I wrote: Every legal clause that affects company ownership is accepted by the CEO and the board.

I did not write: Every legal clause is accepted by the CEO and the board.

I read it. It's just not right. Companies have all kinds of processes in place for who can negotiate what and up to what limit and who has to agree if it goes above this or changes that or whatever. There are entire software packages around contract management to route contracts to the right place based on the process the company has in place.

You're right that in general Sam Altman isn't countersigning every OpenAI employee contract.

However, at some point a lawyer sat down and worked with people to write the form-contract, and someone said "you sure? you want them to sign an NDA on exit? with a clause that lets you claw back equity? (implicit: because that's not normal)"

The form-contract is changing frequently at a company going through a lot of corporate changes and with a lot of freakishly talented employees who probably negotiate hard on contracts.

To be clear, he may well have known. But it isn't a given and in the grand scheme of things on a CEO brain, it would have been way down the list of capturing mind share.

Agree 100%, something tells me A) he really didn't know B) it's still scuzzy.

I'm taking a mental note to remember why mom always said to read e v e r y word before you sign.

I should have learned this at a younger age, somehow ended up 50/50 in an LLC I always assumed was going to be 70/30. Cost a lotttt of time and energy, essentially let them hold the company hostage for $60K later, after some really strange accounting problems were discovered. (my heart says they didn't take money, but they were distracted and/or incompetent)