I was with you until this. There are definitely many millionaires minted from their original equity grants several years ago that have gone up 1,000%+.
To amend what I said a bit, we're talking about employees with shares (or any other comp) that they get from their "hard work" that turn them into millionaires.
They probably have a 4 year RSU schedule determined based on the TSLA share price in 2019, so $50.
If their equity compensation target was $30k per year, then they would get stock grants in 2021 and 2022 worth $400-600k.
That works out to a lot of millionaires.
Elon is a smart man, many of these executives are smart people, they know working for a company does not pay off in the same way that entrepreneurship does. They admit as much when they describe why they deserve so much money.
I'm not even saying employees should expect that type of return, what I'm saying is that executives should not use their hard work to become massively wealthy to try and influence their employees to work just as hard, when they know the payout is not there. It's manipulative.
Everyone knows Musk "slept on the factory floor" to get Tesla working. That type of investment has paid out well for him. It won't pay out well for the workers on the factory floor.
Someone that joined as a new grad 5 years ago would be a millionaire today. If they had been selling along the way, maybe even wealthier than if they had held on till this moment.
You are severely underestimating the absolutely meteoric rise that $TSLA has had. Even a single $100K initial grant (low even for a new grad at the time) a few years ago would be worth north of a million.
Tesla IPO'd in 2010 with 13.3 million shares
Tesla had a bit under 1000 employees in 2010
Tesla stock price was $17 in 2010
Tesla had a 5-for-1 stock split in August 2020
Tesla Stock price is $748 a share today
1 share of Tesla in 2010 is equal to $3,740 today
It would take 268 shares of Tesla from 2010 to be a millionaire today. that's $4,556.
Elon's success with Tesla should have produced at least 1,000 millionaires if his early employees believed in the product.
I cant say that still translates to today's workers, but if his vision is that there is still just as much room to grow - then he would be making a lot more millionaires if he is correct. Even amongst todays newer employees. Idk if I would bet on that growth at this point since it is already a household name now and it wasnt before, but I have no actual reason to think one way or the other
Therein lies the rub, as they say. He may have spun off millionaires based on original investors, and maybe a few early employees forwent salary for stock options and became millionaires.
But we're talking about hard workers who put in over 40 hours a week currently. Are they working for stock options that are going to make them millionaires?
Maybe, maybe not. But now they are working for a well known company that looks good on a resume, and I have no reason to believe they are not being paid fairly for their work.
Seems comparable to the big law firms. those might be worse tbh. Do it for the experience and Resume, then get out.
I really hope that we don't guess people's motives. Attacking motives is not just a logical fallacy but also leads to more serious problems as it prevents us from having civil discourse. Look at how angry the left and the right are just because they project what people think per their ideology.
Perhaps people are bored with the word billionaire and want to use an edgier sounding synonym. That is how languages work - they evolve. (i.e. the word literally is now mostly a synonym for figuratively.)
It only becomes an -archy when the actual literal power is openly and legally held
Otherwise, neckbeards would argue that literally every society in history has been a kleptocracy, which is a far more apt description of the sarcastic viewpoint on this society than "oligarchy," which is when rich people are put into office which matches the thing they are good at, would be
Oligarchy does not mean "rich people hold power because they're powerful," or anything even slightly like that
Think about the society that you see in comic book alternate universes every so often, where they make Thomas Edison the chief of industry, et cetera. The nonsense one where we somehow have the ability to divine who's good at what by looking at the history of their wallet, and on that basis make meritocratic elections. In such a society, a lottery winner even who exceeded the wealth of others would wield nonetheless no power, because it wasn't earned.
Practically speaking, there's no way such a thing could plausibly exist. But that's what the word actually means. It's one of those things where people trying to use it to sound deep and wise end up undercutting themselves (like "utopia.")
Can Musk be considered such, considering his antagonistic relationship with current establishment? His acquisition of Twitter could be seen as his first move into politics realm.
But I also wouldn't want to exaggerate the temperature of the hot water Musk is in; he's under fairly minor securities scrutiny thanks to a series of unprecedentedly stupid foot-in-mouth decisions he had 100% control over and could have immediately and trivially avoided at no real cost, he picked a fight with the government over reasonable COVID restrictions and they more or less declined to fight back, and lately he's posted a bunch of tweets of the form "DeMoCrAtS mOrE lIkE dImOcRaTs pwnt!!!!" while a joke video game site slaps him around with a trout. Besides that the most credible claim there's political antagonism is a bizarre to make the White House press secretary say the word "Tesla" which seems at best to be a re-run of the "Why Won't Obama Wear A Flag Pin" controversy, only somehow stupider.
