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Comment by edgyquant | Hacker News Reader

Right but this is him being fired

Fired means or at least connotes a specific thing, I.e., is against the will of the departing employee. Leaving the organisation by mutual agreement after an adult conversation to focus on exciting new project is a very different thing to fired.

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?" Sure, in some sense the departing individual chooses to go one way rather than the other.

'Mutual agreement' could be that the employer didn't want the employee, and the employee was tired of BS being unreasonably dumped on them:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

(Not saying that this is such a situation.)

Except that isn't at all what Paul is claiming here—he says YC offered him the choice between running YC and running OpenAI but not both at once. Altman chose OpenAI. That might have been the obvious choice in the circumstances (it certainly appears so in retrospect), but that doesn't turn the conversation into the kind you're claiming.

Or the adult conversation was: you need to pick one thing to focus on, we’d prefer it was YC but obviously we can’t force you to choose YC.

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.

My point is mainly that PG's telling isn't trustworthy, because that's what you agree to say when the person you're "firing" chooses to go quietly. Obviously I have no specific insight into the situation, but given what I have observed about how career changes happen for people who've reached a certain level of power, I have no faith that the people involved have any interest in accurately describing the situation to the public.

All you have to do is look at the fact that PG has been consistently effusive about Sam in his public comments and essays since the mid 00s through till the present day, for it to be clear that Sam wasn’t simply fired.

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.

I wonder how much of the impulse to believe (in the face of the evidence) that Altman parted ways with YC/PG on bad terms is really rooted in an impulse to believe that YC/PG couldn't be complicit in enabling the kind of person that it now increasingly appears that Altman is.

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.

Virtually all info that reaches outsiders has a strong PR component, and often is entirely PR. We're left to "read the tea leaves" from our own experience with such statements.

You're not just saying that PG isn't trustworthy. You're making a claim beyond that:

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.

Even Jack couldn't handle being CEO of Twitter and Square. It's just not easy to do.

I wonder what evidence could possibly convince you, if both sides of the alleged "firing" saying it wasn't so isn't convincing enough.

History being different than it has been. Like the statements Paul has made to date have been in agreement with the common perception of it being a firing, not very consistent with this newer counter narrative. Obviously just imo and ymmv.

Being fired does not include the option to stay.

This is Sam being given an ultimatum and making a choice before being fired. Is it effectively the same thing? Yes. But technically, he left to pursue OpenAI. YC never said “You’rrrrrrrrrrrre Firedddd!!!” (In my best Spacely Sprockets voice); it just politely asked him to leave if he couldn’t give 100%.

This semantics argument seems super productive

The entire point of the tweet is to explain that he wasnt fired.

Yeah, and the tweet isn't being honest. Issuing somebody an ultimatum that you know they'll refuse is just a different way to get rid of someone.

Which was also clearly not the case here.

Clearly?

If PG's goal was to show Sam was actually fired, why would he take it upon himself to make a tweet explaining that Sam wasnt fired?

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