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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

#91

Post by danielmarkbruce »

tedivm wrote: post #73
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

It must have been part of the original employment document package, that the equity was cancellable. In the details of the equity grant, or similar, somewhere.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#92

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> The text in the letter must be approved

Employment agreements don't even need to be approved by the CEO, let alone the Board. Delegating this responsibility is fairly common.

That said, Sam chose to sign. The buck stops with him, and he has--once again--been caught in a clear and public lie.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#93

Post by [deleted] »

brookst wrote: post #70
dragonwriter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#94

Post by Terr_ »

pempem wrote: post #59
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

Sure and anyone who has worked in a toxic workplace knows exactly what it means to require a direct path to leadership to resolve an issue instead of just resolving it.

I also notice he conditions it on "any former employee." What about current employees who may be affected by the same legalese?

Either way, I can imagine a subtext of "step forward and get a target on your back."

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#95

Post by KennyBlanken »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #31
belter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..."

Mistake? The clawback provisions were the executives' idea!

"We are sorry...that we got caught."

"...and that our PR firm wasn't good enough to squash the story."

They will follow the standard corporate 'disaster recovery' - say something to make it look like they're addressing it, then do nothing and just wait for it to fall out of the news cycle.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#96

Post by devbent »

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 went from very active on multiple subreddits to barely posting once every few months. Instead of answering programming questions or helping people get in shape I'm on other sites doing other things.

Changes like that are hard to measure.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#97

Post by jay-barronville »

madeofpalk wrote: post #13
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

This looks like proper accountability and righting your wrongs to me. Much respect to Sam. I hope this isn’t just a performance for the public.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#98

Post by fragmede »

dankwizard wrote: post #39
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.

youre not worth moving my pinky to the shift key, and you think that missed apostrophe was a mistake? im busy running a billion dollar company i dont have time for this

who's using a hardware keyboard these days?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#99

Post by lobsterthief »

dullcrisp wrote: post #43
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…

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.

Same. Redditor for 15 years and the API thing was the last straw.

I didn’t post about not engaging with or using the platform anymore. Nor did I delete my account, since it still holds some value to me. But I slinked away into the darkness and now HN is my social media tool.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#100

Post by aledalgrande »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #17

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.

They don't need clawback. They can just dilute the f out of you. Which is what happens most of the time anyways
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