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Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

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Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#61

Post by ra7 »

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.

I don’t think it’s only AI influencers that do this. I’ve noticed people use lowercase as some sort of power move. Like they’re so busy and important they don’t care about conventions.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#63

Post by super256 »

tedivm wrote: post #26
madeofpalk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Turkeys don't vote for an early Christmas.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#64

Post by voxic11 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #44
tedivm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is OpenAI a finance company? I guess that would explain a lot.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#65

Post by nabla9 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #55
nabla9 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Employment letters, with equity grants, are practically never signed by anyone on the board, and for companies of any size, practically never signed by the CEO. There are a bunch of people who can bind a company legally, and it's one of the things they figure as part of their governing docs, board process etc.

That's not what I said.

The text in the letter must be approved.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#66

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #22
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…

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…

> This reads like more than standard restrictions.

It reads like omertà.

I wonder if I'll still get downvoted for saying this. A lot can change in 24 hours.

Edit: haha :-P

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#67

Post by grepfru_it »

jsnell wrote: post #25
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Employees are replaceable. Outside of a very specific few, they have very little leverage. If an employee loses trust and leaves or “quiet quits”, they will simply be replaced with one of the hundreds of people clamoring to work for them. This is why unionization is so great.

Just as Reddit users stay on Reddit because there is nowhere else to go, the reality is that everyone worships leadership because they keep their paychecks flowing.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#68

Post by danielmarkbruce »

nabla9 wrote: post #65
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employment letters, with equity grants, are practically never signed by anyone on the board, and for companies of any size, practically never signed by the CEO. There are a bunch of people who can bind a company legally, and it's one of the things they figure as part of their governing docs, board process etc.

That's not what I said. The text in the letter must be approved.

Again, wrong.

It's just not how the world works. It's legally not required, and in practice not done. If the board and CEO had to sit around approving every contract change in every country, my goodness they'd have no time left for anything else.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#69

Post by squigz »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #22
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…

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…

If it's non-enforceable, but you signed it, wouldn't that make the contract void?

I suppose there's probably a bunch of legalese to prevent that though...

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#70

Post by brookst »

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.)

“I have not been released from any exit agreement” is not disparagement.
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