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It probably would be better to switch the link from the X post to the Vox article [0]. From the article: “““ It turns out there’s a very clear reason for [wh

It probably would be better to switch the link from the X post to the Vox article [0]. From the article: “““ It turns out there’s a very clear reason for [why no one who had once worked at OpenAI was talking]. I have seen the extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. 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. If a departing employee declines to sign the document, or if they violate it, they can lose all vested equity they earned during their time at the company, which is likely worth millions of dollars. One former employee, Daniel Kokotajlo, who posted that he quit OpenAI “due to losing confidence that it would behave responsibly around the time of AGI,” has confirmed publicly that he had to surrender what would have likely turned out to be a huge sum of money in order to quit without signing the document. ””” [0]: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158478/openai-departures-sam-altman-employees-chatgpt-release https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158478/openai...

jbernsteiniv 2y ago
He gets my respect for that one both publicly acknowledging why he was leaving and their pantomime. I don't know how much the equity would be for each employee (the article suggests millions but that may skew by role) and I don't know if I would just be like the rest by keeping my lips tight for fear of the equity forfeiture. It takes a man of real principle to stand up against that and tell them to keep their money if they can't speak ill of a potentially toxic work environment.
- pennybanks 2y ago
  [flagged]
- romwell 2y ago
  >It takes a man of real principle to stand up against that and tell them to keep their money if they can't speak ill of a potentially toxic work environment. Incidentally, that's what Grigory Perelman, the mathematician that rejected the Fields Medal and the $1M prize that came with it, did. It wasn't a matter of an NDA either; it was a move to make his message heard (TL;DR: "publish or perish" rat race that the academia has become is antithetical to good science). He was (and still is) widely misunderstood in that move, but I hope people would see it more clearly now. The enshittification processes of academic and corporate structures are not entirely dissimilar, after all, as money is at the core of corrupting either.
  - edanm 2y ago
    I think, when making a gesture, you need to consider its practical impact, which includes whether and how it will be understood (or not). In the OpenAI case, the gesture of "forgoing millions of dollars" directly makes you able to do something you couldn't - speak about OpenAI publicly. In the Grigory Perelman case, obviously the message was far less clear to most people (I personally have heard of him turning down the money before and know the broad strokes of his story, but had no idea that that was the reason).
    - romwell 2y ago
      Consider this: 1. If he didn't turn down the money, you wouldn't have heard of him at all; 2. You're not the intended audience of Grigory's message, nor are you in position to influence, change, or address the problems he was highlighting. The people who are heard the message loud and clear. 3. On a very basic level, it's very easy to understand that there's gotta be something wrong with the award if a deserving recipient turns it down. What exactly is wrong is left as an exercise to the reader — as you'd expect of a mathematician like Perelman. Quote (from [1]): From the few public statements made by Perelman and close colleagues, it seems he had become disillusioned with the entire field of mathematics. He was the purest of the purists, consumed with his love for mathematics, and completely uninterested in academic politics, with its relentless jockeying for position and squabbling over credit. He denounced most of his colleagues as conformists. When he opted to quit professional mathematics altogether, he offered this confusing rationale: “As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some ugly thing or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.”