If 95% doesn't count as a vote of no confidence, what number would? | Hacker News Reader

If 95% doesn't count as a vote of no confidence, what number would?

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27 pointsredbell37 comments

I'm sure there's a huge amount of employees who support Altman. But 95% seems a bit too much.

The names of employees supporting Altman were being written down in Google Doc. It created a social pressure to sign or else they'll be banished from their peer group. Same with the "<3" tweets. maybe there would be more dissenters if votes were private.

Kinda reminds me of The Emperor's New clothes [1]

1. https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditio...

They anticipated that it would be uncomfortable in the event that he returned as their boss if they never signed. On the other hand, there was no drawback in signing, since everyone else did. To those who held out, kudos to you. That couldn't have been easy.

Does PG really think majority of employees would approve board decisions for layoffs? The large majority of employees being against a board decision is nothing new. Can come up with more examples like when companies are taken over and the new board sells the company for parts or sometimes when boards approve strange mergers instead of focussing on their existing product and so on.

Only difference is usually employees being against a board doesn't get used as political ammunition in VC power plays so it doesn't get mentioned in the press.

I work as a company where the board or the investors fired the ceo. I was furious. We were chatting among employees how these guys are destroying our company and our ceo was great. In an employee vote, the ceo would easily get 90%.

3 months have passed now. We are sued for investor fraud. The company stock hit the ground. That ceo actually ruined the company, but us as employees didn’t know the facts.

How much peer pressure was there to sign that document though? If your superior expects you to follow him or face being turned into an outcast?

1. Your boss is trying to force you to join them in doing something you don't want to do, which is an asshole move.

2. If your boss does this thing and you don't, they would no longer be your boss.

3. If your boss does this thing, you not doing this thing would put you in the good graces of your new boss and remaining coworkers, who likewise did not do this thing.

4. With everyone who would have considered you an outcast being gone, there is now substantial room for your own advancement at a place with fewer assholes.

5. If you decide to join your boss in doing this thing, you will continue to work for and with the assholes who peer pressured you and receive no benefit.

This sounds like some really easy peer pressure to resist.

Are companies supposed to be democracies? PG being hypocritical I guess.

Power stems from the consent of the governed, whether the powers that be respect it or not. Employees don't vote for specific policies, but they vote for who they want to work for, and the candidate they pick always wins.

Corporate history of the 20th and 21st centuries would strongly suggest that the power of corporations actively does NOT stem from the consent of the employees.

There are no governed here, especially in a right-to-work culture. Saying people vote for who they want to work for because they can vote with their feet is a bit like saying if you don't like your dictator, just move out of Venezuela. Reality is significantly more complicated than that.

Depends on the degree of freedom the governed have. I'm pretty confident a lot of them would get an offer way above average salary at any of the top 50 AI companies. Hell even the French government told Altman he'd be welcome in France.

I think it's a lot easier for most people to find a new job than to move out of venezuela.

Democracy only when the vote goes in favor of the interest of leadership / moneyed interests.

At a certain threshold, though, it is clear who will win this power struggle. Thereafter, if you do not sign you will be implicitly against the winning team once the dust settles, which is a powerful incentive to sign yourself. Certainly there is genuine feeling that gets the ball rolling, but the fact that it snowballs to 95% can’t necessarily be taken as a sure sign that all 95% would have signed in a secret ballot.

OpenAI is one of the most ideology-driven companies that I know of. It follows that the majority of its employees are driven by this ideology.

Ultimately the board tried to remove Sam because of ideological differences, not just because he was a jerk or a bad leader.

Is it any surprise that most employees stood behind the very ideology that drove them to join the company? This doesn’t necessarily mean that the board was incorrect in their assessment.

is he pro unions and employee owned companies ?

only in this particular case

Lots of people here really seem to be grasping at straws to side with the board on this one. But there really just isn't any case to be made. The board hasn't even bothered to explain to anyone, apparently even the interim CEO, exactly why they fired Sam Altman.

