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Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
21–30 of 567 posts
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#22If 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…
This reads like more than standard restrictions. I hate those like everyone, they are just intended to chill complaints in my opinion with enough question to scare average people without legal expertise (like me, like most devs), just like non-competes used to seemingly primarily be used to discourage looking at other jobs, separate from whether it was enforceable - note the recent FTC decision to end non-competes.
About 5 months ago I had a chance to join a company, their company had what looked like an extreme non-compete to me, you couldn't work for any company for the next two years after leaving if they had been a customer of that company.
I pointed out to them that I wouldn't have been able to join their company if my previous job had that non-compete clause, it seemed excessive. Eventually I was in meetings with a lawyer at the company who told me it's probably not enforceable, don't worry about it, and the FTC is about to end non-competes. I said great, strike it from the contract and I'll sign it right now. He said I can't do that, no one off contracts. So then I said I'm not working there.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#23What 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?
Not trying to play the devil's advocate here, but I am thinking how this would play out if I ever opened a spinoff...
Let's say I find a profitable niche while working for a project and we decide to open a separate spin off startup to handle that idea. I'd expect legality to be handled for me, inherited from the parent company.
Now let's also say the company turns out to be disproportionately successful. I'd say I would have a lot on my plate to worry about, the least of which the legal part that the company inherited.
In this scenario it is probable that hostile clauses in contracts would be dug up. I surely would be legally responsible for them, but how much would I be to blame for them, truly?
And if the company handles the incident well, how important should that blame putting be?
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#24If 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
Given what OpenAI's been in the press for the past few weeks, I can't help but feel this is a trap; even if it isn't, Sam is certainly making it look like it is...
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#25What 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…
This is them fucking over their employees though, not the public, and in a very concrete manner. Threats to rob them of millions - maybe tens of millions - are going to hurt more than losing access to a third-party Reddit client.
And the employees also have way more leverage than Reddit users; at this point they should still be OpenAI's greatest asset. Even once this is fixed (which they obviously will do, given they got caught), it's still going to cause a major loss of trust in the entire leadership.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#26If 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
What Sam is saying is very different than what I'm saying. I'm saying he should be proactive and just do it, he's saying that if people explicitly reach out to him then he'll do it specifically for them.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#27I 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.
It sure means a lot more after liquidity, but big successful companies like spacex do have a market selling pre-ipo options or shares or whatever.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#28If 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…
This reads like more than standard restrictions. I hate those like everyone, they are just intended to chill complaints in my opinion with enough question to scare average people without legal expertise (like me, like most devs), just like non-competes used to seemingly primarily be used to discourage looking at other jobs, separate from whether it was enforceable - note the recent FTC decision to end non-competes. A…
I have worked for multiple startups (Malwarebytes, Vicarious, Rad AI, Explosion AI, Aptible, Kenna Security). Not once have I seen an exit agreement that stated they would steal back my vested equity if I didn't sign. This is definitely not "standard restrictions".
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#29What 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?
It's been stultifying the older I get to see how easy it is for people to lie to themselves and others, everywhere. You have to be really attuned to "is this actually rational or sound right, or am I adding in an implicit 'but we're good people, so,'"
Right. The big change is bad faith argument developing into unapologetic bad faith developing into weaponised bad faith.
It accelerated rapidly with some trends like the Tea Party, Gamergate, Brexit, Andrew Wakefield, covid antivax, and the Ukraine situation, and is in evidence on both sides of the trans rights debate, in doxxing, in almost every single argument on X that goes past ten tweets, etc.
It's something many on the left have generally identified as worse from the right wing or alt.right.
But this is just because it's easier to categorise it when it's pointing at you. It's actually the primary toxicity of all argument in the 21st century.
And the reason is that weaponised bad faith is addictive fun for the operator.
Basically everyone gets to be Lee Atwater or Roger Stone for a bit, and everyone loves it.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#30but sam said he was sorry in all lowercase so it must be okay
Semi off-topic, but the trend of AI influencers adopting the all-lowercase communication style in professional conversation has been very annoying. It makes them appear completely unserious.
I recently received an job recruitment email for an AI role in all-lowercase and I was baffled how to interpret it.