OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the remote work experiment was a mistake – it’s over

Pre COVID I joined an all remote startup as a very experienced first employee .. phone calls / skyping / email throughout each day always minimum length and minimum participation as needed... the project flourished beautifully... same approach is valid today for similar very early startups

key is only highly productive engineers with track record of fully independent powerful problem solving

never any coding questions as a service during hiring

I've been fully remote for over a decade and never again will take any on location requirement jobs

I taught myself coding by myself while working on a ship pre Internet just me and some books... more important than experience early on is creativity and can do attitude coupled with fortitude and perseverance... I have never assumed failure was bad instead a learning opportunity

Sam Altman might think it’s over but the value proposition for his employees has just changed significantly and the consequences of that change is yet to be seen.

"I do not believe in remote work for start-ups"

Would be a better title.

Startups that are small and lean that still are working things out I can definitely see being a lot more productive if everyone is on the premises. Things can be very dynamic and require flexibility from many.

However once your business has settled I don't see any issues with remote work.

Sorry wifi, affordable laptops , 3G, Globalisation and now COVID all contributed to the fact that remote work is here to stay.

year 4 of my startup. we've been remote since before covid. The only downside is that its much harder to onboard engineers. especially juniors. But thats on your senior engineers to put more emphasis on mentoring and onboarding someone as they get into the codebase.

And its not like there aren't clear benefits. you can hire amazing people and let them work where they are happy. happy workers are more dedicated.

One might think that when a sophisticated AI becomes publicly available at little cost which has a legitimate claim at being able to do many people's jobs better than the person, those people would want to do everything in their power to make their continued employment viable and necessary... but nope, people would rather stay at home and exist as just a virtual interface equivalent to ChatGPT, except costs more, takes time off, requires health insurance, is slow to get simple tasks done, doesn't like being bossed around, and tends to express a sense of entitlement. My perspective has changed, as long as people insist on remote work, employers will attempt to replace them with AI.

I'm extremely pro-remote work, but I think Sam's got a point with early early early stage products. When you have ~5 people and 1-2M in funding, you need all the benefits you can get with respect to communication.