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As he says, he should have known, but I think it's plausible that he didn't know every detail of their termination agreements. I would certainly be more comfort
by modeless 2y ago
As he says, he should have known, but I think it's plausible that he didn't know every detail of their termination agreements. I would certainly be more comfortable if it was something invented by an overeager lawyer rather than policy directly from the top.
Glad to see an offer to fix it for former employees. Although it's not clear what form that fix would take. If people signed a perpetual non-disparagement clause because they believed their vested equity was under threat, the correct fix would be to void the non-disparagement clause. And even asking for a perpetual non-disparagement agreement in the first place is gross to me, unless it comes with perpetual severance pay. I just re-checked my exit paperwork from Google and Meta and Microsoft and I didn't see anything like that. I don't think that Sam is apologizing for that specifically. He seems to be apologizing about the equity part only. I'd be happy to see clarification here.
Unfortunately I think apologies are not usually the right PR move, because the mob generally doesn't accept them, but as the person who posted the top thread on the previous post, I'm glad that he did apologize despite that.
- plorkyeran 2y agoNo, it is not plausible that he didn't. This is the sort of thing that CEOs are very involved in the details of. If an overeager lawyer can add a lifetime non-disparagement clause to the equity plan without the CEO even noticing then you have some very big problems. This isn't some routine HR stuff.
- bamboozled 2y agoHe seems to defer to the “I didn’t know” excuse far too often for my liking.
- ethbr1 2y agoHard to blame someone for unknown unknowns.
- lolinder 2y ago> can add a lifetime non-disparagement clause to the equity plan I thought we were talking about exit docs, not clauses in the equity program. Do we have any reason to believe that the equity program itself contained language to this effect? The Vox article only talks about the NDA employees sign on the way out, it's only random internet comments that I've seen speculating about the contents of the equity program.
- bamboozled 2y agoI don’t see how there wouldn’t be a relationship with the exit doc , if part of the NDA is that you lose your equity for insulting the company. He knew about this. There’s no way he only knew about the good bits.
- badlucklottery 2y ago> If an overeager lawyer can add a lifetime non-disparagement clause to the equity plan without the CEO even noticing then you have some very big problems Yeah, it's one of those "are you an asshole or just incompetent?" PR moments. Altman seems to have chosen "incompetent" but neither is a great look for a CEO.
- orionsbelt 2y agoI can assure you, you are wrong. Sam is very busy running a huge company. It is not surprising, or outside the norm, that he is not reviewing exit documents.
- drpossum 2y agoDo you have anything to back up that "assurance" or are you just baselessly defending random companies' inner workings?
- orionsbelt 2y agoDirectly working on this stuff with many many companies of different sizes. I know nothing about OpenAI or Sam in particular — perhaps he is a particular involved CEO and was aware — but I can tell you definitely having a CEO of a company this size paying more attention to the business than this type of stuff is extremely normal.