You KNOW Musk has no intention on converting unvested RSUs to cash. He'll either get rid of them completely while giving everyone a 10% raise (common Twitter TC is 50% cash 50% RSU) or keep everyones cash the same, and tell them their RSUs are now amazing options that will be worth soooo much when Twitter gets relisted in the future
I guess I can only speak for myself at Google which has a similar high percentage of pay as RSUs, but if they suddenly took away everyone's stock grants, nearly everyone would quit.
But the scenario that you KNOW is going to happen doesn't seem likely.
It sucks and I wouldn't wish it on my worse enemy. It does make sense though since the mission and culture will be night and day different and would never mesh.
Is that possible? I guess it is but wow, I would be beyond livid if my compensation changed due to this.
More often these stock options for non-publicly traded companies are not liquid until they IPO. Which a startup engineer at SpaceX completely expects
But the Twitter employees didn't join a startup, and have compared their TC to other liquid comps offered to them. Their leases and mortgages would be based on their liquid comp, which could be cut in half overnight until the next IPO