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At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

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Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#221

Post by roncesvalles »

consumer451 wrote: post #47
amazingamazing wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it interesting? They want to be rich.

Well yeah, but being a CTO at a major org isn't exactly a low-paying gig. The interesting thing to me is that the belief that Anthropic is going achieve something like AGI appears to have really spread through SV. If not AGI, at least greatly disturb their old cushy SaaS jobs. Also, I still do believe some people just want to work on "cool" stuff. edit: not just CTOs and CPOs, I mean John freakin Jumper, who got the…

There is no inherent value in having reports or the title of "CTO". Compensation (broadly considered) is the only objective marker of where your career stands*. We primarily work in exchange for money, not for titles or responsibilities that tickle our ego.

If you're earning $300k at some company as a "Ninja Grandmaster (World Wide) Director CTO with 50 Reports", and a "Super Stinky Junior IC" at OpenAI is earning $400k, the IC is doing better than you.

*more precisely, the cumulative compensation at the end of your career, to account for gambits. it is not relevant that you "climbed the ranks" and were bestowed the title of "CEO" at your company or that you were "entrusted" with 5000 people in the org under you - these are strictly elements of some company's internal gamification and person-role-optimization system.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#222

Post by vkou »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #155
vkou wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social networks only destroyed discourse. This both destroys discourse, and centralizes the means of production into ~4 companies, with everyone else paying them an economic tax in order to be competitive.

Whatsapp provides tremendous utility. I remember paying far more “economic tax” before Whatsapp to communicate, with basically anyone in the world. Facebook Marketplace also provides me with quite a bit utility.

Neither Whatsapp nor my landline is the kind of social network that I'm talking about.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#223

Post by consumer451 »

bodiekane wrote: post #213
consumer451 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, but being a CTO at a major org isn't exactly a low-paying gig. The interesting thing to me is that the belief that Anthropic is going achieve something like AGI appears to have really spread through SV. If not AGI, at least greatly disturb their old cushy SaaS jobs. Also, I still do believe some people just want to work on "cool" stuff. edit: not just CTOs and CPOs, I mean John freakin Jumper, who got the…

>who got the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, left his VP role at DeepMind to have no reports, and be an IC That seems like an obvious choice to make. Managing people, looking at Gantt charts, meeting with compliance & legal and all the other organizational work of management is tedious, boring and miserable. But it pays well and signals high-status, so people do it. If you've won the Nobel Prize, you don't need any ot…

Right, which is a data point against the "of course, these people are just greedy and want more money" narrative.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#225

Post by icepush »

boshalfoshal wrote: post #94
consumer451 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find more interesting is how many people have left big orgs where they had major leadership roles, to become ICs at Anthropic.

I think most of HN can't logically arrive at this conclusion because they don't exactly buy into the premise that (1) (digital) AGI is a real concept, and will be achieved imminently (2) AGI will be world (and possibly more) changing. (3) Anthropic will be the one to do that, or at least capture a large part of it If you buy into all of these, which I'm assuming a lot of SV does at this point, then its kind of a no b…

Creation of a singleton seems at odds with point (3) you listed.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#226

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #201
scottydelta wrote: post #19

Based on YC's directory, there are approximately 13,000 YC founders since YC started. 105/13000 is a very small number to focus on. This data doesn't really mean anything.

What if out of 13000 there are no other cases where close to 100+ worked at the same company

Or, rather, the same two companies

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#227

Post by wolvesechoes »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #191
jmilloy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I feel like llms are the even worse replacement for social networks and maximized ad impressions. Now you don't even need a network or users to produce the addictive content and inject narrative that is so impactful on our brains and lives

I have more meaningful intellectual conversations with LLMs in a given day than in a month on social networks. And the LLMs never try to make me feel angry or stupid, they never ignore my arguments to go on their own soapