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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

#141

Post by londons_explore »

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…

> taxed when it becomes the full, unrestricted property of the employee

I guess these agreements mean that the property isn't full unrestricted property of the employee... and therefore income tax isn't payable when they vest.

The tax isn't avoided - it would just be paid when you sell the shares instead - which for most people would be a worse deal because you'll probably sell them at a higher price than the vest price.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#142

Post by achiandet »

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 certainly a modern status symbol that can be seen as a power move.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#143

Post by tsunamifury »

reaperman wrote: post #119
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?

Seems to pre-date semi-intelligent AI agents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Yea this has always been a market dynamics issue that it tried to manipulate... but it didn't have a flavor of hatred to it.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#145

Post by cawlfy »

devbent wrote: post #104
tomcam wrote: post #88

From Sam Altman: > this is on me and one of the few times i've been genuinely embarrassed running openai; i did not know this was happening and i should have. Bullshit. Presumably Sam Altman has 20 IQ points on me. He obviously knows better. I was a CEO for 25 years and no contract was issued without my knowing every element in it. In fact, I had them all written by lawyers in plain English, resorting to all caps and…

> Presumably Sam Altman has 20 IQ points on me. I've read your posts for years on HN, don't undersell yourself. Many CEOs don't know what is their company's contracts, nor do they think about it. While it is laudable that you paid such close attention, the fact is I've met many leaders who have no clue what is in their company's employment paperwork.

While I agree that there's probably a varying degree of attention paid...

I think that this clause is so non-standard for tech that it almost certainly got flagged or was explicitly discussed before being added that claiming that he didn't know it was there strains credulity badly.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#146

Post by tsunamifury »

mturmon wrote: post #75
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

Then notion here is that the ownership class hates that it cannot own the creators of work. And now a new class if intelligence exists that can be fully owned.

This is dark.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#147

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

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.

OpenCanAIry

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#148

Post by sanxiyn »

jsnell wrote: post #12
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?

Yes, I've definitely seen people believe that in various discussions. Combine "Altman said they'd totally never done this" with "the ex-employee who first wrote about this didn't write with absolute 100% clarity that this applied to vested equity", and there's enough cover to continue believing what one wants to believe. And if the news cycle dies down before the lie is exposed, then that's a win. Obviously that shou…

People are so gullible. Sam Altman deserves zero benefit of doubt. His words should be ignored, his words do not prove anything whatsoever.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#149

Post by user_7832 »

istjohn wrote: post #107

I wonder if this HN post will get torpedoed as fast as the one from yesterday[0]. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440

I really wish there was some simple calculations that could be shown on how posts are ranked. For eg post A has x upvotes, y comments, is z minutes old and therefore rank 2. Post B has these values, while C is here. Hence this post went down the front page quickly.

It's not that I don't trust the mods explicitly, it's just that showing such numbers (if they exist) would be helpful for transparency.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#150

Post by tsunamifury »

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…

Sam Altman has stated over and over again, publicly: "I don't care what other people think." And I'm not paraphrasing.
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