What if I sell my equity? Can I criticize them then?
Once there's a liquidity event and the people making you sign this contract can sell, they stop caring what you say.
OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
271–280 of 1001 posts
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#272Is this a legally enforceable suppression of free speech? If so, are there ways to be open about OpenAI, without triggering punitive action?
I believe a better solution to this would be to spread the following sentiment: "Since it's already illegal to tell disparaging lies, the mere existence of such a clause implies some disparaging truths to which the party is aware." Always assuming the worst around hidden information provides a strong incentive to be transparent.
This is an important mode of thinking in many adversarial or competitive contexts.
Cryptography is a prime example. Any time any company is the tiniest bit cagey or obfuscates any aspect, I default to assuming that they’re either selling snake oil or have installed NSA back doors. I’ll claim this openly, as a fact, until proven otherwise.
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#273Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading that thread it’s really interesting to me. I see how far we’ve come in a short couple of years. But I still can’t grasp how we’ll achieve AGI within any reasonable amount of time. It just seems like we’re missing some really critical… something… Idk. Folks much smarter than I seem worried so maybe I should be too but it just seems like such a long shot.
Personally, I think catastrophic global warming and climate change will happen before we get AGI, possibly in part due to the pursuit of AGI. But as the saying goes, yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
Want to share your model? Or is this more like a hunch?
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Options aren't vested equity though.
... They definitely can be. When I worked for a small biotech company all of my options had a tiered vesting schedule.
Options aren't equity, they're only the option to buy equity at a specified price. Vesting just means you can actually buy the shares at the set strike pice.
For example, you may join a company and be given options to buy 10,000 shares at $5 each with a 2 year vesting schedule. They may begin vesting immediately, meaning you can buy 1/24th of the total options each month (or 614 shares). Its also common for a delay up front where no options vest until you've been with the company for say 6 or 12 months.
Until an option vests you don't own anything. Once it vests, you still have to buy the shares by exercising the option at the $5 per share price. When you leave, most companies have a deadline on the scale of a few months where you have to either buy all vested shares or forfeit them and lose the stock options.
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#276So part of their compensation for working is equity, and when they leave thay have to sign an additional agreement in order to keep their previously earned compensation? How is this legal? Mine as well tell them they have to give all their money back too. What's the consideration for this contract?
Yeah you don't have to sign anything to quit. Ever. No new terms at that time, sorry.
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on how you get it
Exactly. There’s no ethical way to gain ownership of a billion dollars (there’s likely some dollar threshold way less than 1B where p(ethical_gains) can be approximated to 0) A lot of people got screwed along the way
i think a lot of people have been able to become billionaires simply by building something that was initially significantly undervalued and then became very highly valued, no 'screwing'. there is such thing as a win-win and frankly these win-wins account for most albeit not all value creation in the world. you do not have to screw other people to get rich.
whether people should be able to hold on to that billion is a different question
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is wrong on multiple levels. (to be clear I don't work at OAI) > They don't share the equivalent of a Cap Table with employees, so there's no way to tell what sort of ownership interest a PPU represents It is known - it represents 0 ownership share. They do not want to sell any ownership because their deal with MS gives MS 49% ownership and they don't want MS to be able to buy up additional stake and control the…
> Note at offer time candidates do not know how many PPUs they will be receiving or how many exist in total. This is important because it’s not clear to candidates if they are receiving 1% or 0.001% of profits for instance. Even when giving options, some startups are often unclear or simply do not share the total number of outstanding shares. That said, this is generally considered bad practice and unfavorable for em…
> Additionally, tender offers are not guaranteed to happen and the cadence may also not be known.
> PPUs also are restricted by a 2-year lock, meaning that if there’s a liquidation event, a new hire can’t sell their units within their first 2 years.
i know for a fact that these bits are inaccurate, but i don't want to go into the details.
the profit share is not known but you are told what the PPUs were valued at the most recent tender offer
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#279Extra respect is due to Jan Leike, then: https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494
I think superalignment is absurd, and model "safety" is the modern AI company's "think of the children" pearl clutching pretext to justify digging moats. All this after sucking up everyone's copyright material as fair use, then not releasing the result, and profiting off it. All due respect to Jan here, though. He's being (perhaps dangerously) honest, genuinely believes in AI safety, and is an actual research expert,…
> I think superalignment is absurd
Care to explain? Absurd how? An internal contradiction somehow? Unimportant for some reason? Impossible for some reason?
Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?
#280Man. No wonder openai is nothing without its people