OpenAI whistleblowers ask SEC to investigate alleged restrictive NDAs | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI whistleblowers ask SEC to investigate alleged restrictive NDAs

reuters.com

The mastodon thread I read on this concluded that you can’t waiver your way around federal law and it’s completely unenforceable.

https://www.threads.net/@codybrom/post/C9XngNJOedz

That's not mastodon fyi

It was on my mastodon feed. Somebody must have boosted it from threads. That’s okay, that’s how the system works.

I suspect these are in the contract to:

1. Clarify that if you do this, you’re on our naughty list and we’ll never do business with you again.

2. Scare those who don’t know the law itself.

It’s a scummy practice for sure.

IANAL, but I know you cannot hide criminal activity with an NDA.

Making people waive rights to Federal whistleblower compensation, doesn’t quite go there but comes pretty close.

Feels like you definitely can, though you should not be able to.

lol. Yes you can. It may not be right or legal but the point is to intimidate and bully. Works all the time against tech workers who are generally pandering, emasculated individuals already.

> company allegedly made employees sign agreements that required them to waive their federal rights to whistleblower compensation

How common/unusual is that?

> How common/unusual is that?

I’ve never heard of it. In part because it sounds stupid: most whistleblower rights penalise retaliation. This language seems to mandate it.

Wasn't there a thing ages ago about investment banks / finance firms having to carve out "unless you're telling the regulator" exemptions to their "you must not share any proprietary data with anyone ever" clauses?

There are interesting situations with multinational banks where actual requirements of the regulator in one jurisdiction are illegal in others. (It used to come up a lot with tax compliance in Switzerland though recently they’ve normalized them.)

>required them to waive their federal rights

I learned decades ago that contracts cannot be enforced upon illegal requests. Perhaps OpenAI has decided to leave their whistleblower compensation to the judicial system's interpretation..?

These things should be standardized and written by law.

Why “home brewed“ employment agreements are legal is absolute absurdity.

The power asymmetry and the fact that you can do a month of interviews before ever being shown such a document is absurd.

The current state of just encouraging some over zealous unethical sociopath to overwrite such a sensitive document in the hopes you “miss it” or are too poor or scared to “fight it” is absurd.

Even the jurisdictions with most highly regulated labour laws keep some freedom in employment contracts, none force a type contract for private employers.

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