Several reports and testimonies were painted Tesla, Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk as a tough disciplinarian and demanding leader. A Wall Street Journal report on Friday discussed the events leading up to the 2021 departure of one of the billionaire’s top surrogates.
What happened: Jerome Guillen, who was with Tesla for about a decade and rose through the ranks to lead the company’s auto division, resigned in June 2021.
During his time at Tesla, the French auto industry executive was rewarded with equity grants, and by the end of 2020 his unvested equity in Tesla was valued at about $600 million, the Journal said, citing data from an analysis by Equilar Inc. Als When cracks emerged in Musk and Guillen’s relationship, the former asked him to forfeit some of his unvested equity, WSJ said, citing people familiar with the matter. Shortly thereafter, the executive resigned.
Musk concerned about overpayment: Though what happened in the meantime hasn’t been publicly disclosed, the Tesla CEO was concerned that some employees are making more money from the company than their contributions are making, the report said.
Tesla executives are mostly paid with stock awards. Several controversies at the company over the years have their roots in employee stock options, WSJ noted. This included Musk’s falling out with the Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, who sued Musk and the company in 2009 for revoking 250,000 stock options he owned.
About 40 former Tesla employees sued the company for wrongly refusing to exercise stock options.
In Guillen’s case, he joined Tesla in 2010 from what was then Daimler AG, which is now part of it Mercedes-Benz Group AG MBGAF. He reportedly made important contributions when Tesla struggled with the production of the Model 3 vehicle in 2018. In recognition…
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