I got tired of hearing that YC fired Sam, so here's what actually happened
twitter.com
twitter.com
Just to make it fair with the situation: I honestly don't know if I would have proactively quit one or the other. Depending on the workloads, I may very well have tried to moonlight both for a while, I'm unsure.
I don't think this tweet by Paul is weird at all.
Personally I don't care if pg is completely honest or if sam was fired or not. It doesn't have meaningful impact on my view of either.
Feels entirely reasonable.
Even that’s not quite right. OpenAI had been a research project inside YC. So there was no “moonlighting” about it (and Worldcoin started around the same time Sam left YC).
It seems everyone accepted that things qualitatively changed when OpenAI stopped being a non-profit research project inside YC to becoming a for-profit venture, and they just had an adult conversation about it.
So it was always something that was closely linked to YC and his involvement with it was generally accepted as being harmonious with his role running YC, until it became for-profit.
Details here:
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-elon-musk-and-y-combinator...
Not everything is a matter of principle
He left YC in March 2019. Worldcoin was formed in 2019.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/worldcoin/investor_f...
At 24 I ended up as the chair of a not for profit that stood on top of $30 million of real estate _because no one else wanted to_. Getting quorum was impossible because we needed three out of five board members to show up to a meeting.
People have this idea it's mustache twirling villains running these things. It's usually the idiot thats about to burn out.
Question: It's 2 am, a dead opossum is stuck in the main drain for the property and the water is rising during a once in a decade storm. What do you do?
Answer: Wade neck deep into the water, with a stoner tripping on mushroom holding a light, then stab it with a crowbar until the water pressure flushes it down.
Maybe you could turn it into a movie script, something like 'Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas'?
Please do!
99 times out of 100 it's that idiot. The only time it's not is when it is someone that has figured out how to truly benefit themselves from the appointment. Whether ethically or no.
For what it's worth, the above comments are talking about serving on the board of directors of a foundation -- which is most often part-time and not paid.
Also from my link
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/#mitchell-bak...
I'm not sure I'm for changing the language all over, but I don't think dismissing issues that disturb a group that you don't belong to is a manner that fits a gentleman.
Is it because the chairing the non-profit is enough work/burden that it causes folks to burn out, or does this role tend to attract people who are already on the path to burning out, or some other thing?
I thought that was a really interesting detail to include but couldn't quite figure it out on my own. :)
Thanks in advance!
At some point, while I was on hiatus, the board did change its rules to allow telephone and, later, Zoom attendance which has been IMO something of a mixed bag but probably inevitable especially post-COVID. I'd like people to get together in person more but it's harder than when the board skewed younger; people have more family responsibilities at this point and, of course at this point, a lot of people just have less patience about getting together physically when business can mostly be taken care of over a couple hour Zoom call.
Fortunately, the non-profit's regular activities and finances have been on a pretty even keel so the board mostly just keeps an eye out for problems.
So to answer your question, I've observed that it attracts people who are already ambitious in other aspects of their life (and maybe a little too generous with their own time), and the extra work it entails compounds with their other commitments which can lead to burnout.
A realtor once told me that "the only people who serve on HOA boards are people who have no power anywhere else in their life."
Since then I've learned how shockingly true that is.
I have seen the only person nominated to positions get elected scores of times because the depth of potential candidates is like 100 max and 99 of them have jobs and families or just don't feel like being responsible for it. A non-profit requires someone to deal with taxes and tax-status forms and real estate maybe and certainly insurance, someone has to be on the hook for it being correct. I don't know how to get insurance for a non-profit and would need advice on what even is necessary, if I don't know that I'd be a fool to take the role and put my entire family at potential legal risk.
It's a stretch to get someone to be on the hook for that unless there's an existing healthy board. Plus no one wants to volunteer for a position where they have responsibilities but no control or ability to make decisions, so if the leadership are control freaks it's an absolute depressing nightmare.
Bleh. No one cares as much as the board.
It usually doesnt come out of the small guys tho. When the grifters get in its usually over.
Probably because the "Sam Altman is an amoral, power hungry mastermind who was run out of all his previous gigs" is a more interesting narrative than whatever is actually happening.
That’s beginning to enter “he’s playing 5D chess and making you think exactly what he wants” territory. Would you say that it’s a testament to tobacco companies’ marketing skills that everyone talks about cigarettes being cancerous?
The mad speculation is due to him being CEO of a highly talked about company but also the creator of dubious exploitative ventures[1][2] and rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, many of which talk in vague terms instead of being specific from the start.
[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...
[2]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...
I don’t think Sam Altman is probably that great at most of what he would like ppl to think he is great at. But he must be alright at marketing and getting into the right places because we are talking about him.
Ironic[1] that that you’re lamenting a misunderstanding of your comment while misunderstanding mine. I don’t think you were generally endorsing him, my claim is that you’re giving him credit for a skill based on faulty assumptions.
> But he must be alright at marketing and getting into the right places because we are talking about him.
That’s what I disagree with. Would you say that Justine Sacco[2] was great at marketing too? For a while there everyone was talking about her, which she did not intend and didn’t end particularly well for her. Being talked about and being good at marketing don’t automatically correlate. Barbara Streisand knows that very well[3].
[1]: Or maybe not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40507616
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Justine_Sacco_i...
No, he said they would have been fine with it. That has a different quality and honestly, I am quite sure they knew sama was so invested in OpenAI that he would not have choosen to step away from it.
So everybody could save face and no one was "fired".
https://x.com/paulg/status/1796114790722449429?s=46&t=kEOaRx...
I don't see why that matters, YC is "his" organization, other organizations can do what they want
Take out all the names, and it's just a belief that YC should be run by someone that's all in / fully committed.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal
(Not saying that this is such a situation.)
PG’s telling if it, and Occam’s Razer, support that version.
Many people here want to imagine that it was vastly more dramatic than this, or need to reinterpret the word “fired” to support the narrative that Sam is bad. I understand it can be fun to think that way.
For the record I’m no great fan of OpenAI and I think people who are convinced they are about to achieve AGI are, er, mistaken. I mostly just care about correct definitions of words and avoiding sensationalism.
Of course these situations are always complex behind the scenes, with many factors and considerations at play.
But the no he must really just have been fired against his will claim just doesn’t pass the sniff test to anyone paying attention.
If Altman truly is as bad a person as it appears that he might be, that doesn't reflect well on the people who have praised him through the last few decades. If you like those people, then cognitive dissonance forces you to either believe that Altman is being unduly villainized or to believe that the people that you like secretly hate him but just can't say so openly.
The adult conversation in question being, in a nutshell: "We've decided it's time for you to move on. Would you like the public perception of this event to be that it was a mutual decision, or would you prefer to burn some bridges on your way out?"
I think you're falling into the classic reasoning trap:
1. I have realized someone has an incentive to portray the truth in a specific way.
2. They are portraying it to me in that way.
3. Therefore, they are lying.
But 3 isn't necessarily the case! All you can say is "3. Therefore, I can't tell what the truth is." I think that's what people are reacting to in terms of negativity. You actually don't know that PG is lying. You just know that, if Sam was actually fired, PG would have an incentive to portray it as mutually amicable. You really don't have evidence whether or not it happened.
Sure, but is that what happened? Or, did they sit down and have a chat and mutually agree that on what was best? I guess we will never know with certainty (and I frankly don't care).
When your immediate superior sits you don't for a "chat", and you "mutually agree on what is best", it comes across an awful lot like an ultimatum.
