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OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

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Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#631

Post by theGnuMe »

_heimdall wrote: post #275
PNewling wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... They definitely can be. When I worked for a small biotech company all of my options had a tiered vesting schedule.

Options aren't equity, they're only the option to buy equity at a specified price. Vesting just means you can actually buy the shares at the set strike pice. For example, you may join a company and be given options to buy 10,000 shares at $5 each with a 2 year vesting schedule. They may begin vesting immediately, meaning you can buy 1/24th of the total options each month (or 614 shares). Its also common for a delay u…

Options can vest as do stock grants as well.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#632

Post by iinnPP »

tinyhouse wrote: post #622
smt88 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Sam Altman's career and tweets. He's a clown at best, and at worst he's a manipulative crook who only cares about his own enrichment and uses pro-social ideas to give himself a veneer of trustworthiness.

Well, more than 90% of OpenAI employees backed him up when the board fired him. Maybe he's not the clown you claim he is.

People are self-motivated more often than not.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#633

Post by theGnuMe »

anon373839 wrote: post #445
underlogic wrote: post #300

This is bizarre. Someone hands you a contract as you're leaving a company and if you refuse to agree to whatever they dreamt up and sign the company takes back the equity you earned? That can't be legal

Hard to evaluate this without access to the documents. But in CA, agreements cannot be conditioned on the payment of previously earned wages. Equity adds a wrinkle here, but I suspect if the effect of canceling equity is to cause a forfeiture of earned wages, then ultimately whatever contract is signed under that threat is void.

Well some rich ex-openAI person should test this theory. Only way to find out. I’m sure some of them are rich.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#634

Post by boppo1 »

tim333 wrote: post #597
comboy wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised at such a mean comment and lots of follow-ups with agreement. I don't know Sam personally, I've only heard him here and there online from before OpenAI days and all I got was a good impression. He seems smart and pretty humble. Apart from all openai drama which I don't know enough to have an opinion, past-openai he also seems to be talking with sense. Since so many people took time to put him down there…

[flagged]

Idk, everyone loves Carmack

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#635

Post by llamaimperative »

tinyhouse wrote: post #622
smt88 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Sam Altman's career and tweets. He's a clown at best, and at worst he's a manipulative crook who only cares about his own enrichment and uses pro-social ideas to give himself a veneer of trustworthiness.

Well, more than 90% of OpenAI employees backed him up when the board fired him. Maybe he's not the clown you claim he is.

Or they didn’t want the company, their job, and all of their equity to evaporate

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#636

Post by DaSHacka »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #459

"It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it." I find it hard to understand that in a country that tends to take freedom of expression so seriously (and I say this unironically, American democracy may have flaws but that is definitely a strength) it can be legal to silence someone for the rest of their life.

As others have mentioned, its likely many parts of this NDA are non-enforceable

Its quite common for companies to put tons of extremely restrictive terms in an NDA they can't actually legally enforce to scare off potential future ex-employees from creating a problem.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#637

Post by kaoD »

repeekad wrote: post #630
kaoD wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one building this software wants to “steal from creators” > It’s why things like the recent deal[s ...] are becoming so important Sorry but I don't follow. Is it one or the other? If they didn't want to steal from the original authors, why do they not-steal Reddit now? What happens with the smaller creators that are not Reddit? When is OpenAI meeting with me to discuss compensation? To me your post felt somethin…

The law is slow and is always playing catch up in terms of prosecution, it’s not clear today because this kind of copyright has never been an issue before. Usually it’s just outright stealing content that was protected, no one ever imagined “training” to be a protected use case, humans “train” on copyrighted works all the time, ideally copyrighted works they purchased for said purpose… the same will start to apply fo…

That seems even worse: they had intent to steal and now they're trying to make sure it is properly legislated so nobody else can do it, thus reducing competition.

GPT can't get retroactively untrained on stolen data.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#638

Post by ghusbands »

jstummbillig wrote: post #623

I am confused about the source of the outrage. A situation where nobody is very clear about what the claim is but everyone is very upset, makes me suspicious. Are employees being mislead about the contract terms at time of signing the contract? Because, obviously, the original contract needs to have some clause regarding the equity situation, right? We can not just make that up at the end. So... are we claiming fraud…

If the two parties are equal, sure. If it's a person vs a corporation of significant size, then no, it's not safe to assume that people have free choice. That's also ignoring motivations apart from business ones, like them actually wanting to be at the leading edge of AI research or wanting to work with particular other individuals.

It's a common mistake on here to assume that for every decision there are equally good other options. Also, the fact that they feel the need to enforce silence so strongly implies at least a little that they have something to hide.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#639

Post by theyinwhy »

Buttons840 wrote: post #214

So part of their compensation for working is equity, and when they leave thay have to sign an additional agreement in order to keep their previously earned compensation? How is this legal? Mine as well tell them they have to give all their money back too. What's the consideration for this contract?

I guess there are indeed countries where this is illegal. Funny that it seems to be legal in the land of the free (speech).

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#640

Post by mewpmewp2 »

jakupovic wrote: post #617
tim333 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I shared stage with Sam at one point for an hour and was not impressed. Obviously I was wrong as Sam has accomplished so much in the meantime, but my initial impression wasn't much. How he did it is for him to know and for others to ...

What do you mean by not impressed?
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