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Comment by greatNespresso | Hacker News Reader

It came as a surprise for me to learn that PG fired Sam. It's the first time that I read this actually, and if that's true, I find it kind of mysterious that it remained a secret for so long. Or maybe I missed the news somehow but I could not find any other mention of that event on Google.

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I've definitely never heard of it, and I was pretty shocked when I read it given how much positive stuff pg has written about sama, and the article itself says the firing "has not been previously reported".

Reading some recent pg tweets through this lens, though, I think it makes sense. E.g. there is this tweet: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726198939517378988. Both of the following can be true (and more to the point, I think the following two items are flip sides of the same coin):

1. Sam is an absolute masterful negotiator and is incredibly well-respected in the valley because his skills at assembling people and resources are unmatched.

2. Sam can be manipulative and self-serving, sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing.

I see this trait in lots of effective, famous people. There have been tons of comparisons in the news recently to Steve Jobs, but for me for some reason Anna Wintour comes to mind. I don't think many people would describe Wintour as "nice" as she is known for being kind of ruthless and manipulative (she was "The Devil" after all...), but tons of people in the fashion industry are incredibly loyal to her based on her abilities to identify talent and get shit done.

You make a fair point about that tweet, it can be ironic or sincere and it left me a mixed feeling. I am not sure what was PG's goal with that tweet but it did not feel necessary.

> sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing

"Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."

It has been a decade, but let me guess, Mass effect 3 Mordin? I rather not look it up lol.

Damn this line still pulls at the heart strings... Might have to replay

Isn’t that reference like the exact opposite? It’s nominally self-aggrandizing (he’s the only one who could have gotten it right) but is actually about a higher goal (sacrificing himself for everyone else’s sake). That’s how I remember reacting to it anyways.

No doubt Sam Altman thinks this is the case - which, perhaps, is the entire point.

It’s a straight down the middle, no questions about it, perfectly crafted politically perfect Narcissistic capitalist.

Sam is what would come out if you created a technocrat in a lab

I've fired people and later recommended them for jobs where they'd be a better fit. Not uncommon at all.

My immediate thought. Relatively few have been in management here, perhaps.

It's largely engineers who don't really understand the value of a C-level person, as evidenced time and time again in the comments.

The concept you could fire someone for business reasons and later be their very good friend and recommend them for another job - sometimes an even better one than you employed them in - doesn't fit the single-input single-output mind of a lot of engineers.

It's alright. We all have roles to play.

Your reg dates are 2012 and 2014. As you know, this is hacker news. not c-level news, not middle management news.. hacker news.

That's exactly the point. I'm C level, but at heart, I'm a hacker and and engineer, and have been for what, 24 years now (sobering). Reflecting on this isn't a criticism (though we all know how touchy engineer-types can be) -- it's just an acknowledgment. To E-types, firing is loss of job, loss of livelihood, to C-types, it's a reposition of an asset, a reassignment of a resource to a new project. All we're doing here is acknowledging this.

> though we all know how touchy engineer-types can be

I am unfamiliar with this

There’s no reason a manager can’t also have been a hacker. Or still might be, from time to time.

Even YCs application includes the option to show examples of hacking processes. Good managers and C-Level people do that qiuite often.

Like I said, we all have roles to play. I suppose you missed that. May you learn along the way in your career.

I didn't miss anything. May you start your learning journey soon.

Thinking about this, can you think of a great hacker who isn't C-level? Look at the most famous programmers of all time, or people who've made the most popular tools like Ruby on Rails, and they're all C-level.

While I don't follow 'great' hackers, here's some names. I haven't actually checked to see if they held C-level positions so some might have.

Yukihiro Matsumoto, Satoshi Nakamoto, Linus Torvalds, Jeff Dean, Aaron Swartz, Richard Stallman, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Guido van Rossum, Yann LeCun, Andrej Karpathy

I understand the morality needed to succeed and flatly reject it.

Choosing to lose instead of succeed is indeed a choice. And a valid one I've made a few times. As long as you realize the tradeoff.

While this is a common attitude in western society, it does not make sense if you zoom out. Acting morally/ethically and being successful are not mutually exclusive. But it is more difficult, and it might require a more careful assessment.

You only exist because every ancestor of yours, up to your single celled ancestor, succeeded in 'life'. To denounce success for its own sake, is, for lack of a better term, stupid.

Agreed, it's very common to see. In many cases you're talking about people who worked together very closely for years and are verging on as close as family. Also, in higher-level roles you often get fired due to a very specific lack of skills or a very specific weakness that wouldn't be at all applicable for another job.

Ex "this person is an amazing startup CTO but they get problematically overwhelmed when the organization gets to 100 engineers" – you would 1000% recommend that person to a 50-person startup even if they got fired from their job at a 500-person company. They might even be better at it the next time around.

Weird: The most relevant hn post on Altman’s departure from YC is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342184

But despite comments to the effect that the YC post indicated Sam’s departure, it doesn’t seem to say anything about it right now?

Thank you for the article, I saw a comment from Sam in the HN post but agreed it did not look obvious that he got fired.

Nor in 2022 when it was first archived by Wayback (unless archives from previous have been removed)

https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.ycom...