Maybe YC requires more dedication than Altman could provide to both it and OpenAI.
You print off companies as if being a CEO is just being a CEO, and as if Musk doesn't work an unhealthy amount of hours.
Or maybe there's some secret reason for pg to carry water for Sam and it's worth his integrity.
Otherwise, I would urge just stepping away and taking a few deep breaths.
It's not either or. The above can be true and also the reason pg wanted him to run YC.
Does he forget that it is known that Sam posted to YC's site that he was now Chairman in the day or so prior to him leaving? So... what... they asked him to choose, he decided to promote himself and make a post about it, and then they hurriedly deleted that post and then Same "chose" to leave YC?
This line of thinking just reads as sensationalist or needlessly conspiratorial given that the indictment it is trying to support is so weak.
> Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me”, he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.…To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384090) scrubbed from the post…For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.
No whoopsie there, Sam figured he could do whatever he wanted.
This thread exposes who buys into whatever the SF/VC overlords say.
"Got fired" may be a tad ambiguous, but being told "stop working on that other thing or leave" is not too far off.
It's very different.
When employees begin working at my company, they're told a list of things they're not allowed to do. And, they're told if they do these things, they will be shown the door.
By your definition of "not too far off", we're basically firing people on day one. Absurd.
It’s like not he was some random full time employee at YC and concealing his busy life.
So when a smaller AI project he started (with PGs involvement) rapidly turned into a monster overnight and started demanding the bulk of his attention, it’s not a big deal to ask him if he has enough time for both, and to make a decision early on before it becomes overwhelming (note: he still gave him the choice to decide).
Like a lot of entrepreneurs they take on a lot of responsibilities and think they can swing a lot more stuff than they really can, and PG’s whole thing is guiding entrepreneurs to make the best decisions.
The lies start at the company name. What's "open" about OpenAI?
It's "open" for everyone to use, for the right fee.
I mean, if he were concerned about our safety he'd want restricted access, not universal...
WaPo has not spoken to the actress.
And the agent claims that they both have to remain anonymous due to "fears for her safety".
I think we have different definitions of "verifiably".
I mean, so what, this still has no bearing on what happened between pg and sama. I may think sama has done some sketchy things but why would that lead anyone to believe pg is lying? It's not like he had to make this statement or anything - it appears much more likely that it was just characterized in a way pg thought was not true.
There appears to be a pattern in regards to honesty and integrity.
> Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (Strict Mode) is known to cause issues on x.com
(lovely inversion of responsibility gaslighting, too)
If you're signed in you'd see threads, right?
Do you think it's bad or unreasonable they try to fight against at least unsophisticated bots and mass scraping attempts?
You obviously haven't watched any of the US senate hearings, nor read any of Matt Taibbi's investigative work - where Elon gave Matt and other journalists access to Twitter's data like email interactions between Twitter employees, the FBI and other government agencies.
I won't bother describing the understanding I've come to on God since you don't seem like a deep person to even investigate thoroughly enough, whatever propaganda bubbles you get your news from - makes you thinks it's "fake news" tells me you're lost.
Here's Matt's Substack, to make it super easy for you to start reading/learning yourself: https://www.racket.news/
And here's his specific work on the Twitter Files: https://twitterfiles.substack.com/
Maybe if you start developing your self-awareness, and your self-regulation skills, you'll develop the patience to read more, critically think better - and then that would be a good starting point to contemplate the universe and extrapolate from first principles as to how much of a chance that a God exists.
Maybe don't be so confident in your arrogance either; or "lay off it", as you'd say - you're not the super aware person you think you are.
90-minute Bikram hot yoga classes are a good place to start to kick your ass and get your body and mind healthier.
Have you written to Twitter-X support yet to complain?
Maybe someone's fucking with you specifically and signed you up to some service to harass you?
It's not obvious what's going on sometimes.
It means "twitter.com" plus "my frustration with twitter.com".
> If you're signed in you'd see threads, right?
I shouldn't have to sign in to see threads.
> Do you think it's bad or unreasonable
Yes. I don't buy that bots are the reason for hiding threads. It reminds me of pinterest and linkedin: show a teaser and then turn the screws on the user until they do what you want. It's greedy and crude.
Why? Do you pay them towards their the CPU, bandwidth, and other operation costs?
> "Yes. I don't buy that bots are the reason for hiding threads. It reminds me of pinterest and linkedin: show a teaser and then turn the screws on the user until they do what you want. It's greedy and crude."
Why can't it be both? I guess you should try to create a competitor of Twitter-X and take on all those costs yourself, so you can see for yourself if scraping-bots (and the purposes for that occurring) are a sustainable business model or a sustainable way to moderate a massive network of people communicating in public - where maximizing for real conversation is seemingly necessary, especially now with AI being able to simply flood threads with realistic long-form conversation - which on its own could be used as an attack vector to agitate or waste people's time and attention on non-real people who aren't influenceable to help open their eyes to perhaps not believing propaganda they've been indoctrinated with.
"Obviously".
Yes.
This is not a comment on whether PG should have been informed or not, I don't know how YC operates.
That doesn't really seem too hard to stay on top of. Might not be able to rattle them off later, but even spending 10 minutes looking into the investment of the day should be able to expose really obvious conflicts of interest.
I don't know how any of their stuff works, but I'm sure most people can appreciate that the stuff that gets lost between the cracks is the stuff that doesn't come in and get tracked through the normal channels, and an OpenAI investment where one of the main people in the company is heading it might be something that wasn't through normal channels. Maybe that was on purpose so pg didn't see it, or maybe that stuff is mostly handled by someone else. Or maybe pg knew about it and decided to lie about it on twitter. /shrug
Conflict of interest aside, it also paints SA's whole "I just love the work, I have no equity in OpenAI" in a completely different light.
And maybe why PG apparently put no effort into dispelling those rumors for months despite being asked to comment on them by places like the Washington Post and there being plenty of discussion about them here and on Twitter.
He obviously knew about the rumors and he had plenty of time and opportunity to clarify things previously. But it wasn't until some other external party starts criticizing Altman in the press and we seemingly get an "only I can pick on my little brother" type response.
Because that timing is the weirdest thing to me. If PG really cares and respects Altman as much as he always seems to claim, why allow these rumors to persist for so long and suddenly choose this moment to dispute them?
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-ceo-cements-c...
$100bn is a good motivator!
Don’t allow yourself to feel (or be) obligated to answers questions about a past employee, portfolio company, or similar. If you choose to you can, but the answerer chooses, not the questioner.
The white-glove treatment that PG describes is probably much closer to the rumors that PG flew back from London to fire Sam on the spot. At the exec level, things are usually done civilly, because you know that you'll have to deal with these people again. But the CEO knows that the board and shareholders are his boss, the law is on their side, and so if they want him gone, he will be gone. That motivates the CEO to amicably part ways rather than force the issue.
Sam was given an option to continue with YC but he chose a bigger project.
If you don't stop spitting in the food, we're going to have to part ways.
Sam didn't want to leave but had to leave.
Also FWIW it just sounds like PG needed someone full time at YC - Sam couldn't and thus he went elsewhere. The length of discussion on this thread is quite long given the banality of the content. Yes I realize by commenting I am adding to that length.
Correct.
> thus firing him
Not correct, because he was free to keep the YC job by leaving OpenAI.
Firing is when you aren't given a choice.
Oh probably worth considering that we can describe the last position you voluntarily left as being fired - you weren't going to show up anymore, so what was going to happen? You got fired but with different paperwork.
Therefore it's not firing.
