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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

#191

Post by throwaway2037 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #44
tedivm wrote: post #28

Earlier 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.

   > Comp clawbacks are quite common in finance
Common? Absolutely not. It might be common for a tiny fraction of investment bank staff who are considered (1) material risk takers, (2) revenue generators, or (3) senior management.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#193

Post by srockets »

bertil wrote: post #182
tedivm wrote: post #28

Earlier 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".

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 ille…

A 90 days exercise window is standard (and there are tax implications as well in play).

OpenAI is different: they don’t grant options, but “Units” that are more like RSUs.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#195

Post by acjohnson55 »

tedivm wrote: post #33
belter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a mistake... "...But there's a problem with those apologies from company leadership. Company documents obtained by Vox with signatures from Altman and Kwon complicate their claim that the clawback provisions were something they hadn’t known about..."

Honestly I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on that, depending on their actions, because I'm sure they sign so many documents they just rely on their legal teams to ensure they're good.

There's absolutely no way that the officers of the company would be unaware of this.

First of all, it beggars belief that this whole thing could be the work of HR people or lawyers or something, operating under their own initiative. The only way I could believe that is if they deliberately set up a firewall to let people be bad cops while giving the C-suite plausible deniability. Which is no excuse.

But...you don't think they'd have heard about it from at least one departing employee, attempting to appeal the onerous terms of their separation to the highest authority in the company?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#196

Post by internetter »

wayeq wrote: post #175
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've been mostly using all lowercase for decades.. am i the asshole?

why?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#197

Post by beeeeerp »

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…

I actively quit producing content and deleted my account.

Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I do feel like the quality of discourse has taken a nose dive.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#198

Post by a_wild_dandan »

JCM9 wrote: post #132

There’s a recurring pattern here of OpenAI getting caught red handed doing bad things and then being all like “Oh it was just a misunderstanding, nothing more, we’ll get on to fixing that ASAP… nothing to see here…” It’s becoming too much to just be honest oversights.

Seems this Altman fella isn't being consistently candid with us.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#199

Post by warcher »

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.

It’s the rule of ten (I made that up) 1:10 upvote. 1:10 of them comment. 1:10 post.

The people barking are actually the least worrisome, they’re highly engaged. The meat of your users say nothing and are only visible in-house.

That said, they also don’t give a shit about most of this. They want their content and they want it now. I am very confident spez knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#200

Post by andrethegiant »

lobsterthief wrote: post #99
dullcrisp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped browsing Reddit. I imagine the people who posted comments to Reddit saying they’re going to leave Reddit aren’t a representative sample.

Same. Redditor for 15 years and the API thing was the last straw. I didn’t post about not engaging with or using the platform anymore. Nor did I delete my account, since it still holds some value to me. But I slinked away into the darkness and now HN is my social media tool.

Same here on everything you mentioned
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