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Comment by deepGem | Hacker News Reader

Why is it so hard to just accept this and be transparent about motives ? It's fair to say 'we were not aligned with Sam, we tried an ouster, didn't pan out so the best thing for us to do is to leave and let Sam pursue his path", which the entirely company has vouched for.

Instead, you get to see grey area after grey area.

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Because, for some weird reason, our culture has collectively decided that, even if most of us are capable of reading between the lines to understand what's really being said or is happening, it's often wrong and bad to be honest and transparent, and we should put the most positive spin possible on it. It's everywhere, especially in professional and political environments.

For a counter example of what open and transparent communincation from a C-level tech person could look like, have a read of what the SpaCy founder blogged about a few months ago:

https://honnibal.dev/blog/back-to-our-roots

Stakes are orders of magnitude lower in spaCy case compared to OpenAI (for announcer and for people around them). It's easier to just be yourself when you're back on square one.

This is not a culture thing imo, being honest and transparent makes you vulnerable to exploits, which is often a bad thing for the ones being honest and transparent in a high competition area.

Being dishonest and cagey only serves to build public distrust in your organization, as has happened with OpenAI over the past couple of months. Just look at all of the comments throughout this thread for proof of that.

Edit: Shoot, look at the general level of distrust that the populous puts in politicians.

It is human nature to use plausible deniability to play politics and fool one’s self or others. You will get better results in negotiations if you allow the opposing party to maintain face (i.e. ego).

See flirting as a more basic example.

hypocrisy has to be the core of every corporate or political environment I have observed recently. I can count the occasions or situations where telling the simple truth is helpful. even the people who tell you to tell the truth are often the ones incapable of handling it.

From experience unless the person mention their next "adventure"(within like a couple of months) or gig it usually means a manager or c-suite person got axed and was given the option to gracefully exit.

By the barrage of exits following Mira's resignation, it does look like Sam fired her, the team got the wind of this and are now quitting in droves. This is the thing about lying and being polite. You can't hide the truth for long.

Mira's latest one liner tweet 'OpenAI is nothing without it's people" speaks volumes.

true

McKinsey MBA brain rot seeping into all levels of culture

That's giving too much credit to McKinsey. I'd argue it's systemic brainrot. Never admit mistakes, never express yourself, never be honest. Just make up as much bullshit as possible on the fly, say whatever you have to pacify people. Even just say bullshit 24/7.

Not to dunk on Mira Murati, because this note is pretty cookie cutter, but it exemplifies this perfectly. It says nothing about her motivations for resigning. It bends over backwards to kiss the asses of the people she's leaving behind. It could ultimately be condensed into two words: "I've resigned."

It's a management culture which is almost colonial in nature, and seeks to differentiate itself from a "labor class" which is already highly educated.

Never spook the horses. Never show the team, or the public, what's going on behind the curtain.. or even that there is anything going on. At all time present the appearance of a swan gliding serenely across a lake.

Because if you show humanity, those other humans might cotton on to the fact that you're not much different to them, and have done little to earn or justify your position of authority.

And that wouldn't do at all.

> Just make up as much bullshit as possible on the fly, say whatever you have to pacify people.

Probably why AI sludge is so well suited to this particular cultural moment.

not for two sigma

“the entire company has vouched for” is inconsistent with what we see now. Low/mid ranking employees were obviously tweeting in alignment with their management and by request.

People, including East Asians, frequently claim "face" is an East Asian cultural concept despite the fact that it is omnipresent in all cultures. It doesn't matter if outsiders have figured out what's actually going on. The only thing that matters is saving face.

id imagine that level of honesty could still lead to billions lost in shareholder value - thus the grey area. Market obfuscation is a real thing.

It's in nobodies best interest to do this especially when there is so much money at play.

A bit ironic for a non-profit

Everyone involved works at and has investments in a for-profit firm.

The fact that it has a structure that subordinates it to the board of a non-profit would be only tangential to the interests involved even if that was meaningful and not just rhe lingering vestige of the (arguably, deceptive) founding that the combined organization was working on getting rid of.

As I understand they are going to be stop being non-profit soonish now?

We lie about our successes why would we not lie about our failures?

> Why is it so hard to just accept this and be transparent about motives

You are asking the question, why are politicians not honest?

Because if you are a high level executive and you are transparent on those things, and if it backfires, it will backfire hard for your future opportunities, since all the companies will view you as a potential liability. So it is always safer and wiser option to not say anything in case of any risk of it backfiring. So you do the polite PR messaging every single time. There's nothing to be gained on the individual level of being transparent, only to be risked.

I doubt someone with Mira or Ilya’s calibre have to worry about future opportunities. They can very well craft their own opportunities.

Saying I was wrong should not be this complicated, or saying we failed.

I do however agree that there is nothing to be gained and everything to be risked. So why do it.

Their (Ilya and Mira) perspective on anything is so far remote from your (and my) perspectives that trying to understand their personal feelings behind their resignation is an enterprise doomed to failure.

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