Words meaning things isn't being pedantic. It's that words actually have meaning and you can't just change them to mean what you want -- not if you want to be understood when you communicate.
It's no different from if your office moves to a different building 5 minutes away and your boss says you have to show up at the new address and you say no thanks I'll only go to the old address. You're not "essentially fired but with different paperwork". You're being unreasonable and choosing to quit.
Expecting to keep a full-time position at one company while also being a full-time CEO somewhere else is being unreasonable and Sam chose to quit.
Actually, that's not what it is.
Your boss can be like, "Hey, you can continue working here but you will need to take a 50% paycut." You say, "Uh, no." So, you end up leaving the place.
Were you fired? Yes, that's being fired. They were renegotiating the terms of your employment - just like they were with Sam. The terms of his employment now became contingent on not working at another company - which weren't the terms of his employment before.
No, it's not. It's getting a (horrific and generally unrealistic) pay cut. In more realistic terms, things like 10% pay cuts sometimes do happen when a company is struggling, and nobody calls those "firings". Because they're not.
Words have meaning. Being fired has a specific meaning, which is a different meaning from being laid off, and is a different meaning from quitting/resigning when you don't like how your job has changed.
(Also, terms of full-time employment often are contingent on not working full-time at another company -- this is a pretty standard clause. So the terms didn't necessarily change at all -- what changed was Sam became CEO of another for-profit company. That was his choice.)
> Also, terms of full-time employment often are contingent on not working full-time at another company -- this is a pretty standard clause
This is also not in any contract that I've ever signed and I've been in SV for a decade.
> This is also not in any contract that I've ever signed
Are you sure you've looked? It can also be implicit in standard clauses such as the company owns all rights to all of your work. In which case starting a second job would be fraudulent.
But of course it's also one of those things that's so common sense it doesn't need to be written into a contract in at-will employment countries (although it often is). There's the expectation in a full-time salaried professional job that the employer is getting all your productive professional work. It's mentally impossible to give 100% to two full-time jobs simultaneously. There's no reasonable expectation that anyone should be able to hold a second full-time CEO job. Nobody is "changing the terms" when the terms are commonly understood. If you start showing up to work shirtless and it wasn't in your employment contract that you're required to wear a top, complaining that they're "changing the terms" is missing the point entirely.
The example is in the headline.
If you work for Google, they own anything you develop on the side. They're actually nice in that they have a review process where they will give you your rights back if they decide it isn't competitive with any of their lines of business.
A lot of other companies don't even provide that. If you start a business on the side, they own all of its IP. Period.
This is extremely common. Both with large corporations as well as with startups. You just might not be aware of it.
I’ve done startups myself and it’s not common in any contracts I’ve signed nor have my coworkers. If it was, we all wouldn’t be able to start our own companies.
However, it can be fairly common at larger companies, especially in specific segments.
It seems pretty clear that PG thought Sam was distracted from his YC job and forced him to choose.
That would imply that Sam was adding negative value to YC, and PG replaced him as a result.
Look if this was dave from some no name company, there would be no real debate about what happened.
Altman isn't special, he's just rich and well connected.
Altman was booted from YC because he shouldn't have been making money from his side gigs. He broke the rules, and had some level of consequence.
Now that he's rich, and famous, he's not going to get much consequence, unless he vaporises a lot of money from the wrong people. But then he might be WeWork cult leader good and get away with it.
This story was discussed last November, by the title "Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor" with +1k points and +700 comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38378216).
If people really want to describe that as "fired" there is no stopping them. But it isn't. PG is more correct than that quadrant of the backseat managers.
Firing implies you want somebody gone.
> For several years [Sam] was running both YC and OpenAI, but when OpenAI announced that it was going to have a for-profit subsidiary and that Sam was going to be the CEO, we (specifically Jessica) told him that if he was going to work full-time on OpenAI, we should find someone else to run YC, and he agreed. If he'd said that he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so that he could focus 100% on YC, we'd have been fine with that too. We didn't want him to leave, just to choose one or the other.
It's interesting that YC had to raise the issue, rather than Sam saying to YC, "Hey, I've found this other thing I want to do full-time, can we start looking for my replacement?"
So it's not like they are impartial parties either.
Accusing Graham of being "absent" sounds silly.
He still did Office Hours, at least for a time. He described that as "ten percent of what he did" and hired at least two people to divide up the other 90 percent.
I imagine he and Livingston discussed the company over breakfast/dinner and a lot of decisions were likely joint decisions privately hashed out. It's a company founded by a dating couple who later married. There is probably no clear, bright dividing line between "her" decisions and "his."
Anyway, there's a Hollywood movie in this drama... maybe I'll write a script using ChatGPT... :)
He handed off a lot of the day-to-day scut work. He didn't go "I'm just a shareholder who reads the annual report and counts my pennies from the DRIP."
The WP article implied that there was a drop in Altman's performance and hands-on presence due to multi-tasking of his other interests including OpenAI, whereas pg seems to imply that jl gave the ultimatum to Altman before there were any performance complaints.
It's also a little strange that pg doesn't mention the for-profit Worldcoin at all, which announced a 4 mil seed round a few months prior to Altman exiting YC and for which Altman was already CEO.
I'm not sure pg is aware how much he's risking, or how much he's putting Jessica's reputation at risk. He often posts touting Jessica as being a great judge of character.[1] The world is witnessing in real time just how great a character his prince really is. But at least he had the courtesy to mention that Jessica was the one that gave Altman the ultimatum.
There was something missing in his post though. He forgot to add "Sam and Paul" at the end of his statement.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38378216
[1] To be fair, it's usually for determining whether the person has characteristics that make a good startup founder, like resilience or co-founder compatibility. "Having moral fiber" might be at the bottom of the list in terms of priority.
I can't imaging being fired from a company like OpenAI and being asked my thoughts about the people responsible and the company and people taking it seriously! LOL
That said, the interviewer tries to sensationalize the upcoming interview as much as possible in the intro, so I didn't love that
> Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me”, he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.…To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384090) scrubbed from the post…For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.
I just don’t know how this relates to what I wrote.
I meant something different though: I was thinking if he might remember it differently today than if actually happened.
Human memories are not very reliable.
It's somewhat mealy mouthed. "We didn't fire him. We just reached the penultimate step before having to fire him."
If you understood the morals and knew enough to offer your resignation when you accepted the other job, then no, you just took a new job very ethically.
The place to make the choice is when you accepted the new job. That you had to be prompted indicates that you are not the type of person who recognizes obvious conflicts, or you are and you hope that might be able to avoid responsibility for them by lying through omission.
The point is, as a "defense," this is absurdly hollow. I'm not sure PG did him any favors by clarifying this point.
Lots of comments saying "it was still a firing", which makes no sense to me. Firing is not normally used to include situations where the outcome is totally under control of the person who is "fired".
And you say "Paul is clever like that", which just comes off as ridiculous shade to me. Paul may be clever, but he outlined some factual info that, if not true, would just be outright lying, which I don't think he would do. He fundamentally said the decision was always Altman's to make.
Also, I hate how this has become yet another case of using semantics disingenuously. Say what you will about the true meaning of "firing", but nearly everyone would interpret that as Altman got canned and YC didn't want him back. That's not what happened apparently. So all the people saying "it's still a firing" feels like the "I'm not touching you" game that 5-year-old siblings play.
He comes across to me as very creepy and unsettling in interviews. I cannot imagine he is any better in person. How anybody can talk to someone like that for more than a minute is beyond me.
