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Reflections on OpenAI

calv.info

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Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#301

Post by Xenoamorphous »

teiferer wrote: post #300
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this guy is filthy rich and yet decided to grind for 14 months with a newborn at home? I guess that's why he's filthy rich.

Way to go to keep the boring chores of the first months with the partner and join the fun when the little one starts to be more fun after a year. With all that cash, I'm sure they could buy a bunch of help for the partner too.

I don't know, when I became a parent I was in for the full ride, not to have someone else raising her. Yes, raising includes changing diapers and all that.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#302

Post by darkoob12 »

a_bonobo wrote: post #263

>Thanks to this bottoms-up culture, OpenAI is also very meritocratic. Historically, leaders in the company are promoted primarily based upon their ability to have good ideas and then execute upon them. Many leaders who were incredibly competent weren't very good at things like presenting at all-hands or political maneuvering. That matters less at OpenAI then it might at other companies. The best ideas do tend to win.…

I think in this structure people only think locally and they are not concerned with the overall mission of the company and do not actively think about morality of the mission or if they are following it.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#303

Post by TeMPOraL »

stickfigure wrote: post #250
yoyohello13 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure people working for cigarette companies are doing the best they can too. People can be good individuals and also work toward evil ends.

I am of the opinion that the greatest evils come from the most self-righteous.

That may very well be the case. But I think this is a distinct category of evil; the second one, in which you'll find most of the cigarette and gambling businesses, is that of evil caused by indifference.

"Yes, I agree there are some downsides to our product and there are some people suffering because of that - but no one is forcing them to buy from us, they're people with agency and free will, they can act as adults and choose not to buy. Now what is this talk about feedback loops and systemic effects? It's confusing, go away."

This category is where you'll also find most of the advertising business.

The self-righteous may be the source of the greatest evil by magnitude, but day-to-day, the indifferents make it up in volume.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#305

Post by ml-anon »

mirekrusin wrote: post #255
ml-anon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone putting their work project over their newborn in this circumstance (returning early from pay leave no less) is 100% ego driven.

Newborns need constantly mom, not dad. Moms need husbands or their moms to help. The way it works is you agree what to do as a family (to do it or not to do it) and everybody is happy with their lives. You can be a great dad and husband and still do all of it when it makes sense and your wife supports it etc. Not having kids in the first place could be considered ego driven, not this.

Incredible that you've managed to post this from the 1950's

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#306

Post by motbus3 »

I didn't find any surprises reading this post.

If anything about OpenAI which should bothers people is how they fake to be blind to the consequences because of "the race". Leveraging the decision IF and WHAT should be done to the top heads only never worked well.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#307

Post by motbus3 »

teiferer wrote: post #300
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this guy is filthy rich and yet decided to grind for 14 months with a newborn at home? I guess that's why he's filthy rich.

Way to go to keep the boring chores of the first months with the partner and join the fun when the little one starts to be more fun after a year. With all that cash, I'm sure they could buy a bunch of help for the partner too.

There are certain experiences in life that one needs to go through so you keep grounded to what really matters.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#308

Post by petesergeant »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #38
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…

My hot take is I don’t think burn out has much to do with raw hours spent working. I feel it has a lot more to do with sense of momentum and autonomy. You can work extremely hard 100 hour weeks six months in a row, in the right team and still feel highly energized at the end of it. But if it feels like wading through a swamp, you will burn out very quickly, even if it’s just 50 hours a week. I also find ownership has…

2024 my wife and I did a startup together. We worked almost every hour we were awake, 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week. We ate, we went for an hour's walk a day, the rest of the time I was programming. For 9 months. Never worked so hard in my life before. And, not a lick of burnout during that time, not a moment of it, where I've been burned out by 6 hour work days at other organizations. If you're energized by something, I think that protects you from burnout.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#309

Post by lucianbr »

gneray wrote: post #210
harmonic18374 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not trying to advance wild hypotheticals, but something about his behavior does not quite feel right to me. Someone who has enough money for multiple lifetimes, working like he's possessed, to launch a product minimally different than those at dozens of other companies, and leaving his wife with all the childcare, then leaving after 14 months and insisting he was not burnt out but without a clear next step, not…

i know calvin, and he's one of the most authentic people i've worked with in tech. this could not be more off the mark

This reflection seems very unlikely to be authentic because it is full of superlatives and not a single bad thing (or at least not great) is mentioned. Real organizations made of real humans simply are not like this.

The fact that several commenters know the author personally goes some way to explain why the entire comment section seems to have missed the utterly unbalanced nature of the article.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#310

Post by lucianbr »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #121
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…

> There's no Bond villain at the helm. It's good people rationalizing things. I worked for a few years at a company that made software for casinos, and this was absolutely not the case there. Casinos absolutely have fully shameless villains at the helm.

> We are all very good and kind and not at all evil, trust us if we do say so ourselves

Do these people have even minimal self-awareness?

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