I start a side gig and my employer tells me to choose the side gig or my employment. I choose side gig and lose employment. I am fired.
PG: Quit your second job or be fired
Altman: You can't fire me, because I quit
PG: Great, as thanks for going quietly I'll tell everyone you "weren't fired"
It's a firing for all practical purposes, sure. But technically Altman voluntarily resigned.
This is actually somewhat common when firing people - if you ever find yourself in a disciplinary meeting with HR and you know you're about to get fired, you can just resign right then and there, one second before they tell you you're fired, and they'll accept. You sacrifice the right to sue for unfair dismissal, in exchange they'll tell future employers that you left voluntarily and weren't fired.
I believe that's increasingly uncommon, I believe due to legal risk. I think it's usually the case that HR will only verify the bare objective facts of employment: dates of service, title, salary, etc.
I also know of at least one company where policy states everyone who leaves involuntarily is not eligible for rehire, and that includes people who were laid off due to downsizing/site closures/etc. So "not eligible for rehire" my not indicate any performance or behavioral issues.
I've had several job contracts which say I'm not allowed to have another job at the same time unless I have written permission, which they can't say no to without good reason — "This has become a conflict of interest, pick one" or "both of these are now full time, pick one" seem like reasonable grounds to for an employer to rescind permission.
(It's also one of the ways Musk gets flack, given how many companies he's CEO/CTO/president of).
It doesn’t take 40 hours of work all the time, especially if you can delegate well.
Perhaps we can agree that "firing" is a fairly fuzzy term, and maybe not entirely fit to meaningfully contain, both:
a) me losing my job because I am (apparently) not creating enough value for the company
b) me losing my job because I am not willing to split time between my current main gig and my unicorn startup
(this whole terminology debate is so futile and useless, mental food for the bored. WTF cares which exact colorful sticker we put on disagreements and the consequent parting. It's over, carry on.)
If you start working on a side gig, that will take up a chunk of your time and invariably occupy your brain; thus, your employer doesn’t get their full value out of you anymore. Up to a certain degree, employers (have) to tolerate this—in Germany, that would be when your performance at your job starts to suffer from it. But once your commitment to the side gig increases so much that you’re about to become CEO, there’s no reasonable way to claim you can still carry out your contractual duties to your employer.
If your employer then offers you to either step down from that side gig or lose your employment, that is completely reasonable and frankly something you should expect?
Put differently, if you pay me to paint your shed, and after finishing the front side I went off and painted my own house with the rest of the paint, you certainly wouldn’t consider the job done or full payment to be justified.
Sure, you can fly under the radar if you're working on your own business/start-up by simply lying about the hours worked, but if you're doing paid work for another employer it will be obvious, and they would not be legally able to employ you if total working time goes above 48hrs/week.
And we’re not talking about creating a small online T-shirt store, but being CEO of a venture backed organisation to evolve the state of AI. There’s just no way to pull that off.
I'm sure people can manage doing one of both (so long as there is no conflicts of interest). Heck, now that I think of it, technically I'm a chief science officer of a startup and a casual employee of a university...
It's the same if you have a family, an interest, or any semblance of a life really.
So instead, you might just want to check with your employer beforehand and talk about what they’re cool with. Something Sams could have chosen to do, but did not, apparently.
If my boss told me he was "fine with me staying at my job", I'd take it to mean that they were fine with me staying at my job.
I don't think this press release (is it that?) does a very good job of dispelling the rumors that it wasn't entirely mutual, though. He ought to have said something like "delighted to have him stay".
An employer who forces employees to stop working from home or leave the company isn't firing them, for example.
Your remote work example is not different companies ask a performance improvement plan they are saying improve your performance or leave. That “ or leave” doesn’t always mean you get fired legally , some companies would be more generous with severance if you resign voluntarily, but it doesn’t alter the fact you were asked to do so and effectively were fired.
Senior management typically leave by mutual agreement even if they “asked to resign”.
His employment was not terminated by YC legally yes , that would be rare and would happen if there is no trust left that he would do so properly when asked to resign, like it happened in OpenAI for him .
It doesn't sound like he was incapable of doing that - just incapable of doing that while also running OpenAI.
Yet he doesn't do that (in this tweet) as it's only an alternative reason and does not address those accusations.
To me that changes the meaning of "fired". I'd read it as "co-entrepeneurs parting ways". Yes one of the co-entrepeneurs has more say in who stays and who goes. But even if there was an employment contract, I'd see it more as a good/bad leave clause when no body loses their much required primary source of income.
I'm saying that he prolly has a deal at OpenAI with some stock and a good/bad leaver agreement, and a salary. Getting fired in this cases is not the same as firing someone who has zero stock and needs the jobs to put food on the table.
It just does not carry the same weight for me, regardless of the lawful definition.