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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

#371

Post by semi-extrinsic »

londons_explore wrote: post #141
adastra22 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

> which for most people would be a worse deal

It's a worse deal in retrospect for a successfull company. But there and then it's not very attractive to pay an up-front tax on something that you can sell at an unknown price in the relatively far future.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#372

Post by dragonwriter »

somenameforme wrote: post #350
hehdhdjehehegwv wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they probably are that busy and aren’t trying to impress students, they’re trying to grade a bunch of exams while reviewing a paper while writing up research while writing a grant and also having a personal life.

And if they treat them all with this degree of attention, then they're probably failing at all of them.

The grant writing and (supervising the work of the people performing and writing up) the research funded by the grants that will also be the basis on which they will secure future grants get more attention, obviously.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#373

Post by saghm »

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".

The closest thing I've heard of is having to sign anti-disparagement clauses as part of severance when laid off; still pretty shitty, but taking back already vested equity would be on another level.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#375

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

swat535 wrote: post #338
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?

I mean it's not like anything is going to happen to them anyway. People will continue to defend and worship Altman until their last drop of blood on HN and elsewhere, consumers will continue using GPT, businesses will keep hyping it up and rivers of cash will flow per status quo to his pockets like no tomorrow. If one thoroughly wants to to make a change, one should support alternative open source models to remove ou…

>People will continue to defend and worship Altman until their last drop of blood on HN and elsewhere

The percentage of HN users defending Altman has dropped massively since the board scandal ~6 months ago.

>consumers will continue using GPT, businesses will keep hyping it up

Customers will use the best model. If OpenAI loses investors and talent, their models may not be in the lead.

IMO the best approach is to build your app so it's agnostic to the choice of model, and take corporate ethics into consideration when choosing a model, in addition to performance.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#376

Post by dragonwriter »

saghm wrote: post #373
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".

The closest thing I've heard of is having to sign anti-disparagement clauses as part of severance when laid off; still pretty shitty, but taking back already vested equity would be on another level.

My understanding is that its an explicit condition of the equity grant, not something technically first revealed at exit (which would probably be illegal), but probably under the expectation that no one is carefully studying the terms of the agreement that would be required at exit when they are accepting compensation terms that i nclude equity.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#377

Post by whymauri »

manlobster wrote: post #335

Do OpenAI employees actually get equity in the company (e.g. options or RSUs)? I was under the impression that the company awards "profit units" of some kind, and that many employees aren't sure how they work.

Here's an explanation:

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#378

Post by MaxHoppersGhost »

ramesh31 wrote: post #80

They could have been cool. They could have been 2001 Google. They could have been the number one place any new PhD wanted to work. But no. The MBAs saw dollar signs, and everything went out the window. They fumbled the early mover advantage, and will be hollowed out by the competition and commodified by the PaaS giants. What a shame.

Who are the MBAs that did this? Altman is not an MBA.
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