Something similar happened to me when I left Microsoft for Apple (I moved from the Visual Studio team to the Xcode team). MS spent six months trying to prove I'd taken "industry secrets" with me. I hadn't. The entire thing felt like a personal attack and was extremely stressful.

It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.

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ajju an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This seems like an important post. It looks like these letters are occasionally used to as a tactic, and i can see how such a tactic can really scare employees in a country where legal bills can climb really fast.

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nxobject 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.

Honestly, the proof is the least surprising part -- Apple's been paranoid about leaks for decades, even when the stakes have been lower.

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marklar423 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Did Apple help defend you against those claims during the six months?

	▲	LatencyKills 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They did. That said, I don’t know how much “defending” they had to do given that I was never even told what, exactly, I was supposed to have stolen. But, like I said, it was both surprising and anxiety inducing.

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bayindirh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.

I believe some articles mentioned about employees bragging to their former colleagues about accessing documents. Also I believe they lied to Apple about being employed elsewhere so they can continue using their access and hardware, etc.

If these are correct, the whole OpenAI playbook is very dirty, and I won't pity them a bit.

	▲	compiler-guy 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Apple also has server logs that track these former employees downloading confidential docs. It doesn't prove that they shared them over to OpenAI, but Apple has pretty solid proof that the former employees saved them without authorization.