> This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies Could not be further from the truth.
Yeah I mean I can think of a fair few better nouns that are applicable to MSFT than biggest and slowest...
OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
31–40 of 264 posts
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds about right to me. They missed the entire smartphone revolution because they were too slow to adapt their OS (literally their main product) to run on mobile devices.
You realize that was literally 20 years ago?
More like 10 years ago, that’s when Microsoft dropped the ball.
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#33... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything..."). It is not conspiracy anything to think it is certainly happening elsewhere. And there is so much critical open source stuff on github... that said, github is at least noscript/basic (x)html friendly for its core functions.
> ... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything..." Do we? What evidence is there that Microsoft was "pulling the strings in the shadows"? As far as we know Microsoft only found out a minute before Sam did that he was being fired.
Well, we found out that Microsoft is able to reverse essentially any decision they feel strongly about, which is essentially what "pulling the strings" means, in common usage.
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#34Is it actually news that 70% (or whatever) of the employees at a hot startup wouldn't go to work for Microsoft even if they kept their compensation packages (which would probably have a lot of asterisks attached) because of executive suite drama?
It's "business insider". Don't underestimate how poorly management understands "technical resources". I can certainly see lots of leadership just assuming that pay is the only relevant variable and ignore culture entirely during an acquihire, assuming people are fine doing whatever as long as they're paid.
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#35> This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies Could not be further from the truth.
Sounds about right to me. They missed the entire smartphone revolution because they were too slow to adapt their OS (literally their main product) to run on mobile devices.
Actually they did build a really competent smartphone operating system that was as good as iOS at the time quite frankly and was affordable.
The issue is they went and rewrote a chunk of it, breaking APIs and fucked all the developers off, then abandoned it.
The only thing they are is fucking stupid morons.
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#36they didn’t want to leave because of OpenAI’s great compensation packages ($300k+) I do think it is a little unfair to characterize MSFT as “slow and boring” when they’ve been the ones to make the fastest pivot to supporting generative AI as a product line
Have you looked at MSFT corporate record and the current state of their bread and butter products?
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#37they didn’t want to leave because of OpenAI’s great compensation packages ($300k+) I do think it is a little unfair to characterize MSFT as “slow and boring” when they’ve been the ones to make the fastest pivot to supporting generative AI as a product line
I think the deal was for employee to keep their OpenAI compensation even after moving to MSFT
Even if they did you know the annual performance review would go something like:
"You did a great job this year and met or exceeded all of the metrics we measured, but your compa ratio is just too high so instead of a raise we are going to give you a lump sum instead."
Big company culture vs. startup culture is a known issue. People choose to work for startups to avoid that big company culture, so if a big company buys you out then it's time to move on.
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#38How does crap like this get published? Not a shred of evidence is given for its assertions, and they sound pretty preposterous. Nobody actually wanted to go to Microsoft, and they didn't even think Altman was that great as a CEO. So why did they all sign the letter threatening to quit? Mysterious unspecified "pressure". Why did Microsoft claim it was willing to hire the OpenAI team at their current compensation levels, pissing off their own employees, if it really wasn't? Umm, no reason.
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#39pg talks about how Sam Altman is the most powered person he's ever met. Seems we have a super powerful psychopath running perhaps the most important company in human history. I do think he legitimately believes he's doing the right thing though all throughout, which maybe makes it more scary. Sorta like how Mark Zuckerberg seemed to truly believe in Facebook's mission and wound up having all sorts of negative externa…
There’s a lot to be said about Altman, but calling him a “psychopath” is just wrong. It’s a legitimate medical term and should not be used for hyperbole
Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft
#40Am an employee, signed the letter.
I can't read the article so maybe the content is more nuanced, but the framing irks me.
This all happened really fast and the offer was informal. I can only speak for myself but I do have a lot of respect for modern MS, and would have seriously considered the move if that's what kept the team together and comp was reasonable. I would be surprised if most people felt differently.