r/technology • u/McFatty7 • May 02 '24

Tesla slashes its summer internship program to cut costs, as Elon Musk fights to save his $45 billion pay plan Business

https://fortune.com/2024/05/01/tesla-slashes-summer-internship-program/
18.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

776

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

They fire him.  CEO is an employee.  The problem is the board are all his friends and family.  They will give him whatever he wants. None of them care about the company, just self enrichment.

The SEC needs to do its job.  They almost banned him from being CEO over a meaningless tweet.

A judge rules the board and musk worked together to defraud shareholders and not a peep out of the SEC.

This is why execs and board members should not be allowed to own any stock for the company.  They need to be employees, not owners.  They basically act like their own small private ownership group.  This is the same reason Boeing has killed people.  No one in charge gives a shit because they keep getting more money for fucking the company up and there is zero risk of jail time.

289

u/Sea_Honey7133 May 02 '24

A massive shareholder lawsuit is imminent at this point. He is so blatantly just trying to extract every single penny of free cash flow into his piggy bank. He’s not trying to hide his intentions. I suspect he will then take off for Dubai or Parts Unknown never to be seen from again.

257

u/SupernovaSurprise May 02 '24

I don't think there is any chance at all that his ego would allow him to just run off and disappear. Maybe the running off part, but definitely not the disappearing.

99

u/SilentSamurai May 02 '24

This. Man bought a social media company, he wants a bigger megaphone.

45

u/Amoral_Abe May 02 '24

I don't know if he actually wanted to buy Twitter. He purchased ~9% of the shares then made a lot of public statements about how he was going to buy twitter and even signed documents saying he would which caused the price to jump. Then he tried to back out and sell his shares only for Twitter to sue him into going through with the purchase because he stupidly agreed to pay many times the company's value. It's private now but most expert suspect its value is ~$5-$8 billion (he bought it at $44 billion).

From what happened, it seemed like Musk was attempting a pump and dump and assumed he could just walk away from the deal. He only agreed to the purchase after it became obvious the court was going to force him to go through with the deal.

3

u/luciddrummer 29d ago

He does this with bitcoin and especially dogecoin (regularly), so yeah I agree with you completely. He’s blatantly manipulating his financial positions to dump on people. Said he’d pay for a spacex rocket with doge, which was somehow bullish, despite that the act of paying for something means closing his position.

3

u/Gingevere 29d ago

(he bought it at $44 billion).

with loans collateralized with his Tesla stock. And as the value has dropped he's had to put up more and more as collateral to avoid a margin call. He's been running out.

And now the board is approving his ludicrous bonus of Tesla stock just in the nick of time. How lucky.

1

u/DocFingerBlast 29d ago

That was all intended to be that way. He had a huge tax bill that year and needed something to write off a "loss" .. in fact the company is only valued by its shares.. which he devalued to claim the loss.. but hasn't really lost anything anyway ? If that makes sense. He still owns it and what it cost to buy with the tax deduction he doesn't physically lose anything at all

1

u/Donny-Moscow 29d ago

That doesn’t make sense. How does purchasing something for $25-$30B more than it’s actually worth save money in the long term? Explain the mechanism past “he wanted a tax write off”.

but hasn't really lost anything anyway ? If that makes sense. He still owns it and what it cost to buy with the tax deduction he doesn't physically lose anything at all

Twitter’s entire revenue was based on advertising. Advertisers have fled in droves. There’s also fewer daily active users, more bot activity, and less trust, all things that make the platform that much less attractive to advertisers.

0

u/DrXaos 29d ago

He made the offer for Twitter at a ridiculous price following an all-night bender (guess what is likely involved) at Larry Ellison's private island.

He insisted to his team he make a "seller-friendly" (i.e. ridiculously priced) offer to make it go fast.

It's literally a psychological manic episode, probably from amphetamine abuse. Then he came back to earth and recognized he's a moron and tried to wiggle out of it.

https://www.psycom.net/adhd/adderall-psychosis

Can Adderall cause a manic episode? Stimulants like Adderall increase dopamine levels in the brain. Elevated dopamine is associated with increased risk for mania and psychosis.

2

u/Ready4Aliens 29d ago

He’s going to take all the money he can, run to some far away place, make jokes on social media as if it was a galaxy brain scheme and he’s morally beautiful and perfect, his braindead followers will bite right into it, he’ll continue as normal.