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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

#171

Post by elevatedastalt »

poszlem wrote: post #81
ra7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you are correct. It's a status symbol at this point. It's the digital version of "inconspicuous consumption" [1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/inconsp...

No, this is a status symbol because it's a signal that these people are above norms of conventional society.

What's worse is that there's a ready line of journalists talking about how capital letters promote inequality or shit like that providing coverfire for them.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#172

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #156
ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Propaganda at a national level, it's always been that, and I take your point for sure. I think perhaps I didn't really make it totally clear that what I'm mostly talking about is a bit closer to the personal level -- the way people fight their corners, the way twitter level debate works, the way local politicians behave. The individual, ghastly shamelessness of it, more than the organised wall of lies. Everyone getti…

Well, I was referring to Marx and Engels. That's sort of how the whole movement got started. The post-Hegelians who turned away from logic-based philosophical debate to a sort of anti-logical emotional debate where facts mattered less than the arc of history. That got nationalized and industrialized with Lenin and Stalin etc, but that trend precedes them and was more personal. It was hashed out in coffee houses and d…

> Personally I don't think it's a right vs left thing. It's more about authoritarianism and the desire to crush the people you feel are violating the rules, especially if it seems like they're getting away with violating the rules. There are just some differences about what people think the rules are.

Oh I agree. I wasn't making it a right-vs-left thing, but rather neutering the idea that people perceive it to be.

I would not place myself on the political right at all -- even in the UK -- but I see this idea that bad-faith is an alt.right thing and I'm inclined to push back, because it's an oversimplification.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#173

Post by elevatedastalt »

neglesaks wrote: post #84

I'll make a prediction here: OpenAI will in the coming years turn out just as ruthless and socially damaging as Facebook did.

I know shitting on FB is de rigueur. But honestly Facebook at its peak was really very useful in many ways that OpenAI hasn't ever been.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#174

Post by Bluecobra »

minhazm wrote: post #79
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.

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.

I negotiated a starting bonus with my employer and signed a contract that I would need to pay it back if I quit within a year.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#175

Post by wayeq »

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've been mostly using all lowercase for decades.. am i the asshole?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#176

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #91
tedivm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Must it?

Not clear what you mean.

Do you mean it is generic to do that in contracts? (Been a while since I was offered equity.)

Or do you mean that even OpenAI would not try it without having set it up in the original contract? Because I hate to be the guy with the square brackets ;-)

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#177

Post by [deleted] »

adastra22 wrote: post #116
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.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#178

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #118
minhazm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but would that have been achieved with a clause open-ended enough to allow this additional paperwork on exit?

Or would that have been an "if you break the law" thing?

Seems unlikely that OpenAI are legally in the clear here with nice clear precedent. Why? Because they are backflipping to deny it's something they'd ever do.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#179

Post by tptacek »

I'm not following this very closely, but agreements that block employees from selling (private) vested equity are a market term, not something uniquely aggressive OpenAI does. The Vox article calls this "just as important" as the clawback terms, but, obviously, no.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#180

Post by j0hnyl »

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".

I work in ad tech and have had to sign this when laid off.
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