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Yes, that's a huge difference, mostly because the stock is only worth anything if the CEO does a good job of running the company. This can cause problems as well, such as CEO taking measures to juice short term sugars process at the expense of long term corporate health, but is a standard way to align incentives.
Tesla is also a special case because the CEO is also the principal founder and largest shareholder by a considerable margin, so it is to be expected that his interests and the company's will align.
i mean, i'm happy to take my salary in the form of corporate stock if that would 10x my compensation... but regular employees don't seem to get that option.
Even if you were prevented from selling it for several years, at which point it may or may not be worth anything? Most people need actual money to live on in real time.
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For the average Joe, stocks are a white elephant gift. When and how does he sell them? Does he take them to his bank? Does he have to go find a broker? How does he track the taxes on it? It’s a world he’s never seen before, knowing only paychecks and bank accounts.
You can transfer them to an etrade account or similar and sell them using the web interface. The mechanics of self-service stock selling are trivial.
Taxes can be automatically handled by selling a portion of the stock at vest for taxes. This is again a button on a brokerage web interface.
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It's pretty standard in tech to have stocks as part of your compensation even for entry level positions. I would be surprised if no other highly compensated industries did that. Now, the question is, are the workers at these companies "average Joes"? Dunno. But they probably don't count as elite corporate supermen either. There's way too many of them, for one. (Something, something, if everybody is super, nobody is).
He logs into the website of the broker company contracted by the corp to manage stock grants and clicks the "sell" button.
Well, that depends on your country of residence. For example, in one country I'm familiar with, you pay a flat tax on the sale price of any stocks you obtained as part of your renumeration, at the end of the fiscal year in which you sold. There's like an extra form to fill.
In finance it is part of the deal at mid-levels and above. As a quant VP I get my bonus in cash, but a VP-level trader or corporate financier would be getting part of their (larger) bonus in RSU's, as do my bosses at director and MD level.
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For my stocks, at the moment they vest (a taxable event) a fraction of them are sold and the proceeds are given to the IRS as tax withholding. This is pretty common in the US.
No extra forms. It goes on my W2.
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I mean the white elephant thing depends on vehicle. If you're fortunate enough to work for a large liquid traded firm it's easy enough to redeem but for a lot of other people it's nebulous startup equity options kinda stuff or privately held firms where it's a mess
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