But this contemporaneous TechCrunch article—which is clearly talking about the same blog post—says it did!

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/y-combinator-president-sam...

They actually changed the URL structure

This is the old URL, and they indeed mentioned Sam leaving https://web.archive.org/web/20190316222853/https://blog.ycom...

Ohhhh thanks.

Looking at those it looks like there was an edit:

> Updated on 6/12/20

> In May 2019, Geoff Ralston took over as YC President. At that time, Sam Altman stepped away from any formal position at YC.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201028062425/https://blog.ycom...

And then shortly after the edit disappeared too:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210423025128/https://blog.ycom...

I mean, do what you want, the YC blog is not the New York Times, but the Winston Smith-esque silent modifications are cast into some relief given current events.

You are watching history being made.

I'm pretty sure the HN thread hasn't changed, but you're right, the YC post has: https://web.archive.org/web/20190310042303/https://blog.ycom.... One could bisect to find out where. Weird! I've never known these things to change like that, and it's not as if the news wasn't already public.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38386524

The statement about Sam on the announcement post at https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/updates-from-yc/ evolved over time:

1. March 2019: "Sam is transitioning to Chairman of YC and has shifted his operational responsibilities at YC to other partners. This change will allow Sam to spend more time focusing on OpenAI while still being responsible, along with the rest of the partnership, for the long-term social and economic success of YC. Because YC is run as a partnership, there will be no significant operational change."

2. June 2020: "In May 2019, Geoff Ralston took over as YC President. At that time, Sam Altman stepped away from any formal position at YC."

3. April 2021: gone entirely

waybackmachine: https://web.archive.org/web/20190310003417/https://blog.ycom...

Basically seems like they were updating it as leadership turnover happened as Sam went from president to chair to out, and Geoff from partner to president to out.

Yeah I was reading about this last week on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/EricNewcomer/status/1725633569056506282 ) - the departure was "under explored".

I have to imagine that the industry does not appreciate this kind of attention from the mainstream press. Everybody is making loads of money -- does it really matter if a particular business deal went south in a particular way? Maybe it's better if we all just focus on the exciting new things that are being built and all the value we're creating for the world and ourselves.

Reading about how YC handled the situation, it's quite obvious that OpenAI's board should have taken a page out of YC's playbook on how to fire an important person (or maybe even sama specifically) without stirring up unnecessary drama.

We have a tendency to remember the good and not the bad, and we want to see our friends do well. Someone else also pointed out here in the comments that no one wants to publicly state they made a bad call if they can avoid it because it will likely damage them personally. We give others lots of chances, or we encourage and cheer them when others are taking chances on them in the hopes that they'll do better this time even when we would no longer risk our own skin.

I imagine most of us think, "S/he was so close to success. Maybe s/he'll have learned! What could be the harm in talking them up a bit? Besides, no one wants to ruin someone else's life,"

I feel the same way about Annie Altman's allegations. Those were out there, but somehow I wasn't aware of them, and I see almost no one discussing them. I mean, I understand why, but it's still disheartening.

> I understand why

Because its pointless and unpleasant, we have zero means of verifying or discomfirming the story and it won't go anywhere because its unprovable.

It's unpleasant, but it's not pointless. We've just had days of uninformed and uninvolved randos micro-analysing all things Altman, and pushing various wild speculations. This is seen as okay as long as it's confined to what is essentially office intrigue and gossip. But on the much more consequential topic of potential childhood sexual misdeeds -- nothing.

We don't know whether there's any means of verifying the story until people actually put some effort into verifying the story. Also, it's not unprovable. Perhaps in a mathematical sense, but that's not even required in a courtroom.

Consider all that's been written about Altman's character, using such weak signals as "this former co-worker said this about him". Meanwhile there's this disturbing piece of information that could be a strong signal that is completely ignored.

Have you spoken to anyone in your life who has been molested, or abused? It really cuts through the abstract arguments and illustrates that this dynamic is how abusers get away with it.

> Also, it's not unprovable

No it really is. Unless Sam explicitly confesses it's completely impossible to prove to a courtroom standard.

It would have happened two decades ago, with a person he had frequent private physical access to. There is no possible physical or witness evidence.

It can't go anywhere.

Also, remembered allegations of sexual assault from when someone is four are much weaker signals than recountings of behavior by an adult in a workplace setting.

The reason is that SV works on connections, and people are afraid that they won't get their next round or that sweet job if they rock the boat. Also, we're mostly all dudes, so therefore more vulnerable to false allegations on this topic. Also some overlap with culture-wars and pushback against the perceived excesses of the MeToo movement.

Hypothetically, if a little girl were molested by her older brothers, how should she proceed in order to satisfy your sensibilities?

Because regardless, it's irrelevant and a distraction to the context here.

Distraction: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

It could be that the parties involved have chosen at this moment to re-imagine whatever occurred back then in a less favorable light. Since firing is on everyone's mind, and since you can get media attention points by playing along with a juicy narrative, what might have just been described as a disagreement in the past might now be called a firing. I would be skeptical of takes like this.

Sometimes you have to fire people you like. It doesn't have to be a relationship shattering event.

mg impression is that he outgrew the role. that he is better being a ceo somewhere than babysitting founders.

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