So, yeah, if people could stop assuming everybody can read X/Linkedin/Facebook, that would be nice…
Twitter is quickly becoming as bad as discord for siloing information.
No, you can't, Twitter is degenerating further:
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
[Try Again]
/!\ Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (Strict Mode) is known to cause issues on x.com
The exception is that some accounts still require login to read. I'm not sure why but I'm guessing that it might be a per account setting that won't be set by accounts that haven't logged in for a long time (I don't have an acount to check). Actually, worble and ploum's comments below would explain what I see, I usually don't try to check the same content twice (or anything all that often) so I wouldn't notice if it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
The Firefox 126 preferences UI for the "Strict" setting shows this warning:
"Stronger protection, but may cause some sites or content to break."
When the panel for that setting is expanded, it shows an additional warning:
"Heads up! This setting may cause some websites to not display content or work correctly. If a site seems broken, you may want to turn off tracking protection for that site to load all content."
Presumably such problems are not unexpected or unheard of if two warnings are deemed necessary for that setting.
(I'm not a web person, so I'll save my speculation on what is breaking there, but Twitter is the only webpage I experience as broken. It is absolutely possible I mucked around with some setting 5 years ago and completely forgot about it. Or Twitter is doing weird things. Probably a combination of both.)
> Firefox blocks the following:
> Social media trackers
> Cross-site cookies in all windows
> Tracking content in all windows
> Cryptominers
> Known and suspected fingerprinters
All too often it's the latter, meaning anyone without an account can't see the content, meaning it has zero value. No way in hell am I creating an account. So the conclusion is twitter links are now useless.
I got tired of hearing that YC fired Sam, so here's what actually happened:
> People have been claiming YC fired Sam Altman.
> That's not true. Here's what actually happened.
> For several years he was running both YC and OpenAI,
> but when OpenAI announced that it was going to
> have a for-profit subsidiary and that Sam was going
> to be the CEO, we (specifically Jessica) told him
> that if he was going to work full-time on OpenAI,
> we should find someone else to run YC, and he
> agreed. If he'd said that he was going to find
> someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so that he could
> focus 100% on YC, we'd have been fine with that
> too. We didn't want him to leave, just to choose
> one or the other.
The real interesting bit, is that Paul Graham somehow thought it was worthwhile to stick his neck out and improve Sam Altman public image by clarifying he was ever fired from YC.
B: Ok, I can't do that. You can replace me
B proceeds to be replaced and no longer works there
Some time later...
T: obviously, B was not fired.
People have been claiming YC fired Sam Altman. That's not true. Here's what actually happened. For several years he was running both YC and OpenAI, but when OpenAI announced that it was going to have a for-profit subsidiary and that Sam was going to be the CEO, we (specifically Jessica) told him that if he was going to work full-time on OpenAl, we should find someone else to run YC, and he agreed. If he'd said that he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so that he could focus 100% on YC, we'd have been fine with that too. We didn't want him to leave, just to choose one or the other.
He literally directly says they did not fire him and did not want him to leave.
Of course all these people were fired, it's just in the world of very important VC and tech guys, just like in the world of politicians and bureaucrats you can't say that, because 'being fired' is for the desk clerks and floor moppers. Very important executive Bob of course wasn't fired, he choose to spend time with his family
From the Wall Street journal
But seriously, this tweet doesn't claim that WSJ is wrong, it's just a different spin. If you have an upcoming lucrative side business and your employer comes and says "hey bro, it's either us or them" then this is not technically a "firing" if you chose the other one. But let's not pretend like there was much choice here in the first place. For all intents and purposes, he was made to leave.
> To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.
That's just f'ing weird in my opinion. Actually publishing a blog post saying you transitioned to chairman before the partners had agreed??? I've generally defended the "naughtiness" that YC famously valued, because I thought it was usually misconstrued by its detractors. But that doesn't at all come across as "naughtiness" to me, it comes across as borderline psycho.
Nothing nefarious, nothing sneaky, no tricks, nada, ziltch.
The immense bias, bull, made up junk, and outright maliciousness in some of these replies is beyond disgusting.
PG did not think so....
Imagine if you were in a classroom and some new students entered the room and all sat together in a group and were wearing walkie talkies, and then started shouting out comments non-stop at the teacher that seemed to have some non-constructive motive.
You would see something was up immediately.
On the Internet this is harder to see.
"When OpenAI announced that it was going to have a for-profit" clearly indicates it wasn't something that was communicated beforehand to YC.
Friendly clarification about "both" because the OpenAI structure is very confusing and muddies up the narrative.
(1) first in 2015, there was the 501c3 non-profit OpenAI entity. From the public statements, this was more of a "idealistic research & development" organization to create truly open and publicized machine learning data & algorithms so humanity wouldn't be beholden to big tech like Google "controlling AI". This is the entity that Elon Musk and others (including YC Jessica Livingston) donated $40+ million to and the one that Sam was "running for years" along with YC. Maybe this non-profit R&D gig seemed more like a "part-time" job to PG.
(2) then in 2019, OpenAI created a new for-profit OpenAI company (a subsidiary) to raise money and build proprietary products. Sam was then tapped to also run this for-profit company. This new entity is not part of the "running both for years". That's where PG said Sam needed to choose where to be full-time. The additional responsibilities of being the CEO for the new for-profit company was a change in circumstances.
Try reading again both there original tweet and the comment you replied to, slower this time.
If a worker keeps coming in late and the owner says to them "We love the work you do here but you need to be at the desk at 9am or choose to work somewhere else" Is that ultimatum a threat to fire?
So they didn't fire Sam but threatened to fire him and he chose to leave?
[1]: Adding it is popular on Mastodon but I’m unsure if Twitter allows it.
[2]: I’m guessing this is Twitter and not Paul.
Edit to add: obviously pg isn't going to respond to every rumor, but this one has had significant attention and he was particularly well placed to address it.
He got an ultimatum: choose to quit one or we’ll choose for you.
If you want to be super pedantic about it, then let’s just say that PG kicked him out, but Sam at least got a say in what he was being kicked out of.
If he had chosen both then that is the same as choosing OpenAI. “Both” was not an option on the table.
Being told to commit or leave is not being kicked out. You can choose to commit and stay.
Sure some CEOs might drop out and play golf, but all that proves is you have slackers at any level of an org
- (SA) The new CEO of a company wanting to commit as much of their time as possible to that company also seems like a reasonable position.
There could be a kind of non-disparagement agreement like OpenAI used to have.
I think you are very confused about the power dynamic here. OpenAI is small beans compared to YC.
Reading the replies and the tribal colours / flag waving is fascinating. I suppose This tribalism happens for every topic but it’s just hard to be gifted this perspective on topics your career is invested in.
It’s been fun reading clearly fabricated explanations that don’t base themselves on any objectivity but on the posters inner desires.
I see it almost exclusively online, and people don't seem to notice what they are doing.
IRL the vast majority of the time they are just flawed humans like the rest of us. Sometimes people take on more responsibilities in life than they can realistically handle. And everyone needs to be challenged and questioned whether they’re being honest with themselves at various points in their lives.
As a result, random people on the street form strong opinions on everything, from Sama's psychology and internal narrative to nuclear reactor design.
It is wildly delusional when you think about it.
In other words, the comment is a construct of that definition; And a demonstration of the fallacy of opinion.
Is the only way out is to assert as you do that some opinions are less valid than others? I don’t think that resolves the paradox.
Philosophers must have studied this... I understand that in math we have Gödel incompleteness which is an axiomatic version of a similar argument.
