Has anyone here worked with Sam Altman? What's he like? | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone here worked with Sam Altman? What's he like?

11 pointshilux11 comments

My best friend and I took him on a ski trip when he had just sold Loopt. I've been connected to him since. He's always very responsive via texting and was stoked to receive copies of the book I wrote with AI when OpenAI gave me researcher access years ago. I haven't worked with him on a team however.

* the book was Autonomous Haiku Machine; and was the first book of haiku written by AI.

HN has low Erdos numbers!

That was an interisting read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number

He worked with our group a bit in YC S16. He helped us rename our company to a better brand that targeted are demographic better. Was a pretty reasonable guy, soft spoken, logical, easy to work with and gives blunt advice.

I can guarantee you he is competent.

There are no incompetent people at that level. It’s just that sometimes they aren’t competent at the things you think they should be competent at because you make incorrect assumptions about what it takes to rise to the top.

That is beautifully stated, and gets to the essence of my question.

The guy founded/oversaw the development one of the most revolutionary companies of all time. Enough with this speculation that he is completely incompetent. People need to accept that results matter

I think the question is whether Peter Principle applies. The fact that he was fired hints he wasn't able to grow into the role he holds, but there's likely a lot of politics involved there so the signal is blurry.

Dude he ran Ycombinator during its most successful period. Then founded openai. get out of here with this crap

Peter Principle is when someone is competent until they are put in a position where they are incompetent. It doesn't nullify that he was great at YC or OpenAI at the start, but both of these gave him poor reviews near the end.

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