Musk asks X staff to justify their stock options | Hacker News Reader

Musk asks X staff to justify their stock options

theverge.com

33 pointsalgo_trader12 comments

This article is terrible: the title’s postscript seems to explicitly say this is about granted options, the article then _implies_ it’s about granted options, and finally the actual message seems to be about granting new options in comp packages.

Except of course twitter is private so they can only sell stock they have (or exercise options) with consent of twitter, which seemingly has not been done. Nor have compensation changes due in April been done - again per the article - but I don’t know if “due” means contractual or stated compensation changes have not been made, or if twitter historically did per review/comp adjustment in April. Those are very different things.

9f course given musk’s track record of labor code violations, wage theft, illegal firing, and fraudulently claiming employees resigned, it’s entirely possible he’s trying overt wage theft.

Again as always: stock based compensation is worthless if you cannot freely exchange it for money, or if it can be retroactively seized.

I’d be interested to hear if there are any HN users that work at Twitter, who could comment on this. I don’t understand why you’d put up with this sort of behavior from the CEO of a tanking company, when RSUs/options for companies with much better prospects are out there for the taking. But I don’t work there, so maybe there’s something I’m missing.

You’re missing a lot of Elon fanboys.

“The most recent stock refresh for X employees was in October 2023, valuing the company at $19 billion — significantly less than the $44 billion Musk paid for it.”

Trying to deal with this mistake?

This whole spectacle has got to be one of the better examples of "be careful what you wish for" I've ever seen. Between Musk's bravado and running his mouth, and the absolute salivating that his detractors were doing when the courts were deciding whether to force the purchase or not, the end result everyone thought they were wishing for was probably a lot rosier than the actual result. I'm pretty sure the only people who have actually gained anything from this entire farce were the previous owners. Everyone else, from the current owners and investors, to the users, to the rest of us that have to live in a world where Twitter/X continues to be relevant, have pretty much been made worse off by the whole thing.

I'm sure the NLRB has their eyes on this one....

It sounds like this is requesting justification for future grants and not withholding previous grants so I’m not sure there’s much to look at. Kind of tacky and something that would be a red flag for me personally, but I can’t think of any regulations that it violates.

Yeah, not saying theres an issue just yet, but Elon has a knack for this kinda thing.

Because of politics?

Yeah I’m sure that’s the only thing they do with their time. Definitely not work or do anything else productive for society.

Is that the organization that protects employees of private companies or something else?

Why exactly?

Musk should take X Public again. This time with some BDFL shares a la Zuckerberg.

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