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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

#181

Post by jiggawatts »

I've learned to interpret anything Sam Altman says as-if an Aes Sedai said it. That is: every word is true, but leads the listener to making false assumptions.

Even if in this specific instance he means well, it's still quite entertaining to interpret his statements this way:

"we have never clawed back anyone's vested equity"

=> But we can and will, if we decide to.

"nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement"

=> But we made everyone sign the separation agreement.

"vested equity is vested equity, full stop."

=> Our employees don't have vested equity, they have something else we tricked them into.

"there was a provision about potential equity cancellation in our previous exit docs;"

=> And also in our current docs.

"although we never clawed anything back"

=> Not yet, anyway.

"the team was already in the process of fixing the standard exit paperwork over the past month or so."

=> By "fixing", I don't mean removing the non-disparagement clause, I mean make it ironclad while making the language less controversial and harder to argue with.

"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."

=> We'll fix the employee, not the problem.

"very sorry about this."

=> Very sorry we got caught.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#182

Post by bertil »

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’ve seen that for a well-known large tech company, and I wasn’t even employed in the US, making those seem stranger. Friends and former colleagues pushed back against that (very publicly and for obvious reasons in one case) and didn’t get to keep their vested options: they had to exercise what they had before leaving.

There was one thing that I cared about (anti-competitive behavior, things could technically be illegal, but what counts is policy so it really depends on what the local authority wants to enforce), so I asked a lawyer, and they said: No way this agreement prevents you from answering that kind of questioning.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#183

Post by nwoli »

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

They’re definitely doing this on comments too. I’ve had negative towards altman comments at the top dropped to below the negative voted ones in the past

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#184

Post by ixaxaar »

croes wrote: post #53
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…

>Edit: Looks like they're doing the right thing here That's like P.Diddy saying I'm sorry. That's damage control for being caught doing something bad ... again.

Extreme pinky swear.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#185

Post by bertil »

joedevon wrote: post #32
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…

No one off contracts. lol. What nonsense. Then why did bother to have a meeting? You handled that one like a boss.

> Then why did bother to have a meeting?

Because lawyers are in the business of managing risk, and knowing what OC was unhappy about was very much relevant to knowing if he presented a risk.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#186

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

Attorneys are like any other profession. The average attorney is just like the average person, except he passed a difficult test.

Exceptions require sign off and thinking. The optimal answer is go with the flow. In an employment situation, these sorts of terms require regulatory intervention or litigation to make them go away, so it’s a good bet that most employees will take no action.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#187

Post by suroot »

nwoli wrote: post #183
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

They’re definitely doing this on comments too. I’ve had negative towards altman comments at the top dropped to below the negative voted ones in the past

Wait til you hear what happened to Michael O’Church.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#189

Post by webdoodle »

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.

Don't forget about Reddit and Twitter. Although they like to call themselves social networks, they are really corporate psyop networks for hire.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#190

Post by singron »

gundmc wrote: post #169
devbent wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Changes in sentiment can be hard to measure, but changes in posting behavior seems incredibly easy to measure.

How do you measure without the API?
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