Note SpaceX currently has approximately 22,000 employees globally, so those "4,000 millionaires", 1 out of 5.5, probably do not include many, if any, of the lower-end workers.
For those without a paid NYT subscription: SpaceX IPO could make thousands of employees millionaires
Y'all might want to check back in a while.First off, getting paid in stock generally means getting paid less and hoping for an IPO. It has been a great dodge for tech companies to avoid paying people the going rate and push some of the risk back onto employees. If the company crashes or is bought out, your "stock" could be worthless. Went hand in hand with getting people to work 80 to 100-hour workweeks on a salary.
Second, generally, you don't "get stock." You can buy at the price the stock was at when the option was granted. If you have the cash, you can buy and hold the stock. More likely, you will want to "same day sell" the stock, pocketing the price difference. Granted, enough people do that, and the price will drop, so you probably want to be at the head of the line. Sell at the right time, you win, if not, you lose. Reports mention ex-employees in the millionaire group, but as a rule, you lose any "unvested" options when you leave the company. I've lost a ton over the years, since most of the "gift options" were meant to make it cost you to leave, so they would vest a year or more later. The largest set of options I lost, though, was when they sold off my department to a contract agency and laid off all the directs.
Lastly, as appears to be the case here, you cannot exercise the option or sell the stock until a certain period has passed. So they might technically be millionaires only on paper. Kind of like I was till I sold my house and got less than half what the county claimed it was worth. No doubt this gives the billionaires time to get out first.
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