Tesla’s Pay Deal to Keep Elon Musk: All or Nothing

I think you could only honestly say that Tesla and SpaceX have struggled with operations under his leadership if you're ignoring the level of success that both companies reached so far. He's busy, he's admitted and aware of switching costs of leading two companies - there is value to this though of course too; imagine if Elon only focused on Tesla and not SpaceX - where would we be as a society, where would Elon be position wise? He's following his intuition and his heart which he clearly wears on his sleeves. He's a wonderful role model, and we should support everyone the same way he's gained support from others; yes, he was entrepreneurial from a young age, and "got lucky" by knowing to move to the place that dreams are more easily funded. We fail as a society supporting everyone to reach their dreams to the same level, part of the reason are systems in place that are designed to control and funnel everyone into an economically efficient model - however ignoring the qualitative impact - it's why the idea of flexible learning, learning online at your own pace, etc are going to become the future.

Didn't he also get the use of a private jet or something like that? That might be considered part of his compensation and so take him above minimum wage.

Bragging about having a $1 salary is basically telling your employees that you make so much more in other benefits that you can choose to forego the one thing (salary) that makes up the vast majority of their total comp.