I can have a valid , well informed, and even actionable opinion about what my wife would like for dinner.
Inversely, my opinions on what happened behind closed doors between PG and SamA in 2019 isnt informed, actionable, or generally useful.
To the extent my post could be seen as critical of opinions(which is I think where you draw the irony from), it wasnt critical of holding just any opinion, but holding a certain class of poorly formed and completely unnecessary opinions.
From the outside you might think that this itself is useless navel-gazing, but I have found it to be actionable. It has helped me to question some of my own compulsive behaviors.
Anyway there is some connection to AI and AGI in this that is worth exploring...
The evidence is that if you challenge them with the actual facts, they sometimes don't accuse you of being factually wrong, instead they accuse you of wishing the other way (i.e. being on the other camp).
A lot of people on this forum came of age at a time when the internet and computers and tech companies built around them were ascendant and seen as a force for good in the world. We had the open source movement and peer-to-peer sharing and everything was going to be free and egalitarian and connected. Google was "organizing the world's information" and went from underdog to champion while telling us "don't be evil" was their core value. Kids who were bullied for being sincere and passionate were becoming the adults who ran things and got success and admiration.
Also, in the first ~decade or so that I was on HN speculative fiction about AI was extremely popular here. We weren't really sure if superhuman intelligence would happen anytime soon, but we all had the sense that if/when it did it better be designed and run by people with high ethical standards if we have any hope of avoiding major catastrophe.
(I personally see the concerns about mis-aligned "superhuman AI" and mis-aligned mega-corporations as representing essentially the same underlying anxiety: that there are powerful forces in the world that are beyond our ability to influence in meaningful ways but which have outsized effects on our environment and lives while being completely agnostic to our happiness or even our existence.)
Now we've been through one or more cycles of seeing our heroes turn into villains. Google got rid of "don't be evil". Musk turned his attention away from the stars and the "good of humanity" and toward petty political spats and gossip. And now OpenAI, which sold itself as the organization that will "do AGI" and do it the safe and ethical way, looks like it's run by somebody who is incredibly shrewd and self-serving.
So while I understand why you wouldn't care about this, I also completely understand why it's such an engaging topic for so many people here.
People don't really want to litigate these things in particular but use it as proxy for their own personal feelings about the effects of AI or even capitalism itself.
If my boss told me he was "fine with me staying at my job", I'd take it to mean that they were fine with me staying at my job.
I don't think this press release (is it that?) does a very good job of dispelling the rumors that it wasn't entirely mutual, though. He ought to have said something like "delighted to have him stay".
Yet he doesn't do that (in this tweet) as it's only an alternative reason and does not address those accusations.
To me that changes the meaning of "fired". I'd read it as "co-entrepeneurs parting ways". Yes one of the co-entrepeneurs has more say in who stays and who goes. But even if there was an employment contract, I'd see it more as a good/bad leave clause when no body loses their much required primary source of income.
I'm saying that he prolly has a deal at OpenAI with some stock and a good/bad leaver agreement, and a salary. Getting fired in this cases is not the same as firing someone who has zero stock and needs the jobs to put food on the table.
It just does not carry the same weight for me, regardless of the lawful definition.
It doesn't sound like he was incapable of doing that - just incapable of doing that while also running OpenAI.
An employer who forces employees to stop working from home or leave the company isn't firing them, for example.
Your remote work example is not different companies ask a performance improvement plan they are saying improve your performance or leave. That “ or leave” doesn’t always mean you get fired legally , some companies would be more generous with severance if you resign voluntarily, but it doesn’t alter the fact you were asked to do so and effectively were fired.
Senior management typically leave by mutual agreement even if they “asked to resign”.
His employment was not terminated by YC legally yes , that would be rare and would happen if there is no trust left that he would do so properly when asked to resign, like it happened in OpenAI for him .
PG: Quit your second job or be fired
Altman: You can't fire me, because I quit
PG: Great, as thanks for going quietly I'll tell everyone you "weren't fired"
It's a firing for all practical purposes, sure. But technically Altman voluntarily resigned.
This is actually somewhat common when firing people - if you ever find yourself in a disciplinary meeting with HR and you know you're about to get fired, you can just resign right then and there, one second before they tell you you're fired, and they'll accept. You sacrifice the right to sue for unfair dismissal, in exchange they'll tell future employers that you left voluntarily and weren't fired.
I believe that's increasingly uncommon, I believe due to legal risk. I think it's usually the case that HR will only verify the bare objective facts of employment: dates of service, title, salary, etc.
I also know of at least one company where policy states everyone who leaves involuntarily is not eligible for rehire, and that includes people who were laid off due to downsizing/site closures/etc. So "not eligible for rehire" my not indicate any performance or behavioral issues.
(this whole terminology debate is so futile and useless, mental food for the bored. WTF cares which exact colorful sticker we put on disagreements and the consequent parting. It's over, carry on.)
If you start working on a side gig, that will take up a chunk of your time and invariably occupy your brain; thus, your employer doesn’t get their full value out of you anymore. Up to a certain degree, employers (have) to tolerate this—in Germany, that would be when your performance at your job starts to suffer from it. But once your commitment to the side gig increases so much that you’re about to become CEO, there’s no reasonable way to claim you can still carry out your contractual duties to your employer.
If your employer then offers you to either step down from that side gig or lose your employment, that is completely reasonable and frankly something you should expect?
Put differently, if you pay me to paint your shed, and after finishing the front side I went off and painted my own house with the rest of the paint, you certainly wouldn’t consider the job done or full payment to be justified.
Sure, you can fly under the radar if you're working on your own business/start-up by simply lying about the hours worked, but if you're doing paid work for another employer it will be obvious, and they would not be legally able to employ you if total working time goes above 48hrs/week.
And we’re not talking about creating a small online T-shirt store, but being CEO of a venture backed organisation to evolve the state of AI. There’s just no way to pull that off.
I'm sure people can manage doing one of both (so long as there is no conflicts of interest). Heck, now that I think of it, technically I'm a chief science officer of a startup and a casual employee of a university...
It's the same if you have a family, an interest, or any semblance of a life really.
So instead, you might just want to check with your employer beforehand and talk about what they’re cool with. Something Sams could have chosen to do, but did not, apparently.
Perhaps we can agree that "firing" is a fairly fuzzy term, and maybe not entirely fit to meaningfully contain, both:
a) me losing my job because I am (apparently) not creating enough value for the company
b) me losing my job because I am not willing to split time between my current main gig and my unicorn startup
It doesn’t take 40 hours of work all the time, especially if you can delegate well.
I've had several job contracts which say I'm not allowed to have another job at the same time unless I have written permission, which they can't say no to without good reason — "This has become a conflict of interest, pick one" or "both of these are now full time, pick one" seem like reasonable grounds to for an employer to rescind permission.
(It's also one of the ways Musk gets flack, given how many companies he's CEO/CTO/president of).
He was doing something that did not align with YC and he was told to stop doing that, and he said no, and left. Basically pushed out of YC. Not "fired for cause" but pushed out, absolutely.
1. There was reporting and online discussion that sama was fired from YC. pg didn't believe this framing was correct and sent out his tweet to correct the record.
2. Toner made some very specific allegations about instances where sama was not truthful to the OpenAI board, especially with respect to instances of self-dealing.
If #1 is true (and I see no reason to believe it's not), that in no way implies #2 is false.
