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.