Technology

So, while Elon Musk is an asshole, and these terms are awful, there is more to it:

They involve stock awards, which are given by the company to the employee. They can either be options (which give you a choice to buy at a certain price, and presumably you wouldn't do that unless you can sell for higher price), or outright stock grants . They are given as part of compensation, and vest on a set timetable. (So, if someone was given 1000 shares, the employee would still see 1000 shares in some account, but they may only be able to access 100 of them every six months). So, this whole discussion is about shares the company gave to the employees in the first place.

Then, the other wrinkle is that SpaceX is a private company. That means that employees can't just go sell their shares on the open market. So SpaceX graciously offers to buy back these private shares at whatever they think they are worth at the time. While this sounds fishy, the only other real alternative is for the employees to hold on to the shares and sell them if they go public....

.... However, simply receiving the shares when they vest is a taxable event. So if SpaceX didn't offer some way for mere mortals to turn their shares to cash, then in effect they would be saddling them with an enormous tax burden and no way to raise the cash to pay it. So they have to do it this way.

Do they really need to confiscate an employees shares if they hurt Elon's fee-fees? Of course not. But that's the only dumb bit here. The rest is pretty standard for a private company who attracts workers with stock benefits.

All Musk companies are sweatshops.

SpaceX, from a financial standpoint, is just an elaborate Ponzi scheme for Musk, who treats all of his companies as his private fiefdom and personal piggy bank. In reality, none of them are genuinely profitable, and depend on government subsidies and capital investments to survive. The goal is to just build a barely viable business and then scam people with bullshit promises. Any real cash flow is immediately converted into cash for his personal use. Though from time to time, he uses that cash prop up another of his ventures. Very likely, all of this will come crashing down at some point, and it will be revealed that his companies are nothing like what they seem.

Sounds like a healthy work environment

As a wise Arabian parrot once said, "Why am I not surprised? WHY am I not surprised!?"

How is that even legal?

Isn't that market manipulation and anyway completely illegal to force buy back stock at 0$ ?? If I force you to sell me your house for 0$, whatever if it's in a contract, that would be illegal in Europe. 1€ would be fine tho.

I mean.... isn't that also a legal thing?

If you know insider information that's not public (A company misbehaved being one of them) you are not supposed to trade stock to financially gain from it.

Now that's what you're supposed to do... Politicians have proven that's rules just for peasants, and most stock traders heavily benefit from this type of information, and unless your Martha Stewart for some reason, you get away with it... But my point is legally, if you know they misbehaved, that's immediately insider information?

Edit: I misunderstood the headling/rule. Sorry. Quite a shit thing that granted stock can be revoked, especially after you pay taxes. I wonder how legal it is, because if they can revoke it, is it actually yours and thus do you have to pay taxes on it?