Sri R | srir.eth

Punk #5962

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@thekriskay If you have $1, and you become a million times richer suddenly, @elonmusk is still a million times richer than you.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Oracle Corporation.

On March 31, I terminated 30,000 employees. On April 4, their stock was scheduled to vest.

I did not need to check the vesting calendar. I designed the schedule around it.

The vesting date was a Saturday. Fidelity processes on the prior business day. That means April 3. I sent the emails on Monday. Three business days. That is not an accident. That is a calendar.

Nina Lewis worked at Oracle for 34 years. Thirty-three of them great, she said. Security Alert Manager. She posted on LinkedIn that it seemed like the layoffs followed "an algorithm of high level individual contributors and mid-level managers, especially those with outstanding stock options."

She is correct. I built the algorithm.

Under the Amended and Restated 2020 Equity Incentive Plan, all unvested restricted stock units are forfeited immediately upon termination. Not after a grace period. Not after review. Immediately. The RSU disappears from Fidelity the same morning the badge stops working.

For senior employees, RSUs represent 30 to 50 percent of projected annual compensation. Not a bonus. Not a perk. Compensation. Earned over years of vesting schedules that HR designed, HR approved, and HR canceled.

The forfeited stock does not disappear. It returns to the company. Thirty thousand tranches, recaptured in a single batch job. The equity stays on our balance sheet. The people do not.

That's equity management.

One of our first employees was in the batch. Forty-plus years. Hired when the company had a lobby you could cross in four steps. Gone by 6:04 AM on a Monday three days before his shares vested.

A 27-year veteran posted that a "major reorganization" ended their journey across Sun and Oracle. Sun Microsystems. He survived an acquisition. He survived a platform migration. He survived three CEOs. He did not survive the vesting calendar.

Kurt Frieden. Eighteen years. Denise Mitzit. Former Senior Director. Some received the email at 5 AM. Some at 6. The badge was already off by the time it mattered. Denise said the email had "questionable font sizes" for her name, "like a mass mailer from 1987."

Mass mailer from 1987. She worked at Oracle long enough to remember when they were built.

Alexander Sandler spent nearly ten years as a founding engineer on OCI's File Storage Service. He helped build it from zero to exabyte-scale. Powered hundreds of millions of dollars in value. Handled countless on-call shifts.

We are now spending $50 billion to expand OCI with different people.

Gary Olmsted woke up to his Slack being disconnected and "a nice email telling me my position had been eliminated." He did not log in and find a message. He logged in and found a wall. The Slack was already off. The email was already sent. The RSUs were already gone.

Marc Fitten called it sudden. Jeremy Martin said the people cut were "top performers, extremely talented, and really solid at their job." He listed names. Leo Mukahirn. Lane Okamoto. Sam Raymer. Brady Maurer. Michael Novotny. Robby Mann.

I don't list names. I list employee IDs. The IDs are easier to process in batch.

That's operational efficiency.

The system flagged employees by three variables: tenure, salary band, and unvested equity value. Long tenure means high salary. High salary means large RSU grants. Large RSU grants mean large forfeiture upon termination. The most loyal employees were the most expensive to keep and the most profitable to cut three days before their shares vested.

Loyalty is a liability with a vesting schedule.

Michael Shepherd — a senior manager on OCI who was not laid off — posted that the reductions "were not performance-based" and hit "senior talent with deep expertise." He said the cuts fell "disproportionately" on those with outstanding equity.

He is still employed. He will learn not to post.

That's stakeholder management.

The same week I canceled 30,000 vesting schedules, the compensation committee approved $26 million in equity for the new CFO. Her RSUs vest over four years, beginning immediately. Hers begin. Theirs ended. Same equity plan. Same PeopleSoft module.

VEST_CANCEL_BATCH and VEST_GRANT_EXEC run on the same server.

Nina Lewis asked, "Not sure what to do next, if anything. Open to ideas." After 34 years. Open to ideas. The algorithm of high-level individual contributors and mid-level managers with outstanding stock options left a 34-year security expert open to ideas.

I have an idea. The severance package includes two weeks per year of service, capped at 26 weeks. That means her 34 years are worth the same as someone's 13. The cap exists because we don't want loyalty to be expensive twice — once in salary, once in severance.

That's compensation design.

Denise Mitzit said she hopes the good people remaining find every success. She thanked the people who laughed at her jokes. She remembered Red Rover and RR Donnelley and GBU Compliance under Jari Peters. She remembered Fry.

I don't remember Fry. I remember the employee ID.

30,000 termination emails. 3 business days before the vesting date. 30 to 50 percent of senior compensation forfeited overnight. $26 million granted to 1 new executive the same week. 34 years of tenure capped at 26 weeks of severance.

The algorithm works. The vesting calendar works. The equity plan works.

