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Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

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Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#201

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

gexla wrote: post #89
al_borland wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

Isn't this how you gain power? You influence as many people as you can through suggestion that you can give them what they desire? Then grow that group to be large enough so that you're cemented within the org? Manipulation doesn't even necessarily feel bad. Just promising something, or offering a place inside the "in-group" could do the trick for most. It's when you're up against someone whose job it is to safeguard…

Dunno, you have to be able to deliver on some of those promises of desires fulfilled. And as you get older, your ability to see through it should only increase. At that point, the only real question becomes: is it to my benefit?

FWIW, while I follow this saga, I am kinda waiting to see the full retrospective. I think we don't know everything relevant yet.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#202

Post by JackFr »

sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #12

Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me.

I just don't get his cult of personality. He's an underwhelming intellect but a top-notch promoter. And Worldcoin, seriously? I can see in 2019 wanting to be in on the grift, but let it die.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#203

Post by shapefrog »

kelipso wrote: post #141
refurb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Elizabeth Holmes had been able to pull off some successful product that made a lot of money, no doubt all the "fake it 'til you make it" she did at the beginning (showing demos that didn't work, sending tests to outside labs and saying they were run on their equipment) would have been forgiven no doubt. Just another nostalgic Silicon Valley "hustler" story.

She really only got into trouble because her lies became obvious and she risked people's lives. If it was some CRUD app and she didn't get enough customers or whatever, more than likely she'd have gotten money for another company.

> she risked people's lives

She was found not guilty of that bit. The conviction and jail time is only for defrauding the investors.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#204

Post by kubrickslair »

Solvency wrote: post #31
bananapub wrote: post #21

it is absolutely fascinating how in all the threads about him, there's all these huge fans, and some people who are apparently highly connected, but no one ever seems to discuss why he has these fancy jobs, why he left others, and why is apparently so well regarded?

It's strangely paradoxical. Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a mildly surly sloth when he talks. His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective are a joke. But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI, and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed to get all spotlights on him at all tim…

I have only interacted briefly with Sam but I found him to be one of the smartest YC folks. But I will let a Paul Graham essay speak [1]:

Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?"

What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#205

Post by wahnfrieden »

loveparade wrote: post #112
sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #12

Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me.

I subscribe to the HN RSS feed, which shows flagged items since they're published on the feed before they're flagged. The craziest thing that stands out to me is how so many negative stories on Sam Altman end up being flagged, even though they are just as legit as the positive ones. I'm almost 100% certain that HN is highly manipulated for this story. For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all of…

HN is strongly anti-controversy. So when you have a large enough minority of users who rally around flagging certain topics, they easily get taken down even if there’s otherwise interest in the discussion. I don’t think it requires owner manipulation. You can see it in how things like any coverage of Palestinian perspective getting flagged immediately while coverage of far-right ancap politics lingers despite both being contentious political topics (where ancap discussion is controversial but detractors lack the habitual urge to flag brigade and are more open to discuss).

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#206

Post by JackFr »

alamod3 wrote: post #192
93po wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean how google scans everyone's fingerprints and apple scans everyone's faces?

I think it is quite different though, in that biometric-as-a-device-authenticator features keep your biometric data on your device. The plan with worldcoin is to create a central database of this data.

Biometric data as authentication vs. differentiate my shitcoin so I can get in on the crypto grift.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#207

Post by tristor »

abadpoli wrote: post #199
tristor wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re referring to discussing their qualifications to be on the board, I don’t think that is in any way driven by sexism. There were numerous comment threads discussing the qualifications of all the board members and these two stood out as being specifically unqualified, and D’Angelo stood out for having clear conflicts of interest. Given how the board handled this whole situation like an amateur hour shit show,…

> defending them because they’re women There’s absolutely nothing in my comment that even implies I’m defending them and their actions, and also absolutely nothing in my comment that implies any of my statement is based on their gender. I seem to have struck a nerve with you, though. I think the commenter doth protest too much.

I suggest you reread your comment then. You claimed the only reason people questioned their qualifications was sexism.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#208

Post by moralestapia »

fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

(I'll hijack your comment a bit, just want to share my experience working in something related to it)

I've had a chance to work with some HR people who genuinely wanted to improve the work environment on their respective companies (I know! Please believe me, lol).

One of the bigger issues was corruption in general, of which this sort of behavior could fall under. The line of reasoning for that is that people usually resort to these behaviors in order to immorally/unlawfully attain some material benefit to them (it is very strange to find a pure blooded sociopath that just does it for the sake of it). When people artificially distort any system that is set up (for acquisitions, promotions, terminations, you name it) so that it no longer serves the company's interest but that of a group of rogue employees, well ... that's corruption. This framing is nice as it makes company exec's take a look at it from a business' gain/loss perspective instead of "meh, it's just employee's gossip".

Anyway, the proposed solution was a sort of ombudsman for companies (it's actually a tech thing, not an actual person), a private channel where people could raise these issues without fear of retaliation. There cannot be a clear cut criteria by which one could define whether a particular employee is being corrupt or not, but we've observed something like a bi-modal distribution where problematic individuals truly stand out! Quoting Warren Buffet, "there's never just one cockroach in the kitchen"; you usually observe a lot of employees with no comments on them, a few getting like one or two remarks per month (and you can just ignore those, shit happens everyday) and then you have this guy who is getting 10+ comments per week and that's who you really need to sit down with and ask what's going on.

Obviously this relies on the HR person being fair and honest, not part of the plot, and that comes with its own set of caveats; but at least, it's much easier to control that for one person than for 100s. Overall, the whole thing felt like an improvement.

But, conclusion, the app didn't go much farther than being used at a couple companies, and then we realized it would be very hard to monetize, the team disbanded and we all moved on to other things :P.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#209

Post by PheonixPharts »

al_borland wrote: post #44
fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

I suspect the signers were a combination of wanting to follow their comp out the door and a bit of Tom Wambsgans from Succession: "Because I've seen you get fucked a lot, and I've never seen Logan [in this case Sam] get fucked once."

There's very little risk in signing if everything falls apart, but there's a lot of risk to not signing if Sam comes back on as lead.

> I find it hard to believe

I also find it hard to believe that anyone on HN interested in this space doesn't at least have a "friend of a friend" who works at OpenAI. Based on what I've heard (which is nothing particularly quotable), it certainly gives off the vibe of being exactly that "kind of environment"

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#210

Post by layer8 »

lynx23 wrote: post #7

It is hard to see through the unfolding drama. Since I am lacking data (and we all do), I can only fall back to my intuition. When I was listening to Sam being interviewed by Lex, I had to turn the podcast off because I felt I am listening to a deeply flawed and manipulative character. He left a creepy feeling of "Never ever trust this guy".

It’s likely that that will eventually be his downfall.
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