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OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

businessinsider.com

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Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#111

Post by blagie »

vthallam wrote: post #97
xazzy wrote: post #40

Am 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.

> >> and comp was reasonable there's no way you guys would get the same comp though? like not even close. MSFT irrespective of how much it wants you is not going to honor the 10X increase in valuation from the upcoming $90 billion valuation. Even if they do, you will miss on the upside. MSFT stock is not going to 10X but OpenAI's might.

I think if things went that far, OpenAIs valuation would very quickly pop to zero.

Real MSFT stock beats a theoretical could-have-been with a 10x upside.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#113

Post by Havoc »

Not sure that part actually matters?

The message of the letter was clear and the gun being held at boards head was credible. And what 90%+ supported on paper?

Even if many of the 90% are lukewarm & half-arsed, from a leadership perspective that's conclusively game over.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#114

Post by strangattractor »

xazzy wrote: post #40

Am 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.

Smart - If it ain't written down it is not an offer.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#115

Post by what_ever »

Tenoke wrote: post #103
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #67

> Given the absence of interest in joining Microsoft, many OpenAI employees "felt pressured" to sign the open letter, the employee admitted. The letter itself was drafted by a group of longtime staffers who have the most clout and money at stake with years of industry standing and equity built up, as well as higher pay. They began calling other staffers late on Sunday night, urging them to sign, the employee explaine…

This isnt the board though. This is the against the board side.

That's why they feel bad for those who supported the board as the ones that opposed the board may not have just done it based on the board's actions.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#116

Post by wolverine876 »

fwungy wrote: post #78

As if OpenAI employees would have any problem landing a new gig... Going from an agile startup environment to an F50 is a huge leap culturally. It's like going from Summer science camp to the army.

> As if OpenAI employees would have any problem landing a new gig...

They'd have problems landing new gigs where they worked on OpenAI, with OpenAI's resources, team, etc.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#117

Post by ponector »

vthallam wrote: post #97
xazzy wrote: post #40

Am 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.

> >> and comp was reasonable there's no way you guys would get the same comp though? like not even close. MSFT irrespective of how much it wants you is not going to honor the 10X increase in valuation from the upcoming $90 billion valuation. Even if they do, you will miss on the upside. MSFT stock is not going to 10X but OpenAI's might.

Don't forget that with new rounds and new valuation there is also a dilution of shares.

If the valuation goes up x10 after next round average developer probably will have the same money locked in rsu/options.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#120

Post by nijave »

Laaas wrote: post #20
valine wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

They didn't miss the cloud revolution, and certainly not the AI revolution either. Microsoft is doing absolutely great under Satya Nadella.

>They didn't miss the cloud revolution

Imo they barely kept pace largely by leveraging existing software and repurposing it for cloud. They still seem to be playing catch-up with multiple solutions to the same problem--some deprecated, some preview.

Take for instance Postgres. Azure had Single Server built on Windows containers. They acqui-hired Citus to build out distributed and they released Flexible Postgres as a Linux-based replacement for SS. Flexible still doesn't have feature parity with Single Server and doesn't have feature parity with other cloud vendors (pg_wait_sampling roll-up is missing last time I checked a few months back).

To make matters worse, their data migration tools are sorely lacking as well.

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