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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

#521

Post by spongebobism »

voxic11 wrote: post #64
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is OpenAI a finance company? I guess that would explain a lot.

Would it though? Presumably a finance company's claw back clause is there to protect it from you taking its trade secrets with you to its competitors, not from you tweeting "looks trashy lol" in response to a product launch of theirs, or you mentioning to a friend that your old boss was kind of a dick.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#522

Post by JohnFen »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #22
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…

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…

You did the right thing here.

> I was in meetings with a lawyer at the company who told me it's probably not enforceable, don't worry about it

Life rule: if the party you're negotiating a contact with says anything like "don't worry about that, it's not enforceable" or "it's just boilerplate, we never enforce that" but refuses to strike it from the contract then run, don't walk, away from table. Whoever you're dealing with is not operating in good faith.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#523

Post by aagha »

brown9-2 wrote: post #218
aagha wrote: post #206

I don't understand whenever you read about something like this, why the head of HR at a company like this (just google (head of people|hr|"human resources" openai linkedin) and see the first result) doesn't end up on a public blacklist of bad actors who are knowingly aggressive toward employees!

Because this isn’t something instituted by the head of HR alone.

But it's 100% approved by them.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#524

Post by _1_1_1_1_1_1_ »

mpweiher wrote: post #461
hollowpython wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really do this, and is striking out a line of a contract binding?

Yes, I really do this. Have done since I started working. At one of my first jobs as a student employee they offered me a salary X. In the contract there was some lower number Y. When I pointed this out, they said "X includes the bonus. It's not in the contract but we've never not paid it". OK, if this is really guaranteed, you can make that the salary and put it in writing. They did, my salary was X and that year wa…

[dead]

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#525

Post by samspot »

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.

Yeah, agree, but they don't have to cancel the disparagement clause. They could just eat the PR hit. Allowing former employees to talk freely seems risky to me (if I were them). I think we can give them back 5 points for this move but still leave them at -995 overall.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#526

Post by NotSammyHagar »

xwolfi wrote: post #310
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…

You did well: there is never a rule against one-off contract. I can assure you the CEO has a one-off contract, and that lawyer has a one-off contract, at the very least :D

Those are great points. I didn't think about it at the time. Since they were pushing me hard to sign a contract that for once literally blocked most of the companies in the cs speciality area I mostly have worked in, it gave me enough courage to say no. Barely ;-)

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#527

Post by [deleted] »

WhrRTheBaboons wrote: post #496
hollowpython wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really do this, and is striking out a line of a contract binding?

(EU perspective) it is binding. you just add both parties' initials/signature on the margin of each line that was changed.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#528

Post by mrguyorama »

darkwater wrote: post #474
mpweiher wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And just like I have to be fine with not getting the job if my conditions are not acceptable to them, they have to be fine with not getting me if their conditions are not acceptable to me. Considering the considerable effort that has gone into this by the time you are negotiating a contract, letting it fail over something that "is not important" and "is never enforced" would be very stupid of them. So if the…

> So if they are unwilling to budge, that either means they were lying all along and the thing that's "never enforced" and is "not important" actually is very important to them and definitely will be enforced, or that they are a company that will enforce arbitrary and pointless rules on employees as long as they think they can. Most of the time is basically just FUD, to coerce people into following the rule-that-is-n…

It's always "not enforced" or "just a template" right up until they decide they need to pressure you into something and then they will have no problem referencing those items.

Do not sign a contract unless you are willing to entirely submit to everything in it that is legally binding.

Also be careful with extremely vague contracts. My employment contract was basically "You will do whatever we need you to do" and surprise surprise, unpaid overtime is expected.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#529

Post by mrguyorama »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #229
user_7832 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish there was some simple calculations that could be shown on how posts are ranked. For eg post A has x upvotes, y comments, is z minutes old and therefore rank 2. Post B has these values, while C is here. Hence this post went down the front page quickly. It's not that I don't trust the mods explicitly, it's just that showing such numbers (if they exist) would be helpful for transparency.

I really don't care about the "algorithm" here. I think this place is distinguished nicely by the fact that I almost never know how much karma a post or user has. If it was in fact a total dictatorship of a few, posing as some democratic reddit thing, who cares? I'm OK as it is, and these things don't last forever anyway. All you can really do on the internet is ride the waves of synchronicity where the community and…

>I think this place is distinguished nicely by the fact that I almost never know how much karma a post or user has.

Did you know that people who have been involved with Y Combinator who make an account on HN can see everyone else who has been a part of Y Combinator? Their usernames are highlighted a different color.

It's a literal secret club that they rarely acknowledge.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#530

Post by interludead »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #325
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".

Anytime someone tried to get me to sign a terrible contract, they always said “This is just standard stuff.”

By that downplaying the significance of a contract's terms and persuading to sign it without fully understanding the implications. If this were only the beginning of my career, meaning my first serious company, I would sign the contract.
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