I'm just saying I wouldn't describe myself as having an antagonistic relationship with the government because I get parking tickets sometimes and I have tweets calling elected officials clowns.
Some think he's saving the world, but from what I can see, he might just be the world's most effective leech.
However you feel about the Biden laptop stories, how many of these oligarchs allowed its spread? I think you're kidding yourself if you think oligarchs work against the establishment, but for some reason it's a pretty common view; that of fighting the more powerful, when really that's you.
He's doing it to save humanity from extinction level events. If he just wanted to be rich, well, that goal was met years ago.
It just turns out you need a lot of capital for truly effective altruism.
Isn't transportation the number 1 cause of CO2 emissions? How does forcing his employees to transmute to and from work help that goal?
And those only pay out if you don't consider the mining costs to make the batteries. If you do, they're significantly worse
We should be sticking to combustion cars, atmosphere sourcing the gasoline (we said "it's too expensive" back when gas was $0.79 a gallon; things have changed) and mandating 10% inefficiency into something chemically stable, so that road trip driving becomes part of the solution
Elon Musk has not performed any altruism. Almost all of the other billionaires have. He's never given any money to charity at all. No, that word doesn't mean "he's working on stuff."
You're just trying to make the man you're a fan of look good by pretending he does things he hasn't done
Why did you think that he was something other than a car maker who lies for publicity a lot?
I'm not parent, but it sounds like you might have the causality of this backwards. Parent wouldn't be a fan in the first place if he didn't think that he's done good things.
You seem to need a quick brush up on what marketing is.
Parent is a fan because the internet told him to be. Parent is a fan of great things that Musk explicitly has not actually done.
> You seem to need a quick brush up on what marketing is. > Parent is a fan because the internet told him to be.
Question: Are you a non-fan of Musk because of marketing? After all, five years ago many people were much bigger fans of Musk, and the last few years have been full of anti-Musk messaging from various corners. So perhaps you are more a victim of marketing than parent? The "Internet" is for sure telling people to be anti-Musk nowadays.
I think it's more charitable to treat your views and parents views as sincerely held, and argue about the views directly, not about whether or not they are "just the result of marketing/the internet/the media/whatever". It'll make for a more interesting conversation.
I'm a non-fan of Musk because it is default to be a non-fan of people, because he's done nothing of value, and he's done a lot of damage to the planet
I don't like people who call heroes pedophiles. I don't like people with a long history of firing their staff for what they say, who go on to call themselves free speech extremists.
I don't like ultra-rich men who give nothing to the starving.
I don't like people gassing the worst in politics.
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> After all, five years ago many people were much bigger fans of Musk
If you take your opinions from Reddit and HN, maybe.
Please stop trying to explain that it's normal to like this man, and diagnosing people for failing to get it, now. This is ultra-fan behavior, and really quite gross.
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> I think it's more charitable to treat your views and parents views as sincerely held
It's very weird that you keep invoking charity.
I'm not really that worried about the opinions of a Musk ultra-fan, frankly, nor your attempts to tell me that I should steer my opinions to what you think will make for interesting conversation.
Go fanboy somewhere else.
It's not in the spirit of this site to act this way, which is why I made my original comment. More importantly, it's just a pretty obnoxious way to behave towards people. If you don't care cause you think I'm just a "gross ultra-fan", well, that's your right, you do you.
You really tried to ask me whether the reason I wasn't a fan of him was because marketing made me so after I said really why; questioned whether I was "the victim of marketing;" instructed me that the reason for my not liking who you like is the internet telling me not to; instructed me two separate times in a single message about how to be charitable (by agreeing with you, and with nothing to do with actual charity;) then recoiled when I said "stop fanboying at me," as if I was the rude one, and chose to lecture me at length about the spirit of the site and how rude I am, for not wanting to be told that my opinions are based rather than what I said actually on marketing by someone who can't tell me my first name or whether I wear glasses
In reality, it's for the reasons I said before you argued with me about my beliefs and identity, then called me rude when I reacted by not couching up to you and learning about myself from you
I think you really honestly can't see it
Please stop now. Third time in a row that I've asked. Thanks.
