive that even the People's Bank of China is taking a break.

On Friday, official data showed China's gold holdings were unchanged in May from the prior month — which means the central bank did not buy gold.

The PBOC's pause has left gold "vulnerable to more downside pressure," wrote Ewa Manthey, a commodities strategist at ING Bank, on Monday.

The benchmark spot gold price is around $2,300 per ounce — about 6% lower than its record high of nearly $2,450 per ounce on May 20.

Prices of gold, a traditional safe-haven asset, have been on a tear this year, gaining about 11% this year-to-date due to global geopolitical tensions. In China, people are also loading up on gold as a store of value amid economic uncertainties and a weak Chinese yuan.

But "gold's record-breaking rally might dent demand for now," wrote Manthey.

China's central bank gold buying had actually started to slow in April, when it bought just 60,000 troy ounces of the precious metal. That was down from 160,000 ounces in March and 390,000 ounces in February.

Before its pause in purchases last month, the PBOC had been snapping up gold for 18 straight months, making it the world's largest institutional buyer. According to industry association World Gold Council, China's central bank purchased 225 tons of gold in 2023. In second place was Poland's central bank, which bought 130 tons of the yellow metal.

David Tait, the council's CEO, told Reuters on Monday that China is "just waiting and watching. If prices correct to the $2,200 per ounce level, they will resume again."

• Lexis Czumak-Abreu is a full-time electrician who highlights her work on social media.
• She's picked up 2.2 million social media followers since 2022 and makes $200,000 a year from the platforms.
• More Gen Z Americans are opting for trade jobs over traditional college degrees.

Lexis Czumak-Abreu graduated from college with a pre-med degree but decided it wasn't a good fit for her.

Instead of taking up another job in healthcare or a science-related field, Czumak-Abreu became a full-time electrician, she told Business Insider last month.

Since 2022, she has amassed 2.2 million followers on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, who watch her lug heavy gear and fix masses of wires — all part of the day-to-day of her electrician job.

The big money doesn't come from her employer: She makes $200,000 a year from her social media pages, including from brand deals with companies, she told the Wall Street Journal. The average electrician makes about $70,000 a year in New York state, and the average social media influencer makes about $58,000, according to ZipRecruiter data.

Despite the money she makes on social media, she decided not to cut her hours working as an employee for an electrical servicing company. Czumak-Abreu wants her company to know she's a reliable employee, she told the Journal. And working fewer hours would give her less material to post about, since a bulk of her feed follows her life as an electrician.

She said that she films and edits all her videos herself, and spends her lunch breaks and nights editing footage.

"There are definitely weeks when I crash and get completely overloaded," she told the Journal.

"Unlike in an office job where you go to the same building daily, I work somewhere different every day. I experience different things and see different people every day," Czumak-Abreu previously told BI.

The interest in trade work comes as more Generation Z Americans weigh the pros and cons of a four-year college degree.

The cost of attending university is outpacing the rate of inflation, leaving young people to take student loans that weigh on them far after graduation. And degrees, even in top fields, are no longer a silver bullet to lucrative starter jobs. Only one in four Americans think it's very important to have a college degree for a high-paying job, per a Pew Research survey of 5,000 US adults released last month.

The time and monetary costs of a conventional degree are compelling young people to ditch diplomas for tool belts. The National Student Clearinghouse reported that enrollment in vocational-focused community colleges rose about 16% last year — its highest level since the educational nonprofit began tracking the data in 2018.

Elaina Farnsworth, cofounder of SkillFusion, a credentialing program for electric vehicle technicians, told BI last month that she noticed a significant increase in Gen Z workers applying for her program.

• An Austrian Airlines plane flew through a thunderstorm on Sunday. 
• The plane was pelted by hail, shattering its windscreen and tearing off its nose.
• All 173 passengers and six crew members were unharmed and made a safe landing in Vienna.

An Austrian Airlines plane traveling from Spain to Austria was left severely damaged after flying through a thunderstorm on Sunday.

"Airbus A320 aircraft was damaged by hail on yesterday's flight OS434 from Palma de Mallorca to Vienna," the airline said in a statement to CNN on Monday.

