SpaceX douments show company forbids employees sell stock if they've misbehaved

> So my take is that SpaceX stock as compensation can have zero value and should be treated as such..

Correct.

I remain astounded by people who consider stock based compensation on non-public companies (and in this case a company who's CEO has explicitly railed against companies being publicly traded), especially given these terms seem to actively prevent employees alone from selling shares during funding rounds and similar (from the article it sounds like the only groups who can profit from share sales are spacex itself - ideally the point of funding - musk, and presumably his selected cronies).

If a company say's "we'll give you a stock grant" but isn't willing to just pay you the equivalent value at each vesting point then their intent is to screw you over, and negotiating like there's any good faith on their side is stupid.

I guess when you engage in wage theft that does cut costs

How is that relevant to the article that was posted?

Well no, you still have to pay taxes on the stock when it vests, usually stock compensation is handled by a fraction of the stock being sold upon vesting to cover those taxes but I'm not sure how that works when you can't sell the stock yourself and spacex gets to invent the value those shares have when they're granted.

If a company wants to have stock based compensation, the company needs to allow employees to get priority in exchanging stock during funding rounds or "tenders" (I guess that what they're called at spacex scale), or it needs to be public. The idea that you can pay someone in an asset but then turn around and say "actually you don't own that asset" is absurd, but tracks with Elon's general view that employees don't deserve compensation or basic employment rights.