Matt Levine has an interesting take on this [0], basically that nothing in that Musk claims of their behaviour meets the specification of "cause" in their employment contracts, and further that the golden parachutes are a good thing in that they prevent the C-suite from being focused on their continuing salary:

"The basic problem with Musk’s efforts to walk away from these severance agreements — beyond the lack of actual arguments — is that if he can stiff these executives then no golden parachute is binding. The point of a golden parachute is that a CEO with a golden parachute will sell his company to a buyer whom he doesn’t like, if that’s what is best for shareholders. If the buyer can stiff the CEO on the parachute payments because they don’t like each other, then no buyer will ever pay severance, and no CEO will ever trust it."

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20221031165639/https://www.bloom...