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Comment by _mh56 | Hacker News Reader

[This is not in response to the satya's tweet but the general articles or opinions in social media.]

Please keep in mind that the articles you read are PR pieces, last few being from Sam's Camp.

msft/sequioa/khosla has no power to remove the board or alter their actions. There is no gain for board by reinstating Sam and resigning themselves. swaying employees who have 900k$ comp is pretty hard. and not giving money to OpenAI is akin to killing your golden goose.

The idea is that Altman and/or a bunch of employees were demanding the board reinstate Altman and then resign. And they’re calling it a “truce.” Oh, and there’s a deadline (5 pm), but since it’s already passed the board merely has to “reach” this “truce” “ASAP.” This is by far my favourite example of PR piece.

I'd recommend not reading rumors and waiting for things to come out officially. Or atleast re-evaluating after a week, how much you read was false.

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It was a negotiation.

Did they have power... Ofc they did. Otherwise... Why were they negotiating?

Its not about who had more power. They just couldn't find enough common ground.

Now Satya bagged talent. They don't have to rewrite the whole codebase due to IP msft has already secured.

I think those talks were real. You don't build something that long and then want to walk away unless huge differences came up. That's what we say.

(edit: rewritten after the comment I responded to added a game changing comment at the top) PR? I mean... That's just not how I would describe what happened.

It was a PR nightmare. They tried to keep the family together. Divorces happen. Satya brought the kids on so they can get a new sandbox going asap.

Don't believe Twitter? Now there...we agree. I'll add... Don't belive hackernews either.

Most of the reporting I saw was pretty good. It just didn't pan out. They reported the board was optimistic. Not that it was a sure thing.

(edit: full comment rewrite due to edit by the commentor which completely changed the context)

Will be interesting to see how many OpenAI employees leave OpenAI to work at Microsoft.

RSUs have got to be better than PPUs.

I agree with you. Satya (msft CEO) has stated that sam is joining msft. The comment was a general overtone of the discussions happening online.

>> Now satya stayed up till 2am to secure up to 40 percent of open talent exodus

Are there any official sources for this?

His tweet timing.

I don't think his secretary does it for him. Doesnt seem like his style.

"Talent secured"

The whole point of this is that Microsoft doesn't even need to remove the board anymore. From their standpoint, the whole fear was openAI was about to lose a lot of their best people, including their CEO, who they had the most trusted.

That would've greatly harmed their investment Now they get to have their cake and eat it too: they can keep their existing relationship with open AI and continue to get access to their models, and yet at the same time they potentially get all the best people in-house and benefit from their work directly. This whole turn of events might turn out to be a net win for Microsoft.

This whole saga will be a great demonstration of how much value a CEO does or doesn't bring to a company.

I'm of the mind that CEO's are like parents, an awful CEO can cause a lot of harm but the difference between an ok CEO and an excellent one isn't that big and doesn't guarantee anything.

> This whole turn of events might turn out to be a net win for Microsoft.

Given that the OpenAI board has to act via mandate from its non-profit charter, what's the likelihood that this was Microsoft's plan in the first place? E.g. getting Sam to be less than "candid", triggering a chain of events, etc.

I think the simplest explanation is the most likely. In this case, that the hold out board members are idiots.

Even if Sam deliberately provoked them and this was a set up, no normal person would be this obstinate about it. They would’ve given up now if this was anybody’s doing but their own.

We still don't know what specific act the board in its initial statement refers to had triggered this, and to add fat to this theory, the interim CEO basically mentions that he had doubts but was convinced after learning what this trigger was.

Nope. Shear is now saying he will step down as interim CEO unless the board can give a clear explanation for why they fired Altman.

This is a tweet directly from Satya Nadella. Do you think he's publicly lying in a way that would be disastrous to the company he runs?

(this is satire) Obviously Sam built the AGI that hacked everything in the planet

Even the pixels you see in your devices

Wake up people

I agree that there's 0% chance Nadella would be lying. As the CEO of a public traded company, making false statements about something like this would get him in trouble with the SEC.

It’s an official statement from the CEO of a listed company, who would be ill advised to say they hired someone when they didn’t.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/11/19/a-statement-from...

This comment doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm not sure that this is a valid comment at all.

This is not a rumor. The article references a tweet made by Satya Nadella itself. It is an official announcement. The board drama no longer matters here.

By the way, $900k comp with illiquid OpenAI shares means nothing anymore when Microsoft can now hire them with $900k+ in fully LIQUID compensation.

Not only that, OpenAI employees can go join Microsoft to work under Sam and Greg, who many of them seem to support.

This is a pretty big win for Microsoft.

>I'd recommend not reading rumors and waiting for things to come out officially.

Thanks for the breakdown. Unfortunately, you have just made things too saucy for me to take that advice :-)

Also, the rumors and machinations are a pretty big part of this story.

This is obviously a power struggle, for control over, potentially, the highest potential company/technology/IP of the current moment.

Power structure in the modern corporate/tech space.. it has become normal to charter a company such that ownership and control are effectively separate... call it overiding the defaults of incorporation and company law.

FB and Tesla are the big publicly traded examples. OpenAI, is the most significant private example. It is also illegible, at least to me, considering the structural complexity. Non-profit, for profit & capped-profit entities in a subsidiary loop. Separate arrangements for ownership, control, and sometimes IP across the mesh of entities...

Openai is like some abstract theory of company law..

For Tesla and FB, the CEO is central to the paradigm. Barring crisis, Zuck or Elon's control over FB & TSLA just is. They have cash flows, market caps to protect. Ongoing operations. Shareholders have no real interest pursuing shareholder control or any kind of coups.

OpenAI.. totally different game.

The IP (protected or otherwise), technology, team, momentum... These are all that matter. Product and revenue.. direct financial return on investments, and such.. these are not driving factors. Not for msft or other parties. Rare.

Everyone just wants to leverage OpenAI's success, to compete with their own partners. Mutual benefit, it's dubious right now.

This is not the www or most other tech/science consortiums.. imo. It's not about fooling resources, pushing the industry forward or going beyond the blue sky scope of individual company r&d.

It may have been that initially, but that changed with gpt3.

There's no point in being the bing to Google's AdWords... And that's the kind of game it is now.

So.. there is a ton well very interesting stuff going on here. My ears are certainly pricked.

Absolutely agree on the need to completely change views as this saga progresses. None of these dogs are mine.

Consider that a substantial portion of that $900k comp is locked up in equity that needs a liquidity event to be realized.

Except the board made themselves irrelevant with their antics

People will be looking at Sam now, and it wouldn't be surprised if half of OpenAI just migrates to MS now

You might be missing the point. Those 900k$ are tied onto future company value that is based on success of its products in 2-3y horizon. Without sam and his push for products the comp may not be there… So all employees who signed up for a exponential growth will jump ship.

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