compilation | Su Mi
| CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
"Frankly speaking, I don't want to be the CEO of any company". As the rocket research and development focused on "flying in the sky", SpaceX for "running on the ground", Tesla for "stopping underground", hyperloop train for "boring the brain", brain-computer interface for "neuralink", social media platform Twitter for "virtual network", Musk for "560" "A hundred million US dollars in salary" said helplessly when the lawsuit was plagued by the lawsuit.
56 billion compensation plan
In 2018, Tesla shareholders voted to approve a compensation plan for Musk in the next decade, a plan worth about $2.6 billion in stock options.
Of course, the so-called plan for the next ten years is destined to not receive all the salary rewards at one time, or even cannot obtain all of them.
To get this reward, Musk must achieve some difficult goals, such as increasing Tesla's market valuation to US$650 billion in the next 10 years. Although this figure may be a very easy thing for Tesla, which currently has a market value of US$573.958 billion, what needs to be achieved is more than 10 times the astronomical figure for Tesla, which has a market value of US$59 billion in 2018.
According to the original plan, shareholders approved a total of 12 option packages. Once Tesla's market value reaches US$100 billion for the first time, Musk can get one twelve of the total stock option package. With every subsequent increase of more than $50 billion in Tesla's market value, Musk will once again receive one-twelve of stock options. In addition, this compensation incentive plan also includes achieving 16 operating goals, most of which are related to Tesla's specific revenue and profit goals.
If the option is fully attributable, Musk may eventually own 28% of Tesla. It is worth noting that Musk does not receive a salary, but chooses a salary plan that mainly equity .
When Tesla announced its first-quarter 2022 earnings this year, Tesla's market value unlocked the benchmark for the 9-11th batch of options originally granted to Musk. If nothing unexpected happens, Musk is expected to receive the last batch of options early next year, when he will receive about $56 billion in salary. His salary plan is also regarded as the largest incentive plan for compensation in American history.
It is worth mentioning that it is this salary plan that makes Musk one of the billionaire and richest people. According to the 2022 Global Billionaire List released by Forbes in April this year, Musk topped the list with $219 billion in assets. The controversy caused by
was sued in court
. It is logical that it helped Tesla achieve its goal and Musk won the reward himself, which is a win-win situation and natural.
However, in 2019, Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla’s board members and raised questions. He wrote in the lawsuit that Tesla's board of directors violated its fiduciary responsibility and paid Musk too high a salary.
Simplely put, Richard Tornetta believes that when the board of directors approves the compensation plan, it did not explicitly require Musk to be independent. At that time, the board members included Musk’s brother Kimbal, as well as friends Antonio Gracias and Steve Jurvetson (Jurvetson and Gracias later left Tesla’s board of directors).
At the same time, Richard Tornetta is also skeptical about whether Musk is focused enough on Tesla, the electric car company, because Musk is not only the CEO of a Tesla company, but also in charge of SpaceX, Boring, Neuralink and the newly acquired Twitter now.
Musk: The word ‘CEO’ cannot define what I do
In response to this lawsuit, Musk responded in court recently, saying, “ Frankly speaking, I don’t want to be the CEO of any company. ”
In Mas’s view, using the traditional CEO title to describe his role is not necessarily appropriately described."At SpaceX, I was actually responsible for the engineering of the Rockets; at Tesla, I was mainly responsible for automotive technology, which made the two companies successful."
"So, the CEO is usually seen as a somewhat business-focused role, but in fact, my role is more like an engineer who develops technology, , making sure we develop breakthrough technologies and making sure we have an incredible team of engineers who can achieve these goals."
Besides that, Musk believes, "Great engineers will only work for great engineers. It's my primary responsibility, not the CEO's responsibility."
has the search for Tesla CEO The successor's plan
In fact, Musk is "unrelated" and is not a verbal statement. After several proven, he does have such plans.
According to foreign media electrek, Tesla's board member is also Musk's friend James Murdoch, the latest revealing that Musk is looking for a candidate for Tesla's position as CEO, although the person's identity has not been made public.
Former board member Antonio Gracias revealed in court that Tesla's board of directors had also considered alternative CEOs in the past, but had not found a suitable replacement.
For so many years, it is actually difficult for Tesla to find a second CEO like Musk.
Review of Tesla's development, which was founded in 2003 by American entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and Musk later joined as Chairman of Tesla.
initially aimed at providing affordable electric vehicles to the mass market. Tesla's birth did not bring much "splash" in the market, and even went on the verge of bankruptcy. In just one year from 2007 to 2008, Tesla changed its CEO four times in succession. At that time, after Tesla's co-founder Martin Eberhard was ousted due to difficulties in delivering models, Michael Marks, the former CEO of electronics contractor Flexibility, took over as interim CEO. At the end of November 2007, Israeli engineer and semiconductor expert Ze’ev Droi took over as the new CEO.
In October of the year, Musk was ordered to put all the remaining cash from his sale of Paypal into the troubled automaker and become Tesla's fourth CEO.
After Musk took over, Tesla first launched the Roadster sports car squeezing into the pure electric sports car market. Later, it was successfully launched in 2010 and successively launched Model S, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck and other models. Since then, it has led the self-driving car market and has become the most valuable automaker. Now it produces millions of electric cars every year.
In the early years, Musk also talked about resigning as CEO and focusing on his other roles at Tesla, such as being a product architect.
"Look for someone else to manage Twitter"
In addition to resigning as CEO of Tesla, Musk also mentioned in this lawsuit, "I hope to reduce my time on Twitter and find someone else to manage Twitter."
Since Musk completed the transaction of Twitter's privatization for $44 billion on October 27 this year and took over Twitter for more than a dozen days, his decisive approach is believed to be obvious to all in the industry.
is also the saying "It is easy to fight the country, but it is difficult to defend the country." After taking over Twitter, Musk quickly reorganized his team members. According to foreign media reports, Twitter fired Twitter's original CEO, CFO and Law Committee chairman and about half of its employees because it lost $4 million a day; this week, Musk also fired some engineers who wanted to correct mistakes in the technical dimension; in recent days, Twitter employees disclosed an internal memo Musk issued, showing that Musk asked employees to either accept long-term high-intensity work or leave with compensation.
At the same time, Musk also vigorously rectified the Twitter platform, including the Twitter Blue certification service that was only launched on the Twitter iOS platform for one day, and then he asked to cancel it.
On the other hand, Musk's "lightning" rectification practice has also taken him a lot of time. Recently, in an interview with foreign media, Musk revealed, "My workload has increased from 70-80 hours a week to possibly 120 hours. Sleep-wake-work, sleep-wake-work, and it goes back and forth seven days a week. I have to execute this for a while, and I have no choice. Once Twitter is on track, I think it is much easier to manage than SpaceX or Tesla."
In this lawsuit, Musk also admitted that some Tesla engineers are assisting in evaluating Twitter's engineering team, but he said that this is taking the principle of "voluntary" and that it is "after Tesla engineers get off work." However, this approach has still been dissatisfied with some Tesla shareholders.
workaholic "Musk", can retire?
Musk is also a well-known "workaholic" in the technology circle. Previously, a screenshot of an email circulating on foreign social media was circulating on Musk's request for Tesla employees to work, which showed, "Musk forced employees to work for 40 hours a week, and said he often slept in factories to let workers see him work: "If I didn't do this, Tesla would have gone bankrupt! ”
Regarding some Tesla decisions he made, in this lawsuit, Musk believed that the consent of the board of directors was not required and refuted the allegations that his performance goals were easy to achieve. Recalling the efforts Tesla initially took to move from its verge of bankruptcy to explosive growth, Musk said, "This kind of pain cannot be expressed in words. I don't want to add this kind of pain to anyone."
. Regarding its mood of not wanting to be CEO, many netizens said that it is unlikely at present.
Reference:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/21/17147678/elon-musk-tesla-ceo-compensation-award-plan
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23458254/elon-musk-tesla-trial-pay-shareholder-autopilot-crash
https://electrek.co/2022/11/16/elon-musk-successor-tesla-ceo/