The principle of charity.
This planet has nighttime. This planet has bad weather. Solar fans usually say "batteries," but that's absolute nonsense; there is nowhere near enough copper on this planet to wire them up, or lithium or lead to make them. When they're not grid backed, which is what we're discussing here, they'd have to be half the size of your house, they'd cost $600k, and you'd have to replace them every 25 years. You think the housing crisis is bad? Wait for the battery crisis that solar fans want.
There's a reason that every time they build a solar plant, they build a natural gas plant right next door.
After that, someone inevitably insists that we can just cover the planet in transmission wires. And I mean, if you even think that through for a tenth of a second
On top of that, *solar plants don't work*. Ivanpah has wanted to shut down for 20 years straight because it's bleeding money, and produces less than 10% of the power it was expected to, but the state won't let it, because then their green laws aren't satisfied anymore (and they're only satisfied now because nobody counts the infill carbon.)
Another thing nobody seems to understand is flywheel smoothing. The variability in power is being physically smoothed by (usually) a large spinning piece of rock, similar to the metal disc that smooths power demand in your car. You remember how the one at Level3 cut a notch through the highway when it spun out of the building? That was with a professional maintenance team. You want one of those in every house, or at every city block?
Energiewende failed for a reason. Germany threw almost two trillion dollars at it for 14 years, and all they did was 6x their cost of power, drive their reliability down, and increase their carbon output (even with flywheels, start/stop cycles aren't free; turning those gas plants on and off is a disaster.)
Solar only makes sense if you look at it on paper, driven by an amateur who's googling shit.
As soon as you look at what actually happens at plants, start folding in all the topics you didn't know about, experience, look at whether there are materials to support the fantasy, look at what can be recycled instead of just saying "recycle it," etc?
It just doesn't work.
One of the world's largest and most industrialized nations tried for 14 years, and it was a disaster.
Just look at the real world evidence.
Are we? Or is it just your deliberate narrowing of the topic for convenience?
> After that, someone inevitably insists that we can just cover the planet in transmission wires.
Ah, yes, "Someone" a.k.a. Straw Man.
> solar plants don't work. Ivanpah has wanted to shut down
Ivanpah is solar thermal. The main thing making it less competitive is cost reduction in medium- and large-scale PV installations, and [citation needed] for them wanting to shut down.
> Another thing nobody seems to understand is flywheel smoothing
Another thing nobody cares about in this context because it's not essential. Most large solar projects are turning to molten salt (not batteries BTW) for storage. In such a system, there's no need for flywheel smoothing.
> You remember how the one at Level3 cut a notch through the highway
No. Do you remember the thousands of oil spills, fires, and other adverse events associated with fossil fuels, or the nuclear-power-plant disasters? No technology is perfectly safe. It's not sufficient to cherry-pick an example or two. To have any kind of point here, you'd have to show that overall solar is less safe than alternatives.
> driven by an amateur who's googling shit.
Totally uncalled for, against the guidelines, and also more descriptive of the people pimping nuclear. That's the very epitome of "works great on paper" google-research, ignoring still-unsolved problems with older designs and hand-waving over anticipated problems with as-yet-untried ones.
> Just look at the real world evidence.
Please take your own advice.
This attempt at a table turning shows that you really have no understanding of the mechanics of this discussion.
Yes, that is exactly what people excluding you are discussing.
I have no interest in engaging with you, because you've made clear that you have no understanding of the material.
Uh, no I don't. Link?
A man worth a hundred billion plus may not be considered generous for giving away less than I have. No. I am in no way rich or important. He can do more than I have, and you absolutely will not hold up a pittance like that and pretend it forgives him the insane damage he's done.
This level of apologism reflects on you. Please stop putting it in front of my face.
When we as a people have grown, we will judge billionaires for their allowing the starving to die, instead of gathering in groups to show that we're wise enough to admire them.
Stop looking up to those who could stop the death, and choose not to. They are not worthy of your respect, and you should learn that.
I'm not religious, but there's a lot of wisdom in what nearly every religion says about rich men. Here in the West we tend to be familiar with the Biblical phrasing: "Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
I have no expectation to go to heaven, but my fat ass is getting through that needle, because there are dozens of human beings who eat because I mail my dollars. Every time someone in a pope hat tries to stare me down, I get to look back with clear eyes. Feels pretty good.
