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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

#151

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nabla9 wrote: post #135
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not talking about grant-making case by case, but delegation authorization resolution itself. Delaware General Corporation Law has sections describing how it can be done.

> delegation authorization resolution itself. Delaware General Corporation Law has sections describing how it can be done

How what can be done?

Nothing in Delaware law says the CEO--let alone the Board--has to sign off on every form of employment agreement. That's a classic business judgement.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#152

Post by [deleted] »

nabla9 wrote: post #89
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #68

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#153

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

Everyone is out for Sam Altman, and there are reasons to scrutinize him. But on this issue - it is common for a company's Legal and HR teams to make decisions on language in docs like these (exit docs) entirely on their own. So it is plausible that Sam Altman had no idea that this aggressive language existed. One reason to think the same thing is true here, is I recall Sam spoke up for employee friendly equity plans when he was running YC.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#155

Post by danielmarkbruce »

nabla9 wrote: post #135
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not talking about grant-making case by case, but delegation authorization resolution itself. Delaware General Corporation Law has sections describing how it can be done.

fwiw, re-reading your initial comment, I think you may have meant to say one thing and have inadvertantly said two things. The comment sounds like you are saying any clause in any contract which has any effect on equity. You might have intended to say any clause in the contracts you then copy/pasted, which deal with process around granting equity.

?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#156

Post by ants_everywhere »

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #131
ants_everywhere wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's something many on the left have generally identified as worse from the right wing or alt.right. It depends a bit by what you mean by left and right, but if you take something like Marxism that was always 100% a propaganda effort created by people who owned newspapers and the pervasiveness of propaganda has been a through line e.g. in the Soviet Union, agitprop etc. A big part of the Marxist theory is that ther…

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 drinking clubs.

You see the same pattern with social media accounts who claim to be on the Maxist-influenced left. Their tactics are very frequently emotionally abusive or manipulative. It's basically indistinguishable in style from how people on the fringe right behave.

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.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#157

Post by InfiniteVortex »

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.

If I received a legitimate job recruitment email for an AI role in all-lowercase I would put in the spam folder lol. sam altman typing in all lowercase letters shouldn't influence people to do the same in semi-professional environments & situations. I think Altman is trying to appear as casual, friendly, and attract the zoomer market by typing in all lowercase, it's just my speculation and perhaps I'm over-reading into it.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#158

Post by ryandrake »

MyFedora wrote: post #52
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…

Yeah, totally legit. Don't worry about it, it's not enforceable anyways. What, remove it from the contract? God no! Oh, I mean sorry, no one off contracts.

I'd be surprised if anyone fell for that. "Oh, thanks, opposing counsel, I totally trust you to represent my interests over your employer's!"

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#159

Post by latexr »

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 expect anybody to believe they didn’t know about clawback clauses?

Why wouldn’t they? I’m sure you can think of a couple of politicians and CEOs who in recent years have clearly demonstrated that no matter what they do or say, they will have a strong core of rabid fans eating their every word and defending them.

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