If Toner has been telling the truth about all of the myriad things that she claims happened, where was she when she was responsible for oversight during recent years? Toner comes across as unprofessional and reckless in how she handled all of this, whether her claims are true or not.
That said, you may have missed it but Toner alleged some very specific instances of lying and withholding information from the board: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40506582. That's very different from "vague and non-specific character attacks".
And, importantly, 4 total board members agreed that was the right action to take.
1. Toner says some specific things.
2. Toner presents them alongside insinuations and plenty of vague and nonspecific things.
Apparently (1) wasn’t sufficient to justify her actions, so she’s had to resort to (2).
As for four board members, that’s a description of what the board did, not what Sam did. The board’s actions do not justify the board’s actions, however much Toner might wish that were the case. Just another insinuation in place of a reason.
My guess (having seen other examples of this) is the board depended too much on the legal advice they got. That is, I'm sure their lawyers recommended giving as few details as possible, because every detail you give is a potential opening for a lawsuit. This is generally standard legal advice when firing someone. The problem with that advice is that while it may make sense from a purely legal perspective, it is absolutely horrible practical advice when it comes to communicating their rationale for a decision of this magnitude.
If Toner’s approach has merely been to stay pragmatic about avoiding legal risks, then it’s difficult to say what prompted her recent podcast, which she had no legal duty to produce.
For what it’s worth, smearing her professional colleague with the stereotype of a sneaky, untrustworthy gay man really shouldn’t have any place in Toner’s repertoire. Gay men can of course be sneaky and untrustworthy, but if Toner really feels the need to explain her behavior to the public, then Toner could potentially improve her credibility by trying her hardest to give a very clear and detailed picture of what happened and to stop employing vague and non-specific devices, so that the public can consider her claims with lucidity rather than through a fog of insinuation.
Obviously the Board has access to legal advice (and probably would risk trouble if they ignored it since they have additional fiduciary duties as Board members), but Toner probably doesn't retain a lawyer for this kind of stuff and when one doesn't have an official position they generally have fewer legal liabilities to worry about.
LLMs are stochastic parrots. What you’re experiencing when you see its output is essentially pareidolia but with language and not faces.
I'm employed by a company, I start a side gig which I spend 50% of my productive time on, my boss eventually tells me that they need someone in my position to be a proper full time employee and I need to choose. I respond, "okay, in that case I resign".
There's no difference between the two analogies in my eye, they're the same except that the first is about asking permission while the second is about just doing it.
Quitting: You decide that it's time to go.
Firing: Your boss decides that it's time for you to go.
Ultimatum: Choose between these options, or it's time for you to go.
The only part that might not be right is the tone. I think "ultimatum" sounds a bit adversarial, whereas PG is describing something more cooperative in nature.
No, I am saying these two are similar.
> I don't see the relevance.
The relevance is that trying to pull an Elon Musk one...Has relevance to the professional ethics of the current manager of the OpenAI new safety team...
- You are not leaving me...I am leaving you!
Person B: "okay I choose person C, bye"
Person B left
---
Contrast with:
Person A to person B: "I'm leaving you because you have a relationship with person C"
Person A left
---
It's really not complicated, and I seriously don't understand why so many people here don't get it... whether you're fired or resigning, and whether you're the person leaving or the person being left, depends on who has the agency. If you're making the choice, you're resigning. If you have no say, you're being fired.
People leave their jobs all the time because their job requires something from them that they don't want to give. That's not being fired, that's resigning. (If the job requires something which you're unable to give, such as if you're doing as good of a job as you can reasonably do but your employer requires you do better still and you're just not good enough, then you don't have the agency; you're being fired.)
Now, I'm done with this conversation, if you have a counter argument then try to think hard about what I would say in response. You can handle both sides of this conversation from here. I have been clear enough.
But maybe not as big a difference as some make it out to be. A PIP is technically a statement of "we want you to be an employee, but we need you to change X to stay," but someone doesn't meet the PIP requirements you'd still say they were fired.
If someone could easily meet the PIP requirements, but decides to leave instead, then they left.
In my mind, the entire question is about who has agency.
It gives a false sense of "agency" for the employee. In reality, the employee was already fired 3 months ago in the mind of the manager.
Well there ya go.
In light of sams public perception I find it interesting that PG is clearing the air NOW.
EDIT: it needs to be stated that "when we found out from a press release that our CEO would be double dipping at another for profit venture..." is shitty way to find out your CEO is moonlighting. The fact that you DIDNT fire him on the spot isnt the best look.
So much drama is created by overanalysing the timing of things, though. It's just air.
Also, I bet he'd be getting annoyed if clarifying things to multiple people. Before, no one gave a damn, so it didn't matter, but now Sam's hot news.
What I’ve been seeing seems more like an attempted character assassination of an accomplished business leader who has done a great deal for society on many occasions. Sam was literally fired from the organization he co-founded — before being re-instated, because apparently the action wasn’t tenable, and yet we keep seeing attacks against his character as if someone still wants him gone, or at least wants his influence and credibility reduced going forward.
I dunno, PG claims that Altman wasn't fired but to me this reads like a difference that ultimately doesn't matter.
Effectively, they gave him an ultimatum: stay at YC and drop that CEO offer or leave. Sure, it's dressed up in nicer words to protect Altman's dignity (which is fine, in terms of "this is bad" it's pretty low, so preserving his dignity makes sense), but that's still what it is. The ultimatum is obviously not a realistic one - be beholden to the board or become your own chief while it's blatantly clear where his ambitions lie, so effectively it's a firing.
I know that Silicon Valley VC is all about relationships (read: not calling out shitty behaviour) but it's difficult to spin someone just full on walking off the job.
I'm sure PG and many others don't want to get on the bad side of someone who controls a decent amount of deal flow, but really it's pretty obvious that's unacceptable behaviour. It's the same thing that happens with Elon Musk - people run around excusing the shitty things he does, but if you drill down the excuse is basically "Elon Musk controls a bunch of things that could line my pocket and I don't want to piss him off", that doesn't suddenly make things ethical.
Reigning in an enthusiastic person they know, not an employee.
> It sounds a lot like Sam went off and found another job, didn't bother to quit his old one
He didn't "find another job", or that's a silly way to put it. He was already was running OpenAI not for profit. When that company decided to create a for-profit subsidiary, and SA to go with it, is when they said to him he couldn't be both.
> and when challenged... quit.
If you're saying he wasn't fired, you're right. He chose to leave and move to another company full time. That's what makes this such a dull topic.
Anyway - breaking this down point by point is unnecessary, because it's all in the original Tweet, and you're still saying what you're saying.
To be clear, I'm not saying he was fired. I'm saying he acted unethically, pushed PG to the point where he gave an ultimatum and then quit, but PG is smart enough not to burn bridges.
No, I'm saying the "reigning in" was a personal one, not an employee one. Obviously Sam was an employee.
> So you're presenting this as if this was thrust upon Sam
No, I'm not. I'm saying he didn't go and find another job. His role changed with OpenAI's structure change, and he probably didn't think it through as to him it was a gradual transition.
> I'm saying he acted unethically, pushed PG to the point where he gave an ultimatum and then quit, but PG is smart enough not to burn bridges.
Okay. At this point we're just doing celebrity gossip, but with tech celebrities. I've no idea if your guess is correct or not.
Why would Altman not deny them, and why would pg wait until now to say it wasn’t true? The reason pg gives is uncontroversial.
The articles claiming this came out last year and Graham didn't return requests for comments or make any statements then. So why now? Why wasn't there more details when Altman left Y Combinator?