* This explanation is confusing only to someone who has never tried to get a tenured position in academia. Perelman was one of the few people to not only give the finger to the soul-crushing, dehumanizing system, but to also call it out in a way that stung. He wasn't the only one; but the only other person I can think of is Alexander Grothendiek [2], who went as far as declaring that publishing any of his work would be against his will. Incidentally, both are of Russian-Jewish origin/roots, and almost certainly autistic. I find their views very understandable and relatable, but then again, I'm also an autistic Jew from Odessa with a math PhD who left academia (the list of similarities ends there, sadly). [1] https://nautil.us/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling-case-of-grigori-perelman-234570/ https://nautil.us/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling-case-of... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck
dang 2y ago
(Parent comment was posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40394778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40394778 before we merged that thread hither.)
- jay-barronville 2y ago
  Thank you, @dang! On top of things, as usual.
calibas 2y ago
> It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. This is the kind of thing a cult demands of its followers, or an authoritarian government demands of its citizens. I don't know why people would think it's okay for a business to demand this from its employees.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
When YCR HARC folded, Sam had everyone sign a non-disclosure anti disparagement NDA to keep their computer. I thought is was odd, and the only reason I can even say this is that I bought the iMac I was using before the option became available. Still, I had nothing bad to disclose, so it would have saved me some money.
- gwern 2y ago
  That's interesting. So this would have been 2017, 2018? How long did the NDA + paired gag order about the NDA, and the non-disparagement order last? The OA one is apparently a lifetime one, including the 'non-disparagement' one. Was the YC HARC NDA also lifetime?
gmd63 2y ago
Yet another ding against the "Open" character of the company.
snowfield 2y ago
There are also directly inscentiviced to not talk shit about a company they a lot of stock in.
bitcharmer 2y ago
[flagged]
watwut 2y ago
> Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it. This should not be legal.
- Tao3300 2y ago
  It doesn't even make logical sense. If someone asks you about the NDA what are you supposed to say? "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of said NDA" is pretty much confirmation of the NDA!
  - space_oddity 2y ago
    Yeah... Come up with "I’m committed to maintaining confidentiality in all my professional dealings." But still it sounds suspicious
avereveard 2y ago
even if NDA were not a thing, revealing past company trade secrets publicly would render any of them unemployable.
jakderrida 2y ago
>>contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. 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. Perfect! So it's so incredibly overreaching that any judge in California would deem the entire NDA unenforceable.. Either that or, in your effort to overstate a point, you exaggerated in a way that undermines the point you were trying to make.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Lots of companies try and impose things on their employees which a judge would obviously rule to be unlawful. Sometimes they just don’t think through it carefully; other times, it’s a calculated decision that few employees will care enough to actually get the issue in front of a judge in the first place. Especially relevant for something like a non disclosure agreement, where no judge is likely to have the opportunity to declare it unenforceable unless the company tries to enforce it on someone who fights back.
- 77pt77 2y ago
  Maybe it's unenforceable, but they can make it very expensive for anyone to find out in more ways than one.
mc32 2y ago
Then lower level employees who don’t have do much at stake could open up. Formers who have much larger stakes could compensate these lower level formers for forgoing any upside. Now, sure, maybe they don’t have the same inside information, but u bet there’s lots of scuttlebutt to go around.
Lamad1234 2y ago
[dead]
YeBanKo 2y ago
They can’t loose their already vested options for refusing to sign NDA upon departure. Maybe they are offered additional grants or expedited vesting of the remaining options.

