Hacker News Reader

Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

How do you explain, in a rational way, that stockholders decided to vote to confirm Elon’s massive pay-package? The only explanation I have is that these people believe that bending to Elon’s will means he will reward them by inflating TSLA with meme-stock level shenanigans. Is there any other rational explanation, as opposed to “whoever has voting shares is already part of the Elon cult?”

View on HN

Elon's pay package was contingent on an insane target that he needed to hit. No one in the world expected him to do it.

Tell me what is better. A CEO that coasts and earns 10/100s millions a year to be average. Or a CEO that says I will take this company into the stratosphere but I want X% of the company to do it?

> Tell me what is better

The slow and steady one, definitely.

> CEO that says I will take this company into the stratosphere

TSLA is -25% this year, -29% since June 2023, -11% since June 2021.

This does not look like stratospheric numbers to me. You pretty much have to go back to the second half of 2020 to see any noticeable growth at all compared to today's price.

> The slow and steady one, definitely.

This is far from the dominant opinion.

> TSLA is -25% this year, -29% since June 2023, -11% since June 2021.

How is that relevant? The deal was for him to hit the numbers in 2018. The fact that it is a 50 billion pay package speaks to the fact that Tesla still has a very high valuation and the deal was contingent on that.

> This is far from the dominant opinion.

True if you are counting individual stocks, maybe not so if you are counting individual owners?

> How is that relevant?

It was posited that Elon was a "curve goes to the skies" kind of CEO and my response when looking at the past years performance is that it looks more like "curve is bungee-jumper".

Cool cherry picking numbers. What matters is the 10x since the deal was made and the PE ratio today which is fair.

Sorry, I did not want to come across as anti-TSLA so I chose to ignore the highest peaks such as November 2021 where the stock is down more than 50% since.

He did what he said he would. It was a prearranged agreement many people thought was unreachable, and he did.

I find it inspiring that he has long term visions and executes to implement, what people would consider, insane goals over decades. I feel this is what makes Elon stand out, and worthy of the pay day, especially when you pull off what you said you would.

But he did by almost committing securities fraud multiple times, plus pumping the price with boastful tweets and meme-stock tactics… the interest of the company would be to avoid that, not the opposite

The one and only interest of the for-profit company is earning money for shareholders. And Musk did earn a lot of money for them since the deal was signed. The tools do not matter as long as they are legal.

Rationally it's more like a "oh shit we're too late to exit now" situation. The stock would have crashed if they'd denied the package. So they voted for it and hope to sell afterwards for a better price.

In one way it’s only fair to pay him what he was owed. The package was a way to incentivize him to get the stock price up and meet revenue goals. He hit every of the goals but one. The board failed the company in structuring a proper pay package and there was an element of luck where the stock just exploded in value.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com