It sure sounds like a firing. If I was fired from a job because I was breaking some contract or rule, it seems weird for the employer to say they didn't fire me because if I hadn't broken the rule they would have been happy to keep me.
You fire someone when you don’t want them anymore.
In this case, he was asked to choose between YC and OpenAI (because doing both is too big a job).
That is not firing someone when they choose whether or not to stay.
That's only true if they left on their own accord. That isn't what happened.
When I someone the option, that is not a firing.
I really don’t understand why you, and others who insist otherwise, have this worldview.
Presumably because “[PG] got tired of hearing that YC fired Sam“
> Why wasn't there more details when Altman left Y Combinator?
Why on earth should there be? If it was me I’d think it’s nobody else’s business and therefore be uninterested in sharing or explaining those details.
However once the world starts speculating and assuming something else happened, I can see why at some point it makes sense to provide some more detail to try to correct that, even if you’d rather not.
It's almost like no one here wants to be a successful entrepreneur
I was just speculating on why some hn members might feel like entrepreneurs even though they have nothing in common with Sam Altman. And how it might even be in their long term interest for one man to not be quite so powerful.
A successful company or individual who does right by its users or employers and puts them above personal gain is lauded. Maybe people would prefer to be successful entrepreneurs who retain human decency.
Your argument also makes it sound like HN is a hive mind who all think the same. It’s not. You’ll find just as many people defending that behaviour as you’ll find detractors.
That's ~10 minutes with ISDN.
It’s frustrating but at least some people are going to believe whatever conspiracy theory they want to believe regardless of any other evidence or argument presented to them.
I’m not sure how we solve this, but it’s becoming ever more important that we do. Make reading comprehension and critical thinking a core part of our education systems? Aren’t they already though? And still… idiots gonna idiot, and the internet will give them as many platforms as they want.
If you decide to leave one company to focus on working for another company then that's not the first company firing you, that's you leaving the first company?
No it doesn't.
"For several years, I was sleeping with both her and another woman, she eventually had enough and filed for divorce" means that the wife left.
"For several years, I was sleeping with both her and another woman, she eventually had enough so she asked me to choose between her and the other woman. I chose to leave her for the other woman" means that the husband left. He could have chosen to stay with the wife, but chose not to.
-----
1(A). Wife discovers cheating.
1(B). Wife gives ultimatum.
1(C). Husband declines ultimatum.
1(D). Husband leaves.
-----
2(A). Wife discovers cheating.
2(B). Wife gives ultimatum.
2(C). Husband declines ultimatum.
2(D). Wife leaves.
-----
You seem to be arguing that it's always scenario 1, because in step (C), the husband "could have chosen to stay with the wife, but chose not to". But that immediately implies that this scenario cannot occur:
3(A). Wife discovers cheating.
3(B). Wife gives ultimatum.
3(C). Husband declines ultimatum.
3(D). Wife stays.
What we know is that the husband sees no reason for the marriage to change, and the wife does. The breakup of the marriage, in this context, is almost always the wife's choice, as identified by the very simple criterion that it's something the wife wants and the husband doesn't want. She can equally choose to take the husband's offer of a stable marriage with adultery.
> but when OpenAI announced that it was going to have a for-profit subsidiary and that Sam was going to be the CEO
If anything (in case you're looking for a scoop), PG implies that YC found-out about Sam's raising the stakes on OpenAI through a third-party ("OpenAI announced"), which does not look good for Sam. There's even a subtle "but" in there. The firing versus resigning discussion is irrelevant, the focus is probably (and arguably) the lack of clear communication on Sam's part regarding a conflict of interest for both parties, YC and Sam.
As a counter-argument, OpenAI was a running show anyway, which YC was on the know and apparently openly allowed and the for-profit thing was just a matter of time.
Sometimes in these situations, one party who was consenting to non-monogamy decides that they want to be monogamous. When that happens, their partner is asked to make a choice as to whether they want to participate in monogamy with that person or go their separate ways.
That’s what this is like.
The human psychological and interpersonal aspect is the real hazard. You either A) don’t find two other people that can emotionally handle it or B) do find two other people that can emotionally handle it but suffer from the trauma they’ve experienced that numbed them enough to be able to emotionally handle it, which is a hazard in itself. Either way, it just doesn’t work in the long run.
I have practiced non-monogamy for 9 years, and along the way I dated a lot of people who were only doing it because they wanted to date me, and I was non-monogamous. Those situations always go poorly. Now I only date people who both want to be non-monogamous for their own reasons and have read the books and done the work to learn how to do it properly.
You are incorrect in your suggestion that people who learn how to do poly well do it by becoming numb. In the terms of the book Polysecure, people learn how to do non-monogamy properly by learning ways of fostering secure attachment that don't rely on monogamous concepts. That book explores the existing body of research on secure attachment, which is primarily focused on monogamous relationships, and applies those concepts to polyamory, with the ultimate takeaway being the HEARTS method described here: https://www.kcresolve.com/blog/creating-a-secure-attachment-...
You are incorrect in your two options presented, which both boil down to "you cannot find emotionally healthy polyamorous people". In my community in Oakland CA, with the people I tend to date, polyamory is actually the norm. You can find people who are immature and problematic, and you can find people who are stable, emotionally mature, and willing to do work when needed to maintain healthy relationships. I have learned to broadly differentiate between the two types pretty quickly. Note that I am 39 and tend not to date anyone younger than 35.
I currently have two partners. They are both dating another person who I will call M. I am also friends with M, and M and I actually text more than I do with either of our mutual partners. We've been having movie nights recently that are cute and wholesome as hell. I've never seen a whisp of jealousy or related issues amongst us. We've all been poly in this community for long enough, and we are all in therapy, that we have learned how to navigate things.
I hate to say it, but "poly simply doesn't work" is what every person who has lived in a monogamous culture and hasn't done the research is likely to say. It's absolutely not easy to learn how to do it and is very much is not for everyone. Some people really should just be monogamous, that much I have learned. But to make the blanket statement that it doesn't work in the long run is sorely misinformed, and if you gave that advice to someone who trusted you, who actually did need to do the work and learn how to be polyamorous, you could do serious harm to their life. If I had tried to stick with monogamy, it simply would have been wrong for me and would have led t continued misery.
It took a while to get here, and I know all too well the pitfalls, but I have finally learned enough, and critically moved to the right place, and now I am flush with lovely non-monogamous connections that fill my heart with joy. I have two loving partners and I go on lots of dates with other cute people. My relationships are healthier than they have ever been, and I finally feel like I have found myself.
So please, don't go telling people that non-monogamy doesn't work. It isn't easy to learn how to do it, and it is not for everyone, but once you learn how it actually becomes second nature (if its right for you) and can be really easy. Non-monogamy saved my life, and there is a wealth of research available exploring how it works. Even if you don't want to be poly, its well worth learning about.
I have some bad news for you
Yes, there's a way to define the word "fired" such that PG did fire Sam.
But, that definition is not the colloquial definition of the word "fired".
Just go outside on the street, and ask someone: "My boss just told me that I need to stop working on my side project to keep working at his company. Would you say I just got fired?"
The answer 95%+ of the time will be no.
So, while I can understand why you might argue that PG fired Sam, if you can't understand why PG claims that he did not fire Sam, you simply have your head buried in the sand.
† Note key proviso: "going outside"
This is where I think everyone will disagree with you. I don't know anyone who would agree with your statement. Most people I know would agree that you're being fired when your terms of continued employment change drastically in such an unfavorable way. If my boss told me, "Hey, you can keep working here as long as you work for free" then that's being fired but by your definition - it's not.
