Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 567 posts

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#291

Post by tsimionescu »

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.

According to the Vox article, it's much more complicated legally. It's not part of each employee's contract that allows this, it's part of the articles of incorporation of the for-profit part of OpenAI.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#292

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

hashtag-til wrote: post #38
kyleblarson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mob that Vox represents these days is miniscule

It’s remarkable to see the hoi polloi to stand by CEOs and big corporations, rather than defending the few parts of the media that stand for regular workers.

This is how anything political (big or small P) works.

Aspirations keep people voting against their interests.

I personally worry that the way fans of OpenAI and Stability AI are lining up to criticise artists for demanding to be compensated, or accusing them of “gatekeeping” could be folded into a wider populism, the way 4chan shitposting became a political position. When populism turns on artists it’s usually a bad sign.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#293

Post by callalex »

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.

Then why are they paid such obscene amounts of money?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#294

Post by hluska »

justinclift wrote: post #241
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…

> He said I can't do that, no one off contracts. There was still potential to engage there: "That's alright, as you said it's not enforceable anyway just remove it from everyone's contract. It'll just be the new version of the contract for everyone." Doubt it would have made any difference though, as the lawyer was super likely bullshitting.

This is one of those magical times where having your own counsel is worth the upfront cost.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#295

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

parineum wrote: post #287
hashtag-til wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s remarkable to see the hoi polloi to stand by CEOs and big corporations, rather than defending the few parts of the media that stand for regular workers.

It's not about taking sides, it's about not caring. Everyone is tired of getting worked up over super rich CEOs being "aggressive" to their very rich employees and your,"if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude.

First they came for the Sheldon Coopers, and I did not speak out

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#296

Post by tsimionescu »

ajb wrote: post #238
ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;-)

If it wasn't in the original contracts for the equity, they wouldn't be able to claw back. Fairly obviously, the mechanism can't be in the exit agreement because you didn't sign that yet. Normally a company has to give you new "consideration" (which is the legal term for something of value) for you to want to sign an exit agreement - otherwise you can just not bother to sign. Usually this is extra compensation. In th…

Per the Vox article, it's not directly in the contract you sign for the equity, it's basically part of the definition of the equity itself (the articles of incorporation of the for-profit company) that OpenAI remains in full control of the equity in this way.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#297

Post by hehdhdjehehegwv »

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…

Personally I only use Lemmy now. I never made a goodbye/fuck spez post, I just stopped using Reddit.

I think your sample frame is off, they did themselves unforced damage in the long run.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#298

Post by nickzelei »

spot5010 wrote: post #209
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.

Ironically, if you just kept the default keyboard settings on your phone, it will capitalize words for you. So these people changes the default settings to create this impression?

They might be sending messages on a laptop which doesn’t have that turned on by default.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#299

Post by filleduchaos »

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.

Lowercase typing is broadly informal and (historically) faster (autocorrect especially on mobile devices was terrible for longer than it has been any good).

Anything else people read into it is very often just projection.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#300

Post by 1123581321 »

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?

Same. It’s something you learned if you did a lot of chat (irc, icq, battle.net etc.) before smartphones. It makes sense young people wouldn’t know it’d been a default, faster way to type.
Post reply on HN