How stock options made him an overnight millionaire

When Juan Edes came to work at SpaceX in 2013, employee stock options were not front of mind. "You're looking at the bottom line, like alright, how much you actually pay, how much can actually take home to feed the family," he recalls. "I had no experience with the stock options or the market or anything like that." Over time, he started noticing the value of SpaceX shares climbing on his employee portal. "You would go on your little web page and they would show the value kind of going up and then you get the emails. You're like, huh, this is interesting."

Juan was born in Mexico and raised in California. He started off working in warehouses and restaurants before moving into office work at an aerospace company. But he kept hearing about another company on the other side of town. "They were marketing themselves like we hire the best of the best," he says. That company was SpaceX. He put his name in the hat, despite having no college degree. He was hired and eventually managed a team responsible for scheduling to hit launch dates and commitments. "Coming from Elon Musk, who is like a known taskmaster, that must have been a lot of pressure," the hosts note. "Yeah, there was a lot of pressure, but he took care of us. He was very demanding. We had skin in the game, so we wanted to execute."