Protip: you can’t negotiate terms after you agree to them.
Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
111–120 of 567 posts
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#112Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#113So disappointing of OpenAI. I hope they'll make things right with all their former employees.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I wrote: Every legal clause that affects company ownership is accepted by the CEO and the board. I did not write: Every legal clause is accepted by the CEO and the board.
I read it. It's just not right. Companies have all kinds of processes in place for who can negotiate what and up to what limit and who has to agree if it goes above this or changes that or whatever. There are entire software packages around contract management to route contracts to the right place based on the process the company has in place.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#115Earlier 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.
Equity grants are usually signed by the board, although a lot of companies treat this as a meaningless formality and present it as though the document your manager signs is the real one. If you take a look at equity grants you've gotten in offer letters in the past, I bet they have "effective on board approval" in there somewhere.
[deleted]
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#116Earlier 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.
What is the structure of those compensations, and the mechanism for the clawbacks? Equity is taxed when it becomes the full, unrestricted property of the employee, so depending on the structure these threatened clawbacks could have either (1) been very illegal [essentially theft], or (2) could have had drastic and very bad tax consequences for all employees, current and former.
I'm not surprised that they're rapidly backpedaling.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Following convention and using standard capitalization rules makes things easier on the reader. Going to all-lowercase is harder on the reader, and thus is disrespectful of the reader. I will die on this hill.
THIS IS WHY I PREFER TO COMMUNICATE ONLY IN CAPITAL LETTERS. IT REMOVES ANY AMBIGUITY AS TO WHETHER OR NOT I’M ANGRY SINCE THE READER CAN ASSUME I’M ALWAYS SCREAMING IN THEIR FACE. I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING A NICE DAY.
Caps Lock is Cruise Control for Cool, right? ;o)
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#118Earlier 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.
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.
Wells Fargo clawed back from the CEO (and a couple others if I remember) over the fake account scandals.
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#119Why 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?
Seems to pre-date semi-intelligent AI agents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)"
The form-contract is changing frequently at a company going through a lot of corporate changes and with a lot of freakishly talented employees who probably negotiate hard on contracts. To be clear, he may well have known. But it isn't a given and in the grand scheme of things on a CEO brain, it would have been way down the list of capturing mind share.
Agree 100%, something tells me A) he really didn't know B) it's still scuzzy.
I'm taking a mental note to remember why mom always said to read e v e r y word before you sign.
I should have learned this at a younger age, somehow ended up 50/50 in an LLC I always assumed was going to be 70/30. Cost a lotttt of time and energy, essentially let them hold the company hostage for $60K later, after some really strange accounting problems were discovered. (my heart says they didn't take money, but they were distracted and/or incompetent)