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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

#151

Post by gwern »

soulbadguy wrote: post #13
ausbah wrote: post #8

they 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

OP discusses this and how it was a hollow promise. Even if it was kept in the full spirit of the nonbinding verbal agreement (which would utterly infuriate MS staff and demoralize them), it would be a bad deal to swap ultra-hot private OA PPUs for the same nominal (but low-growth) amount of MS stock and then have to work at MS.

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

#152

Post by gwern »

gweinberg wrote: post #38

How 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 level…

> and they didn't even think Altman was that great as a CEO.

There are plenty of people who think that. Even the OA executives apparently weren't nearly as enthused with Altman as all those social-media hearts might lead one to assume. See the Time article yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38550240 specifically

    The board expected pressure from investors and media. But they misjudged the scale of the blowback from within the company, in part because they had reason to believe the executive team would respond differently, according to two people familiar with the board’s thinking, who say the board’s move to oust Altman was informed by senior OpenAI leaders, who had approached them with a variety of concerns about Altman’s behavior and its effect on the company’s culture.

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

#153

Post by zamalek »

capableweb wrote: post #143
zamalek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

LinkedIn data says ~44% of the OpenAI team is "Engineering", the rest is operations, human resources and sales. So most likely, if most of the employees moved over to Microsoft, they wouldn't get the same comp, at most 44% of the company would.

> 44% of the OpenAI team is "Engineering"

Yes, the "you guys" average HN demographic per the gp comment.

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

#154

Post by gwern »

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.

It doesn't need to be true, just needs to be what a nontrivial number of OAers think. And given how many people I still see putting down 'M$', I can absolutely believe a dislike of Microsoft is widespread.

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

#155

Post by HWR_14 »

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.

Why wouldn't MSFT honor the increased comp? They are still investing money in OpenAI at that multiple.

They would have to create some kind of crazy structure to avoid wrecking their levels. But of course it could be done.

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

#156

Post by chrisoverzero »

zlg_codes wrote: post #126
djur wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What can Microsoft do for a programmer who self-hosts and doesn't trust proprietary software? Ignore them and market themselves to the remaining 99% of programmers.

that's a funny assertion. Why was Microsoft chasing WSL and PowerShell if they weren't trying to appeal to markets that were smaller than the existing market but might still be worth revenue? It's not as stark and simple as 99/1 split. They've tried hard to prove they're friendly to free software and yet there's still plenty of people that don't trust them. Many people use proprietary software because they're forced…

> Why trust software you can't inspect?

Because for nearly everyone, that’s all software.

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

#157

Post by gwern »

ben_w wrote: post #48
kvee wrote: post #10

pg 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…

I think you're using the word "psychopath" when you're talking about something different, though I can't guess what. Psychopathy is a personality disorder indicated by a pattern of lying, cunning, manipulating, glibness, exploiting, heedlessness, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, sexual promiscuity, low self-control, disregard for morality, lack of acceptance of responsibility, callousness, and lack of empathy and re…

> (Which, now I read it, is disappointingly pattern matching the billionaire who invested in both OpenAI and also a BCI startup currently looking for human test subjects).

Elon Musk actually matches several of those poorly, and matches bipolar disorder much better (most of those are also bipolar or billionaire symptoms, while psychopathy is inconsistent with many Musk symptoms like catatonia): https://gwern.net/note/musk

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

#158

Post by filoleg »

aetherson wrote: post #142
ponector wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Uh, what? Are you claiming that if a company experiences a 10x (!) increase in valuation, that the dilution fully destroys that upside and the average developer experiences no increase in their comp? That is not even vaguely close to true in my experience.

> Are you claiming that if a company experiences a 10x (!) increase in valuation, that the dilution fully destroys that upside and the average developer experiences no increase in their comp?

Not the person you are replying to, but it depends on how diluted it gets. If they print 9x of currently outstanding shares as the value goes 10x, it would result in those original shares being worth exactly the same as before the 10x jump.

But I agree with you overall, in terms of the actual reality. I don’t think any company with half a brain would do that.

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

#159

Post by PepperdineG »

tivert wrote: post #123
reso wrote: post #53

I am still so confused by this whole saga. No one has explained how or why the entire board decided to do a coup, and then simply changed their minds a few days later. I have to assume that the individuals involved are under a mix of social and legal pressure to not talk about the circumstances.

> I am still so confused by this whole saga. No one has explained how or why the entire board decided to do a coup, and then simply changed their minds a few days later. I don't know how anyone can call the board's action a "coup." Calling it that seems to be a propagandistic abuse of the term. The board was in charge, and it's not a coup if it fires a subordinate (the CEO). If anything, the coup was getting the boar…

>I don't know how anyone can call the board's action a "coup." Calling it that seems to be a propagandistic abuse of the term.

>The board was in charge, and it's not a coup if it fires a subordinate (the CEO). If anything, the coup was getting the board ousted.

The CEO was a member of the board and the ones that fired the CEO also fired the Chairman of the Board, so the board went from 6 to 4. So far there's been even less of an explanation for the firing of the Chairman of the Board - who they offered to let remain as a regular employee - than there has been for Altman, though I see the removal of the Chairman as potentially the most egregious and coup-like.

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

#160

Post by Clubber »

dmazzoni wrote: post #84
pixelmonkey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This recent TIME article lays out the saga pretty straightforwardly and makes it a bit less confusing. https://time.com/6342827/ceo-of-the-year-2023-sam-altman/ At least, that was how I felt after reading it. Basically, within the span of a year, OpenAI transformed from a research lab inside a non-profit that was pursuing a seemingly-Quixiotic dream of artificial general intelligence (AGI)... into one of the fastest-…

I think that all makes sense. Things would have played out very differently if the board was more experienced and thoughtful. Their hearts might have been in the right place, but their actions were reckless and ultimately backfired.

>their actions were reckless and ultimately backfired.

What should they have done to accomplish their goal?

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