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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

#41

Post by danielmarkbruce »

minimaxir wrote: post #30
0x5f3759df-i wrote: post #2

but 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.

Give it a year, it will become very uncool as people realize only people not using AI to make their writing better would send syntactically or grammatically incorrect wording.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#43

Post by dullcrisp »

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…

I stopped browsing Reddit. I imagine the people who posted comments to Reddit saying they’re going to leave Reddit aren’t a representative sample.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#44

Post by danielmarkbruce »

tedivm wrote: post #28
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Comp clawbacks are quite common in finance, at least contractually. It's rare for it to go ahead, but it happens. It isn't some especially weird thing.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#45

Post by taylorfinley »

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.

Note that statement says nothing about whether they will be allowed to participate in liquidity events

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#47

Post by nabla9 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #36
nabla9 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Imagine if someone not representing ownership directly could just put clauses that alter the ownership and alter shareholder agreements.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#48

Post by uddiygug »

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…

They probably care more about the effect on potential hires who are gonna second think by the fact that part of their pay may be cancelled due to some disagreement

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#49

Post by lelandfe »

dragonwriter wrote: post #20
polack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”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.)

If your concern is in the validating that they've done so, the article author can at least vet with her anonymous sources.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#50

Post by sumeno »

tsunamifury wrote: post #35

Why had the advent of semi-intelligent agents suddenly turned Silicon Valley into a place that now hates its own workers. Why is it that a place that once believed the mutual benefit of an intelligent worker and a company has turned into a time to brutalize or even hate the very creators of this technology Where is all this hatred coming from?

It always hated its workers, it just didn't think it had other options for a long time.
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