A 14-year-old genius has already been hired by Elon Musk for SpaceX

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has hired a 14-year-old “genius” just as he is about to graduate from university.

Kairan Quazi, from the San Francisco Bay Area, is soon to become the youngest person to graduate from Santa Clara University with a degree in computer science and engineering.

As is the dream for university graduates many years his senior, Quazi has already secured a dream role ahead of his graduation after Musk’s spacecraft manufacturing company SpaceX extended a job offer as a software engineer starting next month.

Quazi has known from a young age that his intellect set him apart from his peers and soon began to skip grades in school before attending university.

Speaking to the KGO, Quazi said: “During third grade, it became very obvious to my teachers, my parents, and my paediatrician that mainstream education wasn’t the right path for my accelerated learning ability.”

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Despite being many years younger than his classmates at Santa Clara University, Quazi said he, and everyone else, soon become accustomed to it.

He continued: “There wasn’t anything to compare it to say 'Oh this is different'. But I really enjoyed it - I made a lot of close friends. I think after a few days the novelty of me being there wore off.”

Quazi explained that the experience helped him to grow, saying: “I went from being a third grade mutineer to really feeling validated intellectually.”

Despite some expressing concern about Quazi not getting to experience a proper childhood, the 14-year-old explained that he feels it’s the best thing for him.

He said: “I think there is a conventional mindset that I'm missing out on childhood, but I don't think that's true.

“I think again that mindset would have me graduating middle school now and I don't think it makes sense for someone that's able to take rigorous graduate electives work in a prestigious co-op - I am joining SpaceX as a software engineer.

“I don't think it makes sense I would be trapped or that anyone whose abilities are beyond that to be trapped.”

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.