Tesla shareholders handed Elon Musk a historic windfall at the company’s annual meeting on November 6, 2025, approving a performance-based compensation plan widely reported as worth up to $1 trillion if all milestones are met. The vote — more than 75% in favor — was cheered by the crowd in Austin and framed by management as necessary to keep Musk focused on a sprawling vision that reaches far beyond cars.
But while investors toasted the headline-grabbing payout, top talent quietly walked out the door, undercutting the claim that Tesla’s future rests solely on one man. In the span of days, Tesla lost Emmanuel Lamacchia, the Model Y program manager, and Siddhant Awasthi, who ran the Cybertruck program and recently oversaw Model 3 efforts — departures that signal real pain for the teams that actually build cars.
Those two exits are only the latest in a longer string of engineering losses this year, including leaders tied to chips, Dojo, Optimus robotics, and regional sales operations. High-profile departures such as Pete Bannon from Tesla’s hardware and Dojo efforts, the Optimus lead Milan Kovac, and Musk confidant Omead Afshar have hollowed out institutional knowledge that can’t be replaced by slogans or ticker-tape.
The root of the churn is plain: Tesla’s management and many shareholders have bought into a pivot from a core mission — building reliable electric cars for American families — toward a glittering promise of robotaxis, humanoid robots, and AI domination. The board sold the compensation plan as a way to bind Musk to that sweeping strategy, even as critics warned the company was losing focus on manufacturing fundamentals and customer-facing issues.
Hardworking Americans who prized Tesla for innovation in mass-market EVs should be outraged that governance priorities now revolve around celebrity and spectacle. Record-setting pay packages and conference-stage theatrics cannot plug the gaps left by engineers who actually know how to ship cars and fix problems on the line; when the product suffers, it’s ordinary customers and factory workers who pay the price, not the C-suite.
The practical consequences are already visible: the Cybertruck has struggled to meet inflated targets, facing production shortfalls and recalls even as the company pushes for moonshot milestones that would trigger Musk’s tranches. This is not the time for corporate theater — it’s the time for sober, accountable leadership that keeps the assembly lines humming and repair bays full.
Conservatives should cheer American innovation and bold entrepreneurship, but patriotism and common sense demand accountability too. Boards must remember their duty to shareholders and the public, investors should stop worshipping founders at the expense of product and workers, and lawmakers should resist grandstanding while real manufacturing jobs and consumer confidence hang in the balance. The future of American industry depends on competence, not cults of personality.
