Elon Musk Puts Forward Controversial New Condition for X Employees' Stock Grants

TapTechNews August 25th news, since the acquisition of Twitter (now renamed X) in 2022, the controversy surrounding Elon Musk and this social media platform has been escalating continuously. After laying off thousands of people and refusing to pay severance pay, Musk has now put forward a rather controversial new condition for the stock grants to X employees.

According to TheVerge, Musk sent an email to employees informing them about future stock options. However, the stock options will be granted based on performance, employees must write a one-page document to explain to the leadership their contribution to the company in order to obtain the stock. This basically means that they need to tell Musk why they are valuable employees in order to own the stock.

Considering Musk's past attitude, this condition for granting stock options is not surprising. After taking over Twitter, Musk once told the remaining employees that they must work long hours and with high intensity, otherwise leave the company, and added that only outstanding performance can constitute passing.

In recent years, the relationship between X and its employees has been rather tense. In June this year, the company postponed the promotion process for no reason, just saying that they are designing a new promotion process. Now requiring employees to provide reasons to prove that they deserve to have the stock may exacerbate the tense situation.

In addition, some sources inside X said that they have not received the annual equity update that should have been distributed in April. Although Elon Musk previously promised that X employees can cash out the stock at any time, he still has not committed to cashing out. The last equity update was distributed in October 2023, when the company's valuation was 19 billion US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 135.499 billion Chinese yuan).