Realistically this cut was probably done in time to offer a decent severance without hurting things on the corporate side -- to compare this to Twitter's post-Elon crash-plan is disingenuous, and i'm not even a Musk fan.

I'm gonna give you a bucket full of benefit of doubt and assume you mean nothing negative by this. I'm all for fake people fulfilling VCs goals if that means we can have better and more exciting future (which Musk has delivered to date).

It's worth mentioning that many other "real" people with "no" hidden agendas have done ... jack shit over the past 20 years. :)

Its kinda true though. He's been the poster "white night entrepreneur", egged on by every other nerd who still believes in the exceptional founder myth. That myth motivates a ton of folks to give up their lives and time to try and build something on pretty bleak terms.