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Reflections on OpenAI

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Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#211

Post by eddythompson80 »

Aurornis wrote: post #206
hinterlands wrote: post #52

It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin on their work experience. I don't think this makes OpenAI special. It's just a good reminder that the overwhelming majority of "why I left" posts are basically trying to justify why a person wasn't a good fit for an organization by blaming it squarely on the organization. Look at it this way: the flip side of "incredibly bottoms-up" from this article is that…

> It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin on their work experience. The opposite is true: Most ex-employee stories are overly positive and avoid anything negative. They’re just not shared widely because they’re not interesting most of the time. I was at a company that turned into the most toxic place I had ever worked due to a CEO who decided to randomly get involved with projects, yell at people,…

> The opposite is true: Most ex-employee stories are overly positive and avoid anything negative. They’re just not shared widely because they’re not interesting most of the time.

Yeah I had to re-read the sentence.

The positive "Farewell" post is indeed the norm. Especially so from well known, top level people in a company.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#212

Post by spoaceman7777 »

mikae1 wrote: post #147
humbleferret wrote: post #44

What a great post. Some points that stood out to me: - Progress is iterative and driven by a seemingly bottom up, meritocratic approach. Not a top down master plan. Essentially, good ideas can come from anywhere and leaders are promoted based on execution and quality of ideas, not political skill. - People seem empowered to build things without asking permission there, which seems like it leads to multiple parallel p…

> I liked the take of the path to AGI being framed as a three horse race between OpenAI (consumer product DNA), Anthropic (business/enterprise DNA), and Google (infrastructure/data DNA) Wouldn't want to forget Meta which also has consumer product DNA. They literally championed the act of making the consumer the product.

And don't forget xAI, which has MechaHitler in its product DNA

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#213

Post by vlovich123 »

hinterlands wrote: post #52

It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin on their work experience. I don't think this makes OpenAI special. It's just a good reminder that the overwhelming majority of "why I left" posts are basically trying to justify why a person wasn't a good fit for an organization by blaming it squarely on the organization. Look at it this way: the flip side of "incredibly bottoms-up" from this article is that…

> That's true at almost every company that ends up making morally questionable decisions! There's no Bond villain at the helm. It's good people rationalizing things

I mean, that's a leap. There could be a bond villain that sets up incentives such that people who rationalize the way they want is who gets promoted / their voice amplified. Just because individual workers generally seem like they're trying to do the best thing doesn't mean the organization is set up specifically and intentionally to make certain kinds of "shady" decisions.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#214

Post by tedsanders »

gwern wrote: post #190
tedsanders wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, happy to report that was also fixed. (It would be a pretty fake solution if equity cancellation was halted, but equity could still be frozen. Cancelled and frozen are de facto identical until the first dividend payment, which could take decades.)

So OA PPUs can now be sold and transferred without restriction to arbitrary buyers, outside the tender offer windows?

No, that's still the same.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#215

Post by maxnevermind »

What I really wanted to know if OpenAI(and other labs for that matter) actually use their own products and not just casually but make LLM a core of how they operate. For example: using LLM for coding in prod, training/fine-tuning internal models for aligning on the latest updates, finding answer etc. Do they put their money where their mouth is, do LLMs help with productivity? There is no mention of it in the article, so I guess they don't?

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#216

Post by bnop »

bawana wrote: post #60

This is a politically correct farewell letter. Obviously something we little people who need jobs have to resort to so the next HR manager doesn't think we are a risk to stock valuation. For a deeper understanding, read Empire of AI by Karen Hao. She defrocks Sam Altman to reveal he is just another human. Like Steve Jobs, he is an adept salesman appealing to the naïve altruistic sentiments of humans while maintaining…

100%

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#217

Post by maxnevermind »

bhl wrote: post #3

> The Codex sprint was probably the hardest I've worked in nearly a decade. Most nights were up until 11 or midnight. Waking up to a newborn at 5:30 every morning. Heading to the office again at 7a. Working most weekends. There's so much compression / time-dilation in the industry: large projects are pushed out and released in weeks; careers are made in months. Worried about how sustainable this is for its people, gi…

I think Altman said in Lex F. podcast that he works 8 hours, 4 first one being the most productive ones and he doesn't believe CEO claiming they work 16 hours a day. Weird contrast to what described in the article. This confirms my theory that there are two types of people in startups: founders and everybody else, the former are there to potentially make a lot of money, and the later are there to learn and leave.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#218

Post by csomar »

theletterf wrote: post #112

For a company that has grown so much in such a short time, I continue to be surprised by its lack of technical writers. Saying docs could be better is an euphemism, but I still can't find fellow tech writers working there. Compare this with Anthropic and its documentation. I don't know what's the rationale for not hiring tech writers other than nobody suggesting it yet, which is sad. Great dev tools require great doc…

I think he explained it in his post? You get rewarded for "actions" which is making cool things and stuff. You don't get rewarded for writing docs.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#219

Post by ls-a »

m00x wrote: post #136
harmonic18374 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never post any criticism of an employer in public. It can only harm my own career (just as being positive can only help it). Given how vengeful Altman can reportedly be, this goes double for OpenAI. This guy even says they scour social media! Whether subconsciously or not, one purpose of this post is probably to help this guy’s own personal network along; to try and put his weirdly short 14-month stint in the…

Calvin cofounded Segment that had a $3.2B acquisition. He's not your typical employee.

Which is a YC startup. If you know anything about YC it's the network of founders supporting each other no matter what.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#220

Post by csomar »

> Good ideas can come from anywhere, and it's often not really clear which ideas will prove most fruitful ahead of time.

Is that why they have a dozens of different models?

> Many leaders who were incredibly competent weren't very good at things like presenting at all-hands or political maneuvering.

I don't think the Sam/Board drama confirms this.

> The thing that I appreciate most is that the company is that it "walks the walk" in terms of distributing the benefits of AI. Cutting edge models aren't reserved for some enterprise-grade tier with an annual agreement. Anybody in the world can jump onto ChatGPT and get an answer, even if they aren't logged in.

Did you thank your OpenAI overlords for letting you access their sacred latest models?

+-+-

This reads like an Ad for Open AI or an attempt by the author to court them again? I am not sure how anyone can take his words seriously.

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