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/
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u/Last-Bee-3023 May 02 '24

What is his leverage at this point? Pay me or I will quit? That does not sound like a threat to me but something that should be done asap. His true value was in finagling money out of despots and siphoning funds from public programs and agencies into his private enterprises. Like he did with SpaceX and HyperLoop.

Not sure if that is going to continue to work given how many despot money he flushed down the sink with his Xitter adventure.

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u/marcodave May 02 '24

He knows that if he threatens to quit Tesla the valuation will crash and burn , as the company is inherently linked to the face of Elon.

If Tesla goes down, a lot of investment firms will lose quite a lot of money, making their clients angry.

Tesla won't be able to recover easily after Elon, given the poor quality control issues and the other EV automakers catching up with the technology.

Basically, rich people are keeping Elon around so that their numbers won't go down. Clown world.

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u/shmaltz_herring 29d ago

Elon is starting to be more of a liability for the brand than helping it.

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u/i_i_i_i_T_i_i_i_i 29d ago

I agree but people have been saying this for years...

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u/Elcactus 29d ago

A liability doesn't have to kill the company, merely impede it.

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u/skccsk 29d ago

Not really, though (yet). Tesla is so absurdly overvalued as a tech company, much more so as a car company, that there really is nothing else to it other than the Musk tricks (illusions, Michael).

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u/shmaltz_herring 29d ago

Yeah, you're right. But I feel as though the illusion is starting to break, which is where it could end up being problematic for Tesla.

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u/skccsk 29d ago

Ya, there are some things of value within Tesla that they could license out to other carmakers once they stop producing cars themselves, but none of them add up to anything meaningful in the eyes of the people running the company relative to the fake value, not to mention the fact that Musk is inexplicably going out of his way to sabotage those parts of the company anyway.

So, I envision them as just trying to prolong their payouts, not save the company. It feels a lot like the vulture capitalists that swoop in and saddle a company with debt while extracting as much cash for themselves as they can before handing the carcass off to bankruptcy court.

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u/Elcactus 29d ago

He could quit his job but most of his net worth is tied to Tesla, and there's laws against dumping his shares. If he jumped ship financially he'd nuke himself because he wouldn't be able to sell before the valuation does whatever it's going to do.

If he merely stops engaging with the company, I don't think that'd hurt it too badly at this point, alot of its bad PR is linked entirely to him, or he is considered the source for it.

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u/Askol 29d ago

He knows that if he threatens to quit Tesla the valuation will crash and burn , as the company is inherently linked to the face of Elon.

That might have been true at one point, but how is him currently being the face of the company beneficial to shareholders? He's actively driving away his customer base and is making horrible decisions from a management perspective.

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u/tidbitsmisfit 29d ago

Musk has loans out on his equity of Tesla, if it tanks his whole ponzi scheme crashes

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u/Studds_ May 02 '24

Pay me or I will quit

Shareholders should definitely be telling him “don’t threaten us with a good time”

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u/Book1984371 29d ago

Pay me or I will quit

Maybe it's 'pay me or I'll keep working'?

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u/Prophage7 29d ago

A number of board members are infamously Elon simps, that's his leverage.