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Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

vox.com

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Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#11

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

mateus1 wrote: post #4

What surprises me about these stories surrounding openAI is how they apologize while lying and downplaying any blame. Do they expect anybody to believe they didn’t know about clawback clauses?

Do they care? The mob will shout for a week or two and then turn their attention somewhere else. spez (the reddit chief) said something like that about their users, and he was absolutely right. A few days ago I was re-reading some of those threads about reddit API changes from ten months back where so many users claimed it was their last message and they were leaving for good. Almost none of them did. I checked two dozen profiles and all but one of them had fresh comments posted within that same day.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#12

Post by jsnell »

mateus1 wrote: post #4

What surprises me about these stories surrounding openAI is how they apologize while lying and downplaying any blame. Do they expect anybody to believe they didn’t know about clawback clauses?

Yes, I've definitely seen people believe that in various discussions. Combine "Altman said they'd totally never done this" with "the ex-employee who first wrote about this didn't write with absolute 100% clarity that this applied to vested equity", and there's enough cover to continue believing what one wants to believe. And if the news cycle dies down before the lie is exposed, then that's a win.

Obviously that should not be possible any more with these leaked documents, given they prove both the existence of the scheme and Altman and other senior leadership knowing about it. Maybe they thought that since they'd already gagged the ex-employees, nobody would dare leak the evidence?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#13

Post by madeofpalk »

tedivm wrote: post #6

If this really was a mistake the easiest way to deal with it would be to release people from their non disparagement agreements that were only signed by leaving employees under the duress of losing their vested equity. It's really easy to make people whole for this, so whether that happens or not is the difference between the apologies being real or just them just backpedaling because employees got upset. Edit: Looks…

For whatever it's worth (not much), Sam Altman did say they would do that

> if any former employee who signed one of those old agreements is worried about it, they can contact me and we'll fix that too. very sorry about this.

https://x.com/sama/status/1791936857594581428

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#16

Post by kyleblarson »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #11
mateus1 wrote: post #4

What surprises me about these stories surrounding openAI is how they apologize while lying and downplaying any blame. Do they expect anybody to believe they didn’t know about clawback clauses?

Do they care? The mob will shout for a week or two and then turn their attention somewhere else. spez (the reddit chief) said something like that about their users, and he was absolutely right. A few days ago I was re-reading some of those threads about reddit API changes from ten months back where so many users claimed it was their last message and they were leaving for good. Almost none of them did. I checked two d…

The mob that Vox represents these days is miniscule

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#17

Post by jobs_throwaway »

I bet similar claw-back clauses are waaay more common than many on this thread would imagine at private co's. I've always been under the impression that 'vested equity' doesn't mean ~anything until you actually see liquidity. The company can generally fuck you before that point if they choose to. Hope I'm being overly cynical with this take.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#18

Post by nabla9 »

mateus1 wrote: post #4

What surprises me about these stories surrounding openAI is how they apologize while lying and downplaying any blame. Do they expect anybody to believe they didn’t know about clawback clauses?

Every legal clause that affects company ownership is accepted by the CEO and the board. It's not something VP or general counsel can put there. Lo and behold, signatures from Altman and Kwon are there.

>Company documents obtained by Vox with signatures from Altman and Kwon complicate their claim that the clawback provisions were something they hadn’t known about.

>OpenAI contains multiple passages with language that gives the company near-arbitrary authority to claw back equity from former employees or — just as importantly — block them from selling it.

>Those incorporation documents were signed on April 10, 2023, by Sam Altman in his capacity as CEO of OpenAI.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#19

Post by belter »

tedivm wrote: post #6

If this really was a mistake the easiest way to deal with it would be to release people from their non disparagement agreements that were only signed by leaving employees under the duress of losing their vested equity. It's really easy to make people whole for this, so whether that happens or not is the difference between the apologies being real or just them just backpedaling because employees got upset. Edit: Looks…

Not a mistake...

"...But there's a problem with those apologies from company leadership. Company documents obtained by Vox with signatures from Altman and Kwon complicate their claim that the clawback provisions were something they hadn’t known about..."

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

polack wrote: post #10
tedivm wrote: post #6

If this really was a mistake the easiest way to deal with it would be to release people from their non disparagement agreements that were only signed by leaving employees under the duress of losing their vested equity. It's really easy to make people whole for this, so whether that happens or not is the difference between the apologies being real or just them just backpedaling because employees got upset. Edit: Looks…

> ”we are identifying and reaching out to former employees who signed a standard exit agreement to make it clear that OpenAI has not and will not cancel their vested equity and releases them from nondisparagement obligations” Looks like they’re doing that.

Well, they say they are. But the nondisparagement agreement repeatedly forbids revealing the agreement itself, so if it wasn't cancelled those subject to it would be forbidden to point out that the public claim they were going to release people from it was a lie (or done only for people from whom OpenAI was not particularly concerned about potential disparagement.)
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