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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

#131

Post by staunton »

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…

Anyone who supported the board was in a situation where they deemed they could afford to go against the peer pressure. This is a combination of acting according to their beliefs/values and economic security. Those people should be envied, not pitied.

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

#132

Post by mrtksn »

staunton wrote: post #125
mrtksn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously MS does some great things but I wonder what do you think about their culture? MS is trying to make me use Edge Browser by randomly refusing to let me use Bing chat in any other browser. This makes me think that MS is still evil and will force me to do things the moment they can. I gave up Bing Chat because of this and was using Perplexity.ai instead, until Bing got integrated into ChatGPT. Another thing is…

> MS is still evil All big corporations are "evil", as in, their decisionmaking is scaled and institutionalized enough to effectively implement the goal of "maximizing shareholder value" above what's good for you or society.

No, not all companies try to exploit their strength in one area to make me use some other product that I have no interest in.

I'm not talking about "hey, we have this product that you might like", I'm talking about "if you want to use this product, you must also use this product". There's also no technical reason for it, sometimes they will let me use it.

Not O.K.

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

#133

Post by VirusNewbie »

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.

If you're ok with sharing, did you sign it because you are more aligned with the productizing of GPT etc, or is it that you truly believe Sama is the CEO to follow? Or a combination of both?

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

#134

Post by joe_the_user »

zer00eyz wrote: post #102
joe_the_user wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your implication that OpenAI has "AGI" is unsupported and implausible imo. LLMs are impressive, can increase productivity for certain workers in certain industries etc, yes but avoid reaching like that please.

I don't imply they have it. I imply that their deal with MS has a definition that we would not call "AGI". One that has implications that may make cutting them (MS) off impossible. From: https://openai.com/our-structure ... "While our partnership with Microsoft includes a multibillion dollar investment, OpenAI remains an entirely independent company governed by the OpenAI Nonprofit. Microsoft has no board seat and no…

Sorry,

I see how your post could be read as you state but the simplest reading is what I said.

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

#135

Post by neilv »

CaveTech wrote: post #55
neilv wrote: post #47

> A scheduled tender offer, which was about to let employees sell their existing vested equity to outside investors, would have been canceled. All that equity would have been worth "nothing," this employee said. > The former OpenAI employee estimated that, of the hundreds of people who signed the letter saying they would leave, "probably 70% of the folks on that list were like, 'Hey, can we, you know, have this tende…

I think it's relatively easy to prove that the main motivation for the majority of employees is not mission alignment, simply by the fact that salaries within OpenAI are in the top few percentile of the field. I don't believe this is necessarily in conflict with the mission though. Employees are mercenaries, it's up to management/leadership to enforce the mission and make sure employees contribute to it positively. T…

> Employees are mercenaries, it's up to management/leadership to enforce the mission and make sure employees contribute to it positively. The employee becomes forcefully aligned with the mission because that is the key to their personal enrichment. They are paid to contribute, their personal beliefs are not all that important.

I think that might be the norm, but it's sounds like an awful dynamic.

It's also unfortunate if you want to do something better. We have many mercenaries companies that have appropriated some of the language we might use to characterize something better.

So, say you're trying to found a company with grand ideals, made up of people who care about the mission, you actively want a diversity of ideas, etc., and almost every sentence you can think of to communicated that a bunch of candidates nodding, "Yeah, yeah, whatever, we've heard this a hundred times, just tell me what the TC is, for the 18 months I'll stay here".

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

#136

Post by hughesjj »

soulbadguy wrote: post #12
Laaas wrote: post #11

> This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies Could not be further from the truth.

why ?

IMHO, today, Google takes the cake for slowest. Meta is still probably the most agile, and Amazon is super hit or miss (so most variance)

Idk where Microsoft would fit in that hierarchy, like Amazon it's kind of hit or miss but with less variance and extrema. From what I've seen and heard, both Gaming and Azure are pretty darn competent these days from an engineering and product perspective. Not perfect of course, but nothing is.

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

#137

Post by throw_away_584 »

replwoacause wrote: post #75
miraculixx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up Annie Altman.

Are you saying this because of the diddling accusations or for some other reason?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

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

#138

Post by kbenson »

mrtksn wrote: post #132
staunton wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS is still evil All big corporations are "evil", as in, their decisionmaking is scaled and institutionalized enough to effectively implement the goal of "maximizing shareholder value" above what's good for you or society.

No, not all companies try to exploit their strength in one area to make me use some other product that I have no interest in. I'm not talking about "hey, we have this product that you might like", I'm talking about "if you want to use this product, you must also use this product". There's also no technical reason for it, sometimes they will let me use it. Not O.K.

> No, not all companies try to exploit their strength in one area to make me use some other product that I have no interest in.

I'm not sure of any large one that doesn't. The incentives are aligned such that it's hard for them not to. It's easy to find examples of similar (sometimes almost identical) behavior from most large companies.

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

#139

Post by kbenson »

staunton wrote: post #131
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…

Anyone who supported the board was in a situation where they deemed they could afford to go against the peer pressure. This is a combination of acting according to their beliefs/values and economic security. Those people should be envied, not pitied.

We should envy people that stand firm on their beliefs and are vindicated, not those that may experience backlash in the future because people that had a different view won in the end. Suffering hardship for doing what you think is right is not something to envy.

Don't envy martyrs, wish for a world without the need for them.

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

#140

Post by zamalek »

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.

> there's no way you guys would get the same comp though?

Nadella was directly involved and he's way smarter than that. Comping one the best ML teams in the world correctly is child's play compared to undoing Balmer's open source mess.

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