United States | News & Politics

And some of that money he has came from under-paying factory workers at his Fremont, California assembly plant. For a long time the hourly rate was $22 (not sure what it is now) but auto plants in the Midwest were paying that or better and he was paying $22 per hour in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country.

All those employees were given stock options as part of their total compensation which those other auto factories did not give to everyone.

All the early floor workers would be multi millionaires if they kept their initial stock, not counting using the employee program to buy more at a discounted rate or further employee incentives.

Anyone who joined a little after the Model S was being sold and the early model 3 time up to around mid 2020 would have around a quarter million if they didn't aquire any additional stock.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla as a company created the most employee millionaires of any recent USA company due to giving every employee stock as part of their compensation.

Early SpaceX employees are in a similar boat, but it's harder to get rid of their shares since it's private so it's harder to quantify it.