May 15 (Reuters) - The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters.
After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network expansion.
The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.
This money really needs to come with more strings attached. Like promises not to do mass layoffs.
The money needs to come with contractual obligations and penalties for failing to deliver (for any reason) or government equity in exchange for funding.
And what if that promise is broken? It shouldn’t just have promises, there should be clear consequences attached as well. Else it’ll just be a broken contract or promise. That can end up in legal stuff for ages.
Isn’t that what being paid in stock is meant to do? Reward him for making decisions causing the company to do well? There’s usually vesting periods and someone that high can’t just sell all at once, so it should incent him to act in the long term best interest of the company. In particular, Musk was famous for negotiating a pay package with less salary, and very aggressive targets for the company, to get stock bonuses . It should be good that it succeeded, that he met those targets
This is what I don’t get since reality is so different from the above fable. Where did it all go so wrong?
It’s easier to make the stock go up by committing securities fraud on Twitter than it is to actually make good products.