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> When she walked into the arena with Altman to try and remove him however he had much more experience and orchestrated an incredible counter-coup.

Nit: Altman may have orchestrated a coup, but the board certainly did not. The board is the legitimate authority, and in no way is a board firing its subordinate a "coup." Rather, it's executing its legitimate power.

Coups triggered when subordinate feels threatened is a pretty common pattern. IIRC, the recent coup in Niger was triggered when the leader of the presidential guard thought the president was about to fire him, too power in a coup rather than lose his job.

Correct, the board acted rashly and without forethought but well within their authority. Their big failure was that they didn't make it stick.

I mean, they did get Sam off the board, right?

The fat lady hasn't sung yet and if Sam can control the board indirectly he doesn't actually need to be on the board.

Presumably, Toner et al agreed to this compromise because they believed it was a meaningful improvement compared to a board composed solely of Sam and friends.

The "fat lady hasn't sung" point works both ways -- for all we know, the new board's investigation into this incident will be incredibly damning for Sam.

That's true, it may well be that. Or it may be a whitewash because he has them by the short and curlies now that it is known what throwing him out will do.

> The board is the legitimate authority, and in no way is a board firing its subordinate a "coup."

Sam was on the board. They didn't fire a subordinate they kicked a peer out of the group.

The board's most important job is to figure out if the CEO should be fired. Your comment seems to imply that the board should never fire a CEO if that CEO is on the board. If that's the policy, then having a board with the CEO on it seems fairly pointless.

The CEO being on the board is a governance failure to begin with, even if it is a very common one.

No, I think the implication is that it was an attempted coup. Not because they removed Altman as CEO, but because they removed him as a board member.

So they were supposed to remove him as CEO and keep him on the board? I think that plan fails rather predictably.

> The board's most important job is to figure out if the CEO should be fired.

Why did they take out the chairman of the board.

The board met but didn't include the board chair, and voted without him being present (they could form a quorum). I am not so sure it's exercising your legitimate power if you don't include the board chair on purpose.

Of course it is: otherwise, how would you ever remove the board chair? Quorum is normally all that matters as long as the rest of the bylaws of the non-profit board are followed. Whether it is elegant or not is another matter.

> lawyers [...] huge potential legal pitfalls to destroying value, or failing fiduciary duties.

> advised by lots of counsel on exactly what can be said, and the list of those things is probably miniscule.

Hmmm, in the US yes and no. First, US lawyers point out risk in every direction. Because nothing is risk-less and the law is unclear or unsettled (and anyone can sue for just about anything). Once they have duly warned to their satisfaction however, their job becomes to come up with a theory on how to do exactly what it is you want to do. The two are different tasks, and are not incompatible.

That's basically the definition of a good business lawyer.

Yeah in think the risk of a negative outcome from being sued was and is low.

Companies implode all the time. Sure you might get a lawsuit but the company would pay it or the directors insurance would.

HN is always scared about lawsuits. If Trump taught us anything is that there’s a lot of leeway in that area.

Regarding the narrative about Sama's behaviour during this fiasco, I believe the perception of him acting strategically is mistaken. I think he was just highly loved by the employees and that alone is what facilitated his return.

This strikes me as a very odd take. All the things that seem to "hasty" and non-strategic to you look to me like deft PR moves that each had exactly their intended effect.