OK. It doesn't matter anyway.
They belong to a similar high social class and protect each other. If it were just a random employee with no power, money, or status that was moonlighting or trying to run their side business, they would be scrutinized and possibly sued. If their generated IP were any good, the company would claim it was theirs.
But yeah, if you are a CEO, you can run a few companies and participate in a couple of boards, even while not disclosing this to the many boards you partake in and having many businesses with conflicting interests. As you are part of the elite, you are safe.
If I offer you either chicken or pasta for a meal, and you pick the pasta, you don't get to say I denied you the chicken.
If you have a choice over which job you want to keep, you're not getting fired. It is very much a meaningful difference.
"People have been claiming YC fired Sam Altman. That's not true. Here's what actually happened. For several years he was running both YC and OpenAI, but when OpenAI announced that it was going to have a for-profit subsidiary and that Sam was going to be the CEO, we (specifically Jessica) told him that if he was going to work full-time on OpenAI, we should find someone else to run YC, and he agreed. If he'd said that he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so that he could focus 100% on YC, we'd have been fine with that too. We didn't want him to leave, just to choose one or the other."
The cult of personality.
Okay, okay, I see what's happening here
You're face to face with greatness, and it's strange
You don't even know how you feel
It's adorable
Well, it's nice to see that humans never change
Open your eyes, let's begin
Yes, it's really me, it's Altman
Breathe it in
I know it's a lot
The hair, the bod
When you're staring at a demi-god
It's usually not necessary to indicate what tune the words are set to when you haven't changed more than one of them.
The font itself is weird. It’s not a programming monospaced font it’s a typewriter font which has weird kerning and other aspects that make it both noticeable and less useful than a console font.
What an end to end bizarre post.
For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision. Sounds like a certain Supreme Court justice. It is inherently bullshit.
Separately, corporate communications are as much about what you don't talk about as what you do.
Paul Graham probably wishes he could turn back the clock, and never fire Altman from YC in the first place.
They would have loved to have Altman be the figurehead of YC at this time.
I'm sure they had these conversations for months: "You can come back to YC as a figurehead president." The conversations went nowhere. Maybe YC was ready to genuflect, ready to co-administer the OpenAI startup fund, which is obviously Altman's BANTA. Like why deal with YC at all, when Altman could administer an index on all AI startups better than they can? That's what happened. What's in it for this billionaire Altman to generate wealth for YC LPs, at this stage?
The best Graham could do was this tweet. YC is not yet an index on all the best AI startups. End of story. This is an existential crisis for them. They are of course a great organization who sincerely care about people succeeding, but so do many accelerators and venture studios. So it's very hard to see this play out.
Sam Altman was incomprehensibly lucky. His feet which people stepped on were constantly connected to his ass which they had to kiss tomorrow. His executive collaborators also were people whose feet were stepped on and whose ass now gets kissed. Satya Nadella - the CEO of a far more successful and influential company - has to kiss these asses!
He even got fired from OpenAI - of course the science PhDs were right, he had to go, what's wrong with you people, you should always be on Team PhD - and yet again you must kiss his ass after stepping on his toes. The OpenAI board got mocked in the media, implications of being unqualified, with all the associated sexism, for doing their jobs correctly! Sounds like a certain toxic politician.
Truthfully, all of his antagonists should stop wasting their time worrying about this guy. Anthropic is likely to be very successful. Work for them! There are alternatives. It took only a year for competition to force OpenAI to make its core offering free. All the Thrive ass kissers may yet have bought billions of dollars of units of OpenAI that will turn out to be worth far less than they bargained for. Time will tell.
I mean, it's called `git blame` for a reason. For every 1 person clicking "Annotate" to see who wrote some excellent code, there are 99 people clicking it to see whom to blame.
It may pattern match as blame (and I think that heuristic about corporate speech is probably a good one), but I don't think that tracks in this context. Partially because it doesn't make sense on the personal and emotional level, and partially because it doesn't read as blame at all.
As he happens to be a guy who frequently compliments his wife publicly on her contribution to YC, as well as on her being a good judge of character, it seems more likely it was meant as a compliment. As in, "it was her decision and I think it was the right one."[0] But this interpretation hilariously makes the statement less generous to Altman than it would have been.
[0] He also uses "We" even though he is technically retired from YC (?), thereby taking some responsibility for the decision and acknowledging that he wasn't a complete bystander.
No. Jessica's role here was a founding partner of YC, not as "his wife." His tweet says that Jessica (not Paul himself, or both together) was the person who communicated with Sam that he needed to choose (and possibly also handled the matter overall).
Was Sam Altman fired by YC?
>Yes, Sam Altman was effectively fired from Y Combinator (YC). Although the official announcement framed his departure as a resignation to focus on other projects like OpenAI, multiple sources indicate that Paul Graham, the founder of YC, made the decision to let him go. This decision was due to Altman prioritizing his personal ventures over his responsibilities at YC.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-altman-dramatic-firings
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38378216
https://english.elpais.com/technology/2023-11-24/why-everyon...
Which is essentially what Paul Graham's tweet sayed: Choose YC or other ventures (OpenAI)
>You're fired.
>No, I quit.
> Yes, Sam Altman was indeed fired from Y Combinator (YC). The decision to remove him from his position as CEO was made due to long-standing patterns of behavior1. Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner accused Altman of lying to and obstructing OpenAI’s board, as well as retaliating against those who criticized him. She also mentioned that Altman created a “toxic atmosphere” within the company2. Interestingly, Altman had previously been affiliated with YC but was later reported to have been fired from YC and even appointed himself chairman without authorization3. It seems his behavior led to significant consequences in both organizations.
Not sure what to think, Lucy in the sky with diamonds?
The ethics of OpenAI directly affect my career and life. They affect the future elections, art, my dad's pension fund, and many other things I care about.
Discussing Altman as person helps us understand what he might do with is near-complete control over the ethics of OpenAI.
I think some people in that Twitter thread, pg included, have become so brainwashed by euphemistic phrases like "we agreed to part ways" to cover a firing, that they start to believe their own hype.
A firing can have varying degrees of amicability. It can be a reluctant firing. You can literally say "we're sad to see you go" and mean it. But I think it's still a firing in this case. It is so weird to see people have trouble grasping this.
PS: It's not advertised, but YC participants smoke a lot of bowls.
The thing I don't like about this "it was absolutely a firing" take is that when the WaPo article first came out, the clear implication among the vast majority of online comments I saw was that YC didn't want Altman to be president. You can argue all you want about the "true meaning" of firing, but that implication is very different IMO than asking Altman to choose one or the other. And Paul Graham, one of the only people who actually knows the details, obviously agrees.
So I think it's a bit disingenuous to claim "it was still a firing", with the unspoken implication that YC didn't want Altman, when all the evidence points to the fact that the decision was ultimately Altman's.
If it were a slob on the bus getting fired, or some boss you've never heard of BSing about how that's not what he did (then gives a textbook example of a firing as if it proves him right...) you're not going to bend your reality to explain it away and make excuses for them. It's entirely the reputation of the people and your opinion of them that drives you to make these statements.
This is utter bullshit. Check my comment history, I've been plenty critical of both pg and sama in the past.
But whatever, you believe your fantasy explanation.
I'm not saying everybody here has this. Some do.
I apologize for lumping you in.
>No, we would have been happy if he stayed and got someone else to run OpenAI.