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Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

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Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#141

Post by makeitdouble »

jlebar wrote: post #113

I think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked.…

The other side of it: some statements made internally can be really bad but employees brush over them because they inherently trust the speaker to some degree, they have additional material that better aligns with what they want to hear so they latch on the rest, and current leaders' actions look fine enough to them so they see the bad parts as just communication mishaps.

Until the tide turns.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#142

Post by arresin »

plemer wrote: post #136
casebash wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they're actually the bad guys, just folks haven't thought far enough ahead to realise it yet.

OK, lay it on us.

It’s not unreasonable given the mountain of evidence of their past behaviour to just assume they are always the “bad guy”.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#143

Post by joules77 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #133
jlebar wrote: post #113

I think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked.…

> I hope everyone here gets to have the experience of seeing HN discuss something that you're an expert in. It's eye-opening to see how confidently wrong most poasters are. Some topics (and some areas where one could be an expert in) are much more prone to this phenomenon than others. Just to give a specific example that suddenly comes to my mind: Grothendieck-style Algebraic Geometry is rather not prone to people co…

I think its more the site's architecture that promotes this behavior.

In the offline world there is a big social cost to this kind of behavior. Platforms haven't been able to replicate it. Instead they seem to promote and validate it. It feeds the self esteem of these people.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#144

Post by dylan604 »

jlebar wrote: post #113

I think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked.…

Your comment comes across dangerously close to sounding like someone that has drunk the kool-aid and defends the indefensible.

Yes, you can get the wrong impression from hearing just a snippet of a conversation, but sometimes you can hear what was needed whether it was out of context or not. Sam is not a great human being to be placed on a pedestal that never needs anything he says questioned. He's just a SV CEO trying to keep people thinking his company is the coolest thing. Once you stop questioning everything, you're in danger of having the kool-aid take over. How many times have we seen other SV CEOs with a "stay tuned" tweet that they just hope nobody questions later?

>if you had actually been in the room for more of the conversation you'd probably feel different

If you haven't drunk the kool-aid, you might feel differently as well.

SAMA doesn't need your assistance white knighting him on the interwebs.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#145

Post by delfinom »

neilv wrote: post #29

Can someone make an honest argument for how OpenAI staff are missionaries, after the coup? I'd be very happy to be convinced that supporting the coup was the right move for true-believer missionaries. (Edit: It's an honest and obvious question, and I think that the joke responses risk burying or discouraging honest answers.)

This is just a CEO gaslighting his employees to "think of the mission" instead of paying up

No different than "we are a family"

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#146

Post by diggan »

jlebar wrote: post #113

I think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked.…

> Btw Sam has tweeted about an open source model. Stay tuned... https://x.com/sama/status/1932573231199707168

Sneaky wording but seems like no, Sam only talked about "open weights" model so far, so most likely not "open source" by any existing definition of the word, but rather a custom "open-but-legal-dept-makes-us-call-it-proprietary" license. Slightly ironic given the whole "most HN posters are confidently wrong" part right before ;)

Although I do agree with you overall, many stories are sensationalized, parts-of-stories always lack a lot of context and large parts of HN users comments about stuff they maybe don't actually know so much about, but put in a way to make it seem so.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#147

Post by CamperBob2 »

riffic wrote: post #52
econ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Close. A missionary is what the sex position was named after.

Specifically, Catholic missionaries indoctrinating indigenous cultures into their church's imaginary sexual hangups. All other positions were considered sinful.

Again, not a label I'd self-apply if I wanted to take the high road.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#148

Post by yodsanklai »

joshdavham wrote: post #49

I think Meta already has very deep cultural problems. If you've ever browsed teamblind.com (which I strongly recommend against as I hate that site), you'll see what the people who work at Meta are like.

What are they like? since you recommend not browsing this site?

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#149

Post by tikhonj »

jlebar wrote: post #113

I think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked.…

Okay, but I've also heard insiders at companies I've worked completely overlook obvious problems and cultural/management shortcomings issues. "Oh, we don't have a low-trust environment, it's just growing pains. Don't worry about what the CEO just said..."

Like, seriously, I've seen first-hand how comments like this can be more revealing out of context than in context, because the context is all internal politics and spin.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#150

Post by jiggawatts »

makeitdouble wrote: post #141
jlebar wrote: post #113

I think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked.…

The other side of it: some statements made internally can be really bad but employees brush over them because they inherently trust the speaker to some degree, they have additional material that better aligns with what they want to hear so they latch on the rest, and current leaders' actions look fine enough to them so they see the bad parts as just communication mishaps. Until the tide turns.

Worse: employees are often actively deceived by management. Their “close relationship” is akin to that of a farmer and his herd. Convinced they’re “on the inside” they’re often blind to the truth that’s obvious from the outside.

Or simply they don’t see the whole picture because they’re not customers or business partners.

I’ve seen Oracle employees befuddled to hear negative opinions about their beloved workplace! “I never had to deal with the licensing department!”

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