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Comment by no_wizard | Hacker News Reader

Maybe. Or maybe they can profit differently going forward. Sam is not the reason OpenAI is gangbusters, its tech is. What I’m not hearing in any of this reporting is how Sam Altman is somehow the secret sauce.

And it’s because he isn’t. This is “rules for thee but not for me”. He as a bad fit, 2/3 the board outed him, and investors are mad because they didn’t feel included.

You know, like how they include employees in layoff decisions and not blind side them.

Sam Altman has spoken about “firing fast” when someone is a bad fit. he got fired fast, because he was a bad fit. That’s the seminal conclusion

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> And it’s because he isn’t. This is “rules for thee but not for me”. He as a bad fit, 2/3 the board outed him, and investors are mad because they didn’t feel included.

The fact that they're openly considering bringing him back should tell you that he's not just some random person whose job anyone can do. He's extremely well connected and was the face of the company - the face of deals that the company made. And you have to consider whether internally the employees are supporting this - if I were at OpenAI I would be pissed that the board decided to fuck around when we were doing so well.

If I were at OpenAI I'd be pissed strangers concern-trolled for me, all while my position was obvious given the company I joined: Open AI.

Easy to say, but when you looked at your option prices I bet you'd be second guessing that.

edit: You have edited your post radically to say different hings like 5x now, I can not keep up.

All the more reason to nip it in the bud. The explicit main goal was _not_ to be a gravy train, and it got co-opted for one.

I'm sure that tanking your company to avoid profit will be a great winning strategy, I look forward to your startup journey.

Strawman

You: "The goal of the company is to not make money"

Me: "Good luck with that terrible strategy"

Not a straw man.

Yeah, you can tell by the fact you had to make up the quote wholesale, not even word swaps or anything clever

Straw-ception!

It’s a private company, options are nothing until otherwise anyway, in most cases. I wouldn’t look at them very much either way and I hope they’re smart enough to make the same distinction

Maybe

Then again, maybe he has been making life less than desirable for the rank and file. Perhaps, even, they felt he was a bad fit for the company too. I don’t know, because I don’t work there.

If this is the case, good time to start hiring away engineers to another firm.

He may be the face, but faces change. Sam Altman isn’t t the only person capable of taking the reins. There is nothing about him that is more “magic” in this case, because the tech is always been their selling point. I think any competent CEO could sell the hell out of OpenAI right now

In as so far as bringing him back: I don’t know the validity nor veracity of those discussions. That news hit a little fast to me to have been fully fleshed out. Not saying it’s untrue, but “some of the board” talking isn’t the same thing as all of the board, either

I don't know about OpenAI, but I suspect that Altman was the one making the big deals, personally. Companies (like Microsoft) are not going to like the idea that:

a) A company they've partnered so heavily with is changing things up

b) That the change-up is to their point-person

It's not about whether another CEO could steer the ship, it's about the previous context and relationships that, regardless of skill, are going to have to be rebuilt carefully when you just rip out the point-person.

> Then again, maybe he has been making life less than desirable for the rank and file. Perhaps, even, they felt he was a bad fit for the company too. I don’t know, because I don’t work there.

People have already resigned over this...

Altman supporters have resigned. I have yet to see reports about rank and file people leaving en masse.

It could happen still, but it’s not obvious that it will.

As far as relationships go, they can build those. I doubt anyone who has access to OpenAI tech wants to give that up, so there is enough leverage on that to smooth things out

You're really undervaluing the fact that MS had a pre-existing relationship with Altman through these deals.

I think everyone is overvaluing what Altman brings to the table in terms of staying power. I don’t think MS is willing to simply throw in the towel on OpenAI because Altman isn’t there there anymore.

They’d be fools to do that if there is a path forward here. Short of them announcing on Monday that they are no longer selling their offerings, I don’t see how there won’t be a path.

Business is business, as all the VCs love to say, there is no room for emotion in this right?

> I don’t think MS is willing to simply throw in the towel on OpenAI because Altman isn’t there there anymore.

Microsoft can exert massive pressure over OpenAI and it seems hilarious to think that OpenAI is the one in that relationship with the power.

That all depends on how much one believes OpenAI tech is far enough ahead that it’s too painful to replace, and that there is no way things can’t be established to be mutually beneficial

If I were at open AI I'd side with tech leadership and research over business leadership and an even better compensation package, but that is an irrational bias on my part. It seems like the non-profit is getting persuaded by partners not to mess with the revenue stream. Perhaps Ilya would be a better fit at Keen. But Carmack is all about moving fast amd breaking things too, with no concern for ethics or safety, just the science. So maybe not there either.

I agree that it's the tech and Altman isn't the secret sauce, but if Sutskever shuts down further product offerings, then the investors lose billions.

So I was just saying that from the investor's perspective, the concept was flawed or at least very questionable from the beginning.

He's extraordinarily talented by all accounts, especially at fundraising. But his Apple was Loopt. He's not the secret sauce but a facilitator - more Tim than Steve. Perhaps like Steve was to Pixar.

"The start-up company must either cross or die, but what value is life if to gain it one has to go against one’s best self?" - Moore, Crossing the Chasm, p. 75

his arc doesnt line up with Jobs. Loopt was how he got his foot into the door at YC as a founder.

at YC he made a name for himself, built the rolodex, and learned how to build startups to the point that he turned OpenAI into a rocketship and now has unlimited access to capital and talent to build another one.

If money and talent is all you need, he's gonna win. But I think this doesn't work for research talent, it's more for commercialization. Think PARC vs ethernet/adobe etc. IDK if AI is really at that stage yet.

Let's see how this pans out.

100%. Hear hear. It's very visible who knew about OpenAI before ChatGPT currently. It's somewhat frustrating to find 99.9999% of people had the standard genius-warrior-hero-CEO narrative locked in. I don't think even Sam in his most private of moments would come close to endorsing some of the hyperbole I've seen the past day.

That's not what "fire fast" means. Altman lead the company for years; he was not fired fast.

It means, if taken at an axiom, that when someone ain’t working out you should fire them fast rather than let them drag down the rest of the group

Tenure doesn’t matter.

You're saying he was working out great all these years until suddenly he was not working out anymore and was fired fast?

It sounds like that’s the case, given what happened.

> 2/3 the board outed him

I’ve seen more compelling boards at Home Depot

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