"The aircraft was caught in a thunderstorm cell on approach to Vienna, which according to the cockpit crew was not visible on the weather radar," Austrian Airlines said, adding that pilots had made a mayday emergency call during the flight.

According to the airline, the plane's two front cockpit windows, nose, and some paneling were "damaged by the hail," per CNN. All 173 passengers and six crew members were unharmed and made a safe landing in Vienna.

Photos going around social media detail the extent of the plane's damage. Besides having a large portion of its nose peeled off, the aircraft's front cockpit windows appeared to be shattered as well.

One of the flight's passengers, Emmeley Oakley, told ABC News that the plane ran into "a cloud of hail and thunderstorm" when it was "about 20 minutes from landing."

"We could definitely feel the hail coming down on the plane, and it was quite loud and super rocky for a minute," Oakley said. "It wasn't until we exited that we saw the nose was missing! The pilots really did an excellent job keeping things as smooth and safe as they could."

Austrian Airlines said in a statement to Fox Business that their technical team has been "tasked with assessing the specific damage to the aircraft."

"The safety of our passengers and crews is the top priority," the airline added. 

Representatives for Austrian Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

The incident comes after several flights were hit by severe turbulence last month.

On May 20, a Singapore Airlines flight that was traveling from London to Singapore was flying over the south of Myanmar when turbulence sent the plane plunging 178 feet in four seconds.

A 73-year-old passenger died of a suspected heart attack, and dozens of passengers were left injured in the incident.

A Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin encountered a similar problem just days later, on May 26. Six passengers and six crew members sustained injuries when the plane ran into turbulence while flying over Turkey.

• A group of emerging countries are planning a payments platform to bypass the US dollar, Lavrov announced.
• The initiative follows a BRICS summit call for trade in national currencies.
• The platform may use digital currency, with more details expected at the Kazan BRICS meeting.

A group of major emerging countries is working on a way around the dollar — but they face an uphill battle to diminish the greenback's dominance.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said BRICS countries are developing a payments platform that will allow them to bypass the US dollar, per TASS, a state news agency.

The initiative came from a summit of the BRICS countries in Johannesburg last year where the group — which includes the key members of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — called for more trade and lending in their national currencies.

Lavrov said on Monday that the platform will improve the international monetary system and allow payment in national currencies for mutual trade. Russia is keen to move its trading partners away from the dollar because it faces significant sanctions from the US and its allies.

Details on the platform are scarce, including which countries could use it and when it could be adopted.

Lavrov was speaking at the two-day BRICS Foreign Ministers Meeting, just days after Russia's flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. There, Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled down on his call to phase out the use of the US dollar and other "toxic" currencies.

There may be more traction on this front when the BRICS bloc meets in Kazan, Russia from October 22 to October 24, according to Christopher Granville, the managing director of global political research at GlobalData TS Lombard.

The new BRICS payments system could come in the form of a digital-currency system that allows for central banks to deal with local currency transactions directly, Granville wrote in a May report.

Lavrov himself touted a digital-currency-based settlement system to local media in April.

'Impossible to replace something with nothing'

Countries around the world have been working at diversifying their assets and chipping away at the dominance of the US dollar over fears that — like Russia — they could be shut out of the world's greenback-based financial system should sanctions hit.

Russia, a commodities powerhouse, has been using more rubles for trade. Putin said last week that the ruble now accounts for 40% of Russia's import and export transactions.

However, king dollar is so entrenched and pervasive in the world's financial system that very few people think it can be dethroned.

There are "real geoeconomic headwinds to the dollar," Jared Cohen, the president of global affairs at Goldman Sachs wrote in Foreign Policy on Monday.

Cohen acknowledged a "marginal" move toward de-dollarization but wrote that the world is far from an inflection point where there's a concerted effort to change the dollar-based global financial system.

"The two most significant problems for those advocating wholesale de-dollarization are that it is impossible to replace something with nothing and the United States' competitors do not currently have the capability or will to replace the dollar, even if their rhetoric at times suggests otherwise," he wrote.

