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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

#71

Post by comp_throw7 »

grepfru_it wrote: post #67
jsnell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Yes, that "very little leverage" is why engineers & researchers near the bottom of OpenAI's career ladder are getting paid 900k/year (2/3rds funny money, admittedly, though in practice many people _have_ cashed out at very large multiples).

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#72

Post by squigz »

grepfru_it wrote: post #67
jsnell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Employees are replaceable, sure, but that doesn't mean that you can't squander your good will with competent employees and end up only being able to hire sub-par employees.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#73

Post by tedivm »

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.

Comp clawbacks in exit agreements, that weren't part of the employment agreement?

I've seen equity clawbacks in employment agreements. Specifically, some of the contracts I've signed have said that if I'm fired for cause (and were a bit more specific, like financial fraud or something) then I'd lose my vested equity. That isn't uncommon, but its not typically used to silence people and is part of the agreement they review and approve of before becoming an employee. It's not a surprise that they learn about as they try to leave.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#75

Post by mturmon »

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?

Since the beginning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight#Frictions

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#76

Post by refulgentis »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #68
nabla9 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right that in general Sam Altman isn't countersigning every OpenAI employee contract.

However, at some point a lawyer sat down and worked with people to write the form-contract, and someone said "you sure? you want them to sign an NDA on exit? with a clause that lets you claw back equity? (implicit: because that's not normal)"

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#77

Post by jprete »

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'm guessing the ones who actually left Reddit did what I did - they disengaged from the site and then deleted all their content and accounts. It's pointless to complain without any actual power.

The relevant stakeholders here are the potential future employees, who are seeing in public exactly how OpenAI treats its employees.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#78

Post by fragmede »

ra7 wrote: post #61
minimaxir wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it's because the stupidphone's stupid keyboard capitalizes for you in the wrong places, and you have to take extra effort to fix it when they get it wrong, or you turn it off, and then get lazy about fixing it when you do need the capitalization.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#79

Post by minhazm »

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.

Can you find any specific examples? I've only seen that apply to severance agreements where you're being paid some additional sum for that non-disparagement clause.

Never seen anything that says money or equity you've already earned could be clawed back.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#80

Post by ramesh31 »

They could have been cool. They could have been 2001 Google. They could have been the number one place any new PhD wanted to work.

But no. The MBAs saw dollar signs, and everything went out the window. They fumbled the early mover advantage, and will be hollowed out by the competition and commodified by the PaaS giants. What a shame.

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