I see all this speculation that they did it out of principles and concerns over safety, but if so, why haven't they said that? Is there any actual evidence that this is the case? And when 95% of people are against you, it's most likely that you are just wrong, not that everyone else is greedy and corrupt.

Does Paul G have skin in this game?

Reputational, for one. For years he has lauded Altman as one of the best and brightest minds out there, playing a major role in Sam's meteoric growth.

On the other hand, in my imagination PG is someone who would stand corrected if there was a good reason.

Has that actually happened before? I've yet to see it, but I'd like to be corrected If I'm wrong here.

My line of thinking is as follows. He is a smart person, not just a successful entrepreneur but a techie. He is also a LISP nerd, that means he is not afraid of unpopular choices. I would like believe these traits go together with a few others that create the kind of personality that can swallow admitting a mistake.

My general perception of "thought leadership" is that it's not particularly amenable to changes or self-corrections (lest you start losing your adherents). In that regard, my imagination paints a different picture.

funnily enough, he wrote this here out today: "We should get over the taboo against saying that the CIA killed Kennedy. It's the most plausible explanation by far."

Not sure I have time to go down that rabbit hole and what to gain from it, though.

"Four years ago, Altman’s mentor, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, flew from the United Kingdom to San Francisco to give his protégé the boot, according to three people familiar with the incident, which has not been previously reported."

I guess he had a change of heart about Sam because ... ?

The employees don't control the board - the board controls the company

I'm curious (and I guess ill informed) though - what was the actual mechanism for the boards removal? Was it concession of defeat/voluntary resignation? Or were they forcibly removed?

Game theory, one bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, etc.

Perhaps employees saw the power struggle with Microsoft as something the "pro humanity" board couldn't win, so they prioritized their job or stock?

If you think about it “I want my buddy to run the money printing machine” is actually a deeply philosophical ponderance

Now wait a second. Let's compare bank accounts. Let's see Paul Allen's card.

For profit companies simply don't work on the majority vote of employees, and it's disingenuous for someone who has become wealthy from having the actual reigns to appeal to this when they happen to agree with him.

If a vote of employees actually mattered we'd see more time off, less working hours, more of the profit go to employees, and maybe even less socially destructive companies. You know what, Paul, please have Y-Combinator companies make employee votes binding!

> If a vote of employees actually mattered we'd see more time off, less working hours, more of the profit go to employees, and maybe even less socially destructive companies.

All the companies I've worked at have had QA session with CEO and this exactly what ppl ask about and ofcourse C level ppl give useless junk "answers" and call it day. Maybe paulg gives employees real answers.

If a C-suite tells you "you miss the big picture" without explaining what the big picture is or "the issue is with partners/investors", then it's usually time to run away as fast as you can.

Office drones settle for junk "answers", and it is disadvantageous to be one.

Yeah but for non profits it’s worse than for profits and that’s the point. At for profit companies everyone (the board included) is trying to make money. That’s the end goal, and most decisions go towards that goal so even if employees don’t agree with a decision, they can at least see the decision as coherent towards an agreed upon goal. At non profits the board and the employees desires are much more likely to be in large conflict in my opinion because the board has no financial stake in the company. This OpanAI thing is a huge example of this but it also happens all the time at normal non profits. The board at non profits is randos with jobs separate from the non profit being on the board for fun but they get ultimate decision marking power when the employees actually work there and spend 40 hours a week or whatever doing shit for the company.

I have to believe he might be willing, if the threshold for a successful vote were 95% of all employees making a credible threat to leave forever en masse!

While organized labor’s history is a mixed bag, it seems to include ample examples of cold-blooded titans of industry (with far more willingness to act with contempt and physical violence) bending to the will of a far lesser proportion of employees taking far milder action.

But of course employees can vote, either individually with their feet, or as groups via unions!

When employees can vote with their feet, and in this case they absolutely can, yeah they kind of do work that way.

Is PG advocating for a worker's council?

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