Still, Cohen warned that the dollar's supremacy should not be taken for granted. He cited developments in the US, such as fiscal brinksmanship and "unnecessary tariffs," that could erode confidence in the greenback.

On Monday, two American think tank analysts wrote in the Financial Times that "American dysfunction" — political and fiscal — is the real threat to dollar dominance.

• A documentary filmmaker secretly recorded SCOTUS justices Alito and Roberts at a recent event.
• The tapes prompted criticism of the justices, but one legal expert told BI they could backfire.
• Serious issues face the court, and the tapes could make the justices more secretive.

Early Monday, Rolling Stone reported that a documentary filmmaker posing as a Catholic conservative created secret audio recordings of conversations with Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito at an exclusive charity gala.

Some critics questioned the ethics of Lauren Windsor's surreptitious recording, while others underscored how Associate Justice Alito's comments starkly contrasted with Chief Justice Roberts' responses to the undercover provocations.

But the recordings, which come as the Supreme Court is wracked by ongoing scandals and plummeting public trust, may not result in any newfound transparency and could create the opposite: an even more secretive high court, one legal scholar told Business Insider.

What the secret recordings captured

The New York Times on Monday evening appeared to confirm the veracity of the recordings, in which Alito — who recently came under fire over an upside-down American flag seen outside his home in 2021 — seemed to endorse the idea that the US should return to being a country of "godliness" while casting doubt on the possibility of future compromise between liberals and conservatives.

"One side or the other is going to win," Alito told Windsor at the event, according to both outlets. "There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it's difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can't be compromised."

Windsor, who has made a career of documenting left-wing movements like Occupy Wall Street and targeting conservatives with the website Project Veritas Exposed, continued to coax Alito, according to the audio, telling the justice she believed the solution would be "winning the moral argument."

"Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness," she can be heard saying.

"I agree with you, I agree with you," Alito concurs.

In contrast, Roberts' remarks appeared more measured. He rebutted Windsor's argument that the court should lead the country morally.

"Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?" the chief justice said, according to the reports. "That's for people we elect. That's not for lawyers."

Windsor told The Times that making the secret recordings was the only way she believed she could get answers to her questions.

"I wanted to get them on the record," she told the outlet. "So recording them was the only way to have proof of that encounter. Otherwise, it's just my word against theirs."

Why the recordings could backfire

Jonathan Adler, an expert on the Supreme Court and law professor at Case Western Reserve University, told Business Insider that Windsor's recordings do not provide any new insight into how the justices interpret law. Instead, he said, they are an unhelpful distraction from significant issues facing the court.

"This sort of thing is going to mean that the justices do things — like go to the Supreme Court Historical Society or equivalent, other institutions — less often," Adler said. "It will encourage the justices being more cloistered and more walled off from citizens, the legal community, and so on. And it's not clear why that would be good for the country or for the court or anything else."

Much of what the justices said on tape, Adler said, can be gleaned from public speeches or their previous case rulings, which Adler noted are much more thoughtfully considered than spontaneous remarks made in response to a stranger trying to provoke a response.

Instead, he said, the tapes now distract from the serious cases before the court about the scope of judicial power, the nature of presidential immunity, and issues like parental rights, gender identity, and the climate crisis.

"I think it'd be much, much more fruitful if we were devoting time to helping people unpack and understand those questions and those issues — because that's what matters," Adler said. "I mean, whether or not Justice Alito thinks that the country's political or tribal divisions are likely to be solved anytime soon doesn't tell us very much."

Representatives for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Female convicts are joining Russia's war efforts against Ukraine, per The New York Times.
• Inmates were promised pardons and a monthly salary of $2,000 during recruitment.
• But this is the first time they are being sent to the battlefield after signing on last year.

Russia's military is starting to tap into another source of manpower — female convicts.

A group of female convicts were released from a prison near St. Petersburg last month to fight in Ukraine, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing two former inmates it had spoken to.

According to The Times, roughly 10% of the prison's 400 inmates signed on with the military last year.

Military recruiters had offered the inmates one-year contracts as combat medics, frontline radio operators, and snipers, per The Times.

In addition to pardons, recruits would also receive a monthly salary of $2,000, The Times reported.