jbernsteiniv 2y ago

He gets my respect for that one both publicly acknowledging why he was leaving and their pantomime. I don't know how much the equity would be for each employee (the article suggests millions but that may skew by role) and I don't know if I would just be like the rest by keeping my lips tight for fear of the equity forfeiture. It takes a man of real principle to stand up against that and tell them to keep their money if they can't speak ill of a potentially toxic work environment.

pennybanks 2y ago
[flagged]
romwell 2y ago
>It takes a man of real principle to stand up against that and tell them to keep their money if they can't speak ill of a potentially toxic work environment. Incidentally, that's what Grigory Perelman, the mathematician that rejected the Fields Medal and the $1M prize that came with it, did. It wasn't a matter of an NDA either; it was a move to make his message heard (TL;DR: "publish or perish" rat race that the academia has become is antithetical to good science). He was (and still is) widely misunderstood in that move, but I hope people would see it more clearly now. The enshittification processes of academic and corporate structures are not entirely dissimilar, after all, as money is at the core of corrupting either.
- edanm 2y ago
  I think, when making a gesture, you need to consider its practical impact, which includes whether and how it will be understood (or not). In the OpenAI case, the gesture of "forgoing millions of dollars" directly makes you able to do something you couldn't - speak about OpenAI publicly. In the Grigory Perelman case, obviously the message was far less clear to most people (I personally have heard of him turning down the money before and know the broad strokes of his story, but had no idea that that was the reason).
  - romwell 2y ago
    Consider this: 1. If he didn't turn down the money, you wouldn't have heard of him at all; 2. You're not the intended audience of Grigory's message, nor are you in position to influence, change, or address the problems he was highlighting. The people who are heard the message loud and clear. 3. On a very basic level, it's very easy to understand that there's gotta be something wrong with the award if a deserving recipient turns it down. What exactly is wrong is left as an exercise to the reader — as you'd expect of a mathematician like Perelman. Quote (from [1]): From the few public statements made by Perelman and close colleagues, it seems he had become disillusioned with the entire field of mathematics. He was the purest of the purists, consumed with his love for mathematics, and completely uninterested in academic politics, with its relentless jockeying for position and squabbling over credit. He denounced most of his colleagues as conformists. When he opted to quit professional mathematics altogether, he offered this confusing rationale: “As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some ugly thing or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.”* This explanation is confusing only to someone who has never tried to get a tenured position in academia. Perelman was one of the few people to not only give the finger to the soul-crushing, dehumanizing system, but to also call it out in a way that stung. He wasn't the only one; but the only other person I can think of is Alexander Grothendiek [2], who went as far as declaring that publishing any of his work would be against his will. Incidentally, both are of Russian-Jewish origin/roots, and almost certainly autistic. I find their views very understandable and relatable, but then again, I'm also an autistic Jew from Odessa with a math PhD who left academia (the list of similarities ends there, sadly). [1] https://nautil.us/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling-case-of-grigori-perelman-234570/ https://nautil.us/purest-of-the-purists-the-puzzling-case-of... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck

dang 2y ago

(Parent comment was posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40394778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40394778 before we merged that thread hither.)

jay-barronville 2y ago
Thank you, @dang! On top of things, as usual.

calibas 2y ago

> It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. This is the kind of thing a cult demands of its followers, or an authoritarian government demands of its citizens. I don't know why people would think it's okay for a business to demand this from its employees.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

When YCR HARC folded, Sam had everyone sign a non-disclosure anti disparagement NDA to keep their computer. I thought is was odd, and the only reason I can even say this is that I bought the iMac I was using before the option became available. Still, I had nothing bad to disclose, so it would have saved me some money.

gwern 2y ago
That's interesting. So this would have been 2017, 2018? How long did the NDA + paired gag order about the NDA, and the non-disparagement order last? The OA one is apparently a lifetime one, including the 'non-disparagement' one. Was the YC HARC NDA also lifetime?

gmd63 2y ago

Yet another ding against the "Open" character of the company.

snowfield 2y ago

There are also directly inscentiviced to not talk shit about a company they a lot of stock in.

bitcharmer 2y ago

[flagged]

watwut 2y ago

> Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it. This should not be legal.

Tao3300 2y ago
It doesn't even make logical sense. If someone asks you about the NDA what are you supposed to say? "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of said NDA" is pretty much confirmation of the NDA!
- space_oddity 2y ago
  Yeah... Come up with "I’m committed to maintaining confidentiality in all my professional dealings." But still it sounds suspicious

avereveard 2y ago

even if NDA were not a thing, revealing past company trade secrets publicly would render any of them unemployable.

jakderrida 2y ago

>>contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. 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. Perfect! So it's so incredibly overreaching that any judge in California would deem the entire NDA unenforceable.. Either that or, in your effort to overstate a point, you exaggerated in a way that undermines the point you were trying to make.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
Lots of companies try and impose things on their employees which a judge would obviously rule to be unlawful. Sometimes they just don’t think through it carefully; other times, it’s a calculated decision that few employees will care enough to actually get the issue in front of a judge in the first place. Especially relevant for something like a non disclosure agreement, where no judge is likely to have the opportunity to declare it unenforceable unless the company tries to enforce it on someone who fights back.
77pt77 2y ago
Maybe it's unenforceable, but they can make it very expensive for anyone to find out in more ways than one.

mc32 2y ago

Then lower level employees who don’t have do much at stake could open up. Formers who have much larger stakes could compensate these lower level formers for forgoing any upside. Now, sure, maybe they don’t have the same inside information, but u bet there’s lots of scuttlebutt to go around.

Lamad1234 2y ago

[dead]

YeBanKo 2y ago

They can’t loose their already vested options for refusing to sign NDA upon departure. Maybe they are offered additional grants or expedited vesting of the remaining options.