The UN World Food Programme makes it easy. The hardest part is using a British spelled word every month. (Indeed, if I ever become rich like him, one of my plans is to go to them and tell them I will fund fixing world hunger if and only if they switch permanently to the American spelling. Makes my skin itch.)
Put your signature on food for another person. Try it, one time. You won't stop.
Pretty soon you'll get why I don't care about a couple hundred grand, from a man who spends tens of millions on car commercials every month.
And you might understand why I think you shouldn't be impressed either. And why I think that if we all started expecting him to do better, and stopped being impressed by silly tricks like fake flamethrowers and smoking pot on vaccine denier radio, we might be better off.
Do you know how much he's had removed from his taxes through lobbying for exemptions? That's a pittance. A trivial pittance.
Elon Musk challenged the UN to explain how $6b could help against world hunger, and said if they did it he'd foot the bill. They solidly answered.
It's been years, and he's trying to buy Twitter for $44b instead.
He's literally got all the resources he needs to solve world hunger, and instead he's wasting time trying to put two block subways under sports arenas which even trivial video game simulations can show would never, ever have worked.
Can you imagine anyone being in a position to solve a job like that, and choosing not to?
At least Bill Gates is tackling malaria. But the ones who aren't doing something like that? Not my favorites. I'd say something more severe but HN has a habit of treating criticism of the rich as bad behavior.
With that amount of money, he could just rent an academic to tell him how to do good, and he chooses not to. I don't understand how anyone, ever, fails to judge that. I genuinely don't.
I don't understand how we've gotten to a position of not hating rich who don't give back. It used to be socially normal to loathe these people, to the point of calling them robber barons.
Nine million lives a year. A holocaust every eight months. Ten thousand children every single day.
People like to pretend that they have some deep insight into the money not being liquid and people not being able to and blah blah who cares, he got it together for Twitter, it's just apologism
What is the meaningful difference between having the ability to stop that and choosing not to, and actual evil? Like, really. I know it's the kind of statement that seems exaggerated and misplaced, but make a genuine attempt to answer it.
We still punish someone for causing a death, even if it's through inaction. If you're standing at a train control panel in that Rocky and Bullwinkle thing with a person tied on the tracks, and you can pull the lever to switch the track to save them, and you just choose not to? And you knew? Even if you had nothing to do with the situation, you're still going to jail for negligent homicide.
If you ask the average American who the worst person of all time is, they'll typically say Hitler, and justify it with six million dead. Better educated people might instead say Stalin, Pol Pot, or Andrew Jackson, on similar grounds.
Most academics count the largest single human's death count as Stalin at an estimated 12 mil.
Nine million by starvation every single year.
Should we have the concept of negligent genocide?
I will ask it again. What is the meaningful difference between having the ability to stop that and choosing not to, and actual evil? Really.
We all pay a substantial portion of our income in taxes. They skate. That portion on just Elon and the Waltons - on just five people, to pay our tax rate - and three holocausts every two years are prevented for the rest of time.
When do we start judging them for their excesses, their lack of doing their share, the harm they're doing to the rest of us?
When do we stop admiring the gilded cage, and realize that it's denying us our basics?
Shouldn't you have government health care, manageable rent, and a non-carbon grid by now?
Of course, given where I'm posting this, this comment is probably bad for me in the long run
Statistically speaking, most academics believe that altruism evolved because it's an effective cure for tragedies of the commons
Really, do you read that as something other than "he threw away a couple hundred grand to impress a girl?"
Do you actually think that was charity? Genuinely? Why just that once, then?
And from that lens, do you realize how little money that actually is, then, and how easy a real amount would be able for him to give?
This idea that Musk famously risked it all to make Tesla so he could come out as a billionaire does not scale down to an individual level for employees. Musk slept on the floor so he could become insanely wealthy, not to get a $10k/year raise.
This type of manipulation is constantly abused by rich oligarchs. They start these endeavors usually with huge parachutes, and then expect their hourly employees to risk nearly as much as they did, with no parachutes, and without the world changing profits that come with it. Citing hard work the entire way, knowing full well that it is the hard work of their employees that they depend on to keep the gears moving, but that those hard workers will not become the next Musk or Gates, regardless of how many hours they put in.
If I'm wrong, I want a list of millionaires that Musk has created. Bonus points if they still work at Tesla and didn't have to spin their experience off into another project, so the work-to-profit transfer can be 1:1.