This is the first time enlisted female convicts are reported to have been sent to join the fighting in Ukraine. The female inmates had remained in prison even after signing on last year, per The Times' interviews with former and current inmates.

It's unclear if this release of female convicts is the start of a larger, nationwide program. Russia's defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

The Russian military's reliance on attrition warfare has seen it turn to unorthodox and controversial recruitment measures to fuel its war effort.

Prison inmates have long been a staple in the Russian Armed Forces. Back in December 2022, the US Department of Defense estimated that the Russian mercenary organization, the Wagner Group, had around 40,000 prisoners serving on the front lines.

Russia has recruited so many inmates that its prison population has plummeted significantly. Russia's Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov said in October that the country's prison population had plunged from 420,000 before the war to 266,000, a historic low, per The Washington Post.

Earlier in March, a local official told lawmakers that some prisons had to be closed because of "a one-time large reduction in the number of convicts," per the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

And it's not just inmates.

Russian officials have begun setting their sights on the country's African migrants. African migrant workers and students have been threatened with deportation if they do not agree to fight in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

But funnelling its population into the military risks exacerbating Russia's already precarious labor market.

In December, the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Economics said that Russia's economy had a shortage of around 5 million workers.

"Unemployment is 3%, and in some regions, it is even lower. This means there are practically no workers left in the economy," Russian Central Bank Gov. Elvira Nabiullina said in November.

• The list of Tesla investors who oppose Elon Musk's multibillion-dollar pay package is growing.
• The chief investment officer of CalSTRS, a major California pension fund, told CNBC that the fund opposes the figure.
• Chris Ailman said Musk needs to focus in on his endeavors. 

Another major Tesla shareholder is publicly opposing Elon Musk's multibillion-dollar pay package just days before investors are set to vote on the enormous figure ahead of the automaker's annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.

Christopher Ailman, chief investment officer for the California State Teachers' Retirement System, told CNBC on Monday that the massive state pension fund is voting no on Musk's astronomical compensation package. The package, which was worth $56 billion when investors initially voted on it in 2018, was down to about $46 billion as of Friday's closing price.

"We need to have a serious salary," Ailman said. "We'll pay him 140 times the average worker pay. How about that deal? I think that's more than fair. "

Ailman skewered the record-breaking compensation package as "ridiculous" and "absurd." A Delaware judge struck down the package in January, calling the final price "unfair" and the process to determine that number "deeply flawed." Investors are now voting on whether to reinstate the package.

CalSTRS, which represents more than one million public school educators in California, has been a Tesla investor since 2000, when the automaker was based in the Golden State. The pension fund currently holds 4.6 million shares in the company. 

Ailman praised Musk for building Tesla from the ground up but implored the billionaire leader to let professional managers lead the car company while he focuses on his myriad other pursuits. 

"He needs to focus in on, either cars, on X, or on going to Mars. And I think his heart really is in going to Mars," Ailman said.

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Despite Musk's other endeavors, Tesla remains a car company — and the automaker's output and stock valuation should reflect that, Ailman said.

"Even if these cars had AI in them, they are not worth 60-times earnings. That is absurd," he told CNBC.

Ailman critiqued Musk's board governance at Tesla and the billionaire's penchant for "temper tantrums" but ultimately said he would be disappointed to see Musk leave the car company. 

"I love the fact that he owns the company. He is the leader. He is the star. He designed the cars," Ailman told the outlet.

The results of the investor vote will be announced Thursday. One Wall Street analyst told BI this week that the compensation package is likely to fail, which could lead to a drop in Tesla stock. Proxy advisors are recommending investors vote no on the pay package, advice which Tesla's passive investors — about 20% of investors in total — are likely to follow, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi told BI. 

Other institutional investors who had already publicly said they were voting no on the deal told BI last week that Musk's decision to redirect a shipment of highly sought-after Nvidia chips away from Tesla and to X instead solidified their vote.

Regardless of Thursday's outcome, Ailman said CalSTRS has no plans to sell its Tesla shares, even if Musk continues to reach for the stars.

"He wants to go to Mars," Ailman told CNBC. "Let's let him fly away."