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OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

businessinsider.com

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Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#121

Post by robbomacrae »

stingraycharles wrote: post #114
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #99

Baseless prediction: MSFT buys ownership of OpenAI's for/capped-profit entities, implements a more typical corporate governance structure, re-instates Altman and Brockman. OpenAI non-profit continues to exist with a few staff and no IP but billions in cash. This whole situation is being used to drive the price down to reduce the amount the OpenAI non-profit is left with. SV don't try the "capped-profit owned by a non…

Why would MSFT buy the for-profit entity when they already have the employees and IP?

For the brand, the IP, and the fact it would be pennies on the dollar.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#122

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

impulser_ wrote: post #31

There is no way this is true. If it is the board might be the dumbest people alive. You fire the CEO and completely destroy a 90b company because of these two reasons? No wonder everyone wants out. I would think I was going crazy if I sat in a meeting and heard these two reason.

The thing I can't understand is how Emmett Shear accepted the interim CEO position. I presume he must have known this reasoning (he tweeted that he did know the reasoning). Everything I've read online is that Shear is generally well respected and competent. Then how on Earth was he willing to get anywhere near this toxic dumpster fire? It's already been reported that the former GitHub CEO and the Scale AI CEO turned down the role - they at least had the good sense to see this radioactive inferno and stay far away.

Sometimes I think that really ambitious people have this blind spot about not seeing how accepting roles that are toxic can end up destroying your reputation. My favorite example is all the Trump White House staffers - regardless of what one thinks of Trump, he's made it abundantly clear that loyalty is a one way street, and I can't think of a single person that came out of the White House without a worse (or totally destroyed) reputation. But still people lined up, thinking "No way, I'll be the one to beat the odds!"

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#124

Post by awb »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #95
zombiwoof wrote: post #92

imagine you are Mira. you are told Thursday they will fire Sam. You would think she would at a minimum ask why. Let's assume she does that. Then they give the two reasons Ilya did. What normal non-self serving human would even go along with the plan at that point? Now she realizes she must bail to hitch a ride back on her Sam gravy train. She is major sus here. Any non greed ego driven person would have told the boar…

Or...you call Sama and say "hey just an FYI, they asked me to be CEO and I said yes. I have no idea what's going on, and I'm loyal so keep me in the loop if we're going to leave or something".

I think you should ask these questions before you say yes.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#125

Post by tempestn »

tsunamifury wrote: post #119
didip wrote: post #112

What will happen to employee’s stock options if they all mass quit and moved to Microsoft? The options will be worth $0, right?

OpenAI has no stock options.

It has "Profit Participation Units", which are another form of equity-like compensation.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#126

Post by Dalewyn »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #115

What I don’t understand is how everyone at OpenAI other than the board just resigns and applies to Microsoft and now Microsoft has a new group that not only preserves a competitor but also one that serves the employees by getting them better compensation and no possible limbo of what is in store. I have built a product around the APIs and I rather go through whatever Microsoft will make me go through than accepting O…

I would argue that "mythically amazing, reality defying backwards compatibility" is Microsoft's forte.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#127

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #114
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #99

Baseless prediction: MSFT buys ownership of OpenAI's for/capped-profit entities, implements a more typical corporate governance structure, re-instates Altman and Brockman. OpenAI non-profit continues to exist with a few staff and no IP but billions in cash. This whole situation is being used to drive the price down to reduce the amount the OpenAI non-profit is left with. SV don't try the "capped-profit owned by a non…

Why would MSFT buy the for-profit entity when they already have the employees and IP?

The employees haven't left yet. Business continuity is easier to achieve if the employment arrangements don't have to change.

MSFT don't have OpenAI's IP. They have an exclusive right to some of it, but there's presumably a bunch that's not accessible to them. Again, business continuity is easier if they can just grab all of that and keep everything running as normal.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#128

Post by stingraycharles »

kumarvvr wrote: post #65

Giving 2 people the same project? Isnt this like the thing to do to get differing approaches and then release the amalgamation of the two? I thought these sorts of things are common. Giving different opinions on same person is a reason to fire a CEO? This board has no reason to fire, or does not want to give the actual reason to fire Sam. They messed up.

I remember a few years ago when there was some research group that was able to take a picture of a black hole. It involved lots of complicated interpretation of data.

As an extra sanity check, they had two teams working in isolation interpreting this data and constructing the image. If the end result was more or less the same, it’s a good check that it was correct.

So yes, it’s absolutely a valid strategy.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#129

Post by choppaface »

tsunamifury wrote: post #119
didip wrote: post #112

What will happen to employee’s stock options if they all mass quit and moved to Microsoft? The options will be worth $0, right?

OpenAI has no stock options.

Believe it’s more of an RSU product with a small few having ISOs. Probably best to just call it “stock comp” since it’s all illiquid anyways.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#130

Post by t-writescode »

stingraycharles wrote: post #114
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #99

Baseless prediction: MSFT buys ownership of OpenAI's for/capped-profit entities, implements a more typical corporate governance structure, re-instates Altman and Brockman. OpenAI non-profit continues to exist with a few staff and no IP but billions in cash. This whole situation is being used to drive the price down to reduce the amount the OpenAI non-profit is left with. SV don't try the "capped-profit owned by a non…

Why would MSFT buy the for-profit entity when they already have the employees and IP?

That's a whole lot of training and server infrastructure that would have to be rebuilt - and cloning the exact existing stuff would be one heck of a corporate espionage charge, which I expect Microsoft is very avoidant of.
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