Tesla’s Chief Accounting Officer Nopes on Up Outta There After Just a Month on the Job

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez
Elon Musk smoking a blunt

Tesla is having a tough time hanging onto a chief accounting officer, you guys.

Dave Morton joined the company in early August after a stint as CFO of Seagate Technology. The day after Morton joined Tesla, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was thinking about taking the company private and buying out investors at $420 a share, which definitely wasn’t a reference to weed because Elon Musk is a grown-ass man and not a greasy-haired burner at the skate park, right?

He claims he based the number on math, not stoner lore. “It seemed like better karma at $420 than at $419,” he said in an interview with the New York Times following the controversial tweet. “But I was not on weed, to be clear. Weed is not helpful for productivity. There’s a reason for the word ‘stoned.’ You just sit there like a stone on weed.”

A little more than a week after the tweet, the SEC issued a subpoena into this whole privatization thing.

Just to keep things interesting, Musk appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast last night and got blazed on a big fat blunt.

Surely, none of this has anything to do with the chief accounting officer noping on outta there after barely a month of service.

“Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations,” Morton said in a Tesla SEC filing, which indicated he resigned on Sept. 4. “This caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla’s leadership or its financial reporting.”

Man, talent shortages are real y’all.

Related Posts

Reno’s “Hot August Nights” Goes For-Profit and Skips Town?

Though the connection between the non-profit Hot August Nights organization that’s been putting on Reno’s biggest party for 24 years and the newly-registered for-profit Hot August Nights of Las Vegas is unclear, what is clear is that part of the event will be held in Long Beach this year due to “horrific” costs to put the event on in Reno.

Reno, if you don’t already know, is in pretty bad shape. I used to live there so I know that it always was but it’s in really bad shape right now. With the iconic Fitzgerald’s Hotel and Casino indefinitely boarded up directly under Reno’s “Biggest Little City in the World” sign as a direct result of the Corus Bank failure 1,500 miles away in Chicago back in late 2009, downtown looks more destitute than ever. I take full artistic license for use of the word “iconic.” This is Reno we’re talking about.


You’d think Reno city commissioners would want to encourage fun and leisure, mostly through the only event any of us with the big money to the West are familiar with (Hot August Nights) but all signs point to the city losing it.

On the same day paperwork was filed in Nevada to establish the for-profit, non-profit Hot August Nights officials announced part of the event would be held in Southern California in 2011.

There’s been a bunch of bitchfighting in Reno (and neighbor Sparks, who gets some of the tourism run-off for the event) and it continues.

We don’t expect you to be familiar with the Reno area (unless you happen to work for Deloitte or E&Y in town, though we don’t like those odds) so for a little background on Hot August Nights, it’s a yearly car show stamped as family fun for everyone. The event costs $700,000 to put on each year according to organizers who swear they aren’t looking to move the show to Long Beach in 2012.

The Reno Gazette-Journal breaks down the non-profit side:

In the 2004 tax year, Don Schmid, then listed as executive director, was paid $93,962 in salary.

On the nonprofit corporation’s 2008 income tax return, current executive director Bruce Walter is listed as collecting $256,890 in salary and $11,940 for a housing allowance, resulting in total compensation of $268,830.

Yes, I’m sure it’s the costs of putting on the event that are inspiring a move. Anyone been to a convention in Reno lately? It’s got to be the cheapest place in the country if you don’t count middle states. You’re telling me it’s cheaper to host the event in Long Beach?

For-profit Hot August Nights corporation created in Vegas [The Reno Gazette-Journal]

3 thoughts on “Tesla’s Chief Accounting Officer Nopes on Up Outta There After Just a Month on the Job”

  1. Well, the company is a cash furnace potentially headed toward bankruptcy in the next 12-24 months, the funding was definitely NOT secured, and less than a month in you’re staring down a SEC investigation and probably additional lawsuits related to securities fraud. I’d have peaced out too. Cant blame the guy for having some common sense!

  2. There’s nothing wrong with smoking a doobie. As long as he had some purp in that blunt and not some Reggie

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