Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter with a classically off-the-cuff announcement: The next version of the company’s , , and wouldn’t be a beta at all — it would be a . This came as a shock to anyone watching FSD’s development, who can clearly tell that the software isn’t ready for prime time, but it appears to have been a surprise on Tesla’s end too: The company is for a three-month summer stint training the FSD software.

New Glassdoor job postings from Tesla, , show that the company is looking for “Vehicle Operators” for three-month temporary gigs. The job is focused on data collection, helping to teach Tesla’s software how to drive a car — y’know, the kind of core functionality that you’re only supposed to refine immediately before software comes out of beta.

Now, , “operating a vehicle” is supposed to be FSD’s whole deal. It’s not absurd for Tesla to hire more testers and collect more data, in advance of a full release. What is absurd, however, is only building up that data collection capacity after the announcement of a stable release — not beforehand, which would give engineers more time to parse through the information and apply changes to the software.

Even better, Tesla could have done this from the beginning — use internal test drivers, rather than relying on its customers (and all other drivers on the road near them) as guinea pigs with its “beta” scheme. Sure that’s a slower process, one that trades the quantity of data ingested for experimental control and safety of those involved, but it’s also a responsible approach. Not very , I know, but it’s an approach to software development that Tesla no longer seems to be against. Why not do it from the start?