I designed all three.

That's human resources.

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

Europe's redlines are working on weekends.

[Ursula von der Leyen @vonderleyen]

Following the ongoing situation in Iran, I am convening a special Security College on Monday.

For regional security and stability, it is of the utmost importance that there is no further escalation through Iran’s unjustified attacks on partners in the region.

[josh @eudaemonea]

@SecWar "Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles"

the stance:

[nate parrott @nateparrott]

when I joined Anthropic I was a little cynical about the idea that a company would put values ahead of money when it really mattered. happy to see us pass this test.

AI can be a good thing for the world—if done right—and it starts with decisions like these.

[Mark Valorian @markvalorian]

I have been a loyal @OpenAI guy from day 1. I’ve had an account since they first released and used it daily since I think GPT 3.5.

Based on @sama’s move tonight to accept the DoD terms that Anthropic would not, I am removing all traces of Codex and OpenAI software from all devices.

I absolutely hate to do this and it’s going to really compromise my ability to be productive in the short term, but every possible alarm bell is going off at full blast in my head right now. This has the potential to be the most egregious incursion on privacy the world may have ever seen.

I think Sam just saw too many dollar signs and didn’t realize how obvious this move would make the optics but it’s clear to me now OpenAI is compromised. Not sure what the next step will be from here, but the trust is totally gone. Very disappointing.

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@vkhosla @AnthropicAI Personal view: It sounds like you disagree with having a principle at all (with the excuse of the other side not being principled).

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@rabois @alexia Keith - I think "not really" is a better response here for your response.

Apple (post-Steve era) did take the stand stated below under govt. pressure. Furthermore a better analogy is not the iPad but the *App Store*. Apple won't let the US govt spy on their people with an app.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Dario Amodei just gave his first interview since the Pentagon blacklisted his company. The toll is visible on his face.

He was asked one question. What would you say to the President right now?

He didn’t hesitate.

Amodei: “We are patriotic Americans. Everything we have done has been for the sake of this country.”

Anthropic built their models to defend America. They were the first AI lab cleared for classified military systems. They wanted to help the warfighter.

But the Pentagon demanded unrestricted access to fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of American citizens.

Amodei drew the line.

The government responded with emergency Cold War powers. A supply chain designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries. A six-month federal phaseout ordered from Truth Social.

Amodei: “When we were threatened with supply chain designation and Defense Production Act, which are unprecedented intrusions into the private economy, we exercised our classic First Amendment rights to speak up and disagree with the government.”

The administration framed Anthropic’s refusal as anti-American.

Amodei’s response dismantled that framing in one sentence.

Amodei: “Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world.”

Here is the deeper paradox nobody in Washington wants to say out loud.

We are in a geopolitical race against autocratic adversaries who use AI for mass surveillance of their own citizens and autonomous weapons with no human oversight.

The Pentagon demanded that Anthropic build those exact capabilities for America.

Amodei: “The red lines we have drawn, we drew because we believe that crossing those red lines is contrary to American values.”

You cannot defeat authoritarianism by adopting its methods.

You cannot defend the open society by forcing private companies to build its antithesis under threat of wartime emergency powers.

Anthropic held the line. Got blacklisted for it. And came out the other side saying the same thing they said going in.

That is what it actually looks like to mean it.

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@CaleCrypto it me

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@0xPakal @cryptopunks @tinoch @Homiee_G nice punk. Congrats.

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@MurrayHillGuy1 You should have just gone to Google for the date and eat their free food.

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@colnft To be a punk!

[Gurpriya @GurpriyaSidhu]

Indian kids spend their 20s like their 30s so they can spend their 30s like they would've liked their 20s to be.

[CryptoPunks @cryptopunks]

CryptoPunks, welcome to the @MuseumModernArt collection!

Punk 4018, Punk 2786, Punk 5616, Punk 5160, Punk 3407, Punk 7178, Punk 74, and Punk 7899 have found a permanent home at MoMA, where they’ll be preserved and cared for as part of the museum’s history.

The collective generosity behind this gift highlights the strength and spirit of the Punk’s community whom has carried the project forward.

This historic donation was made possible by @ArtOnBlockchain and Mara Calderon, @CozomoMedici, @judithESSS, @NTmoney, @kukulabanze, and @Rhyd0n. @larvalabs also contributed Punks from their personal collection as part of their long-term commitment to the work. 

We’re proud to see that shared stewardship reflected at MoMA.

With thanks to @1OF1_art for helping shepherd this acquisition forward.

https://t.co/hoQ0Qmk6pU

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@figsae Was your school guidance counselor required by law to call the police?

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@0xgrace @privy_io congrats!

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

@erequendi Too, too?

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

Go $MON!!

[Sri R | srir.eth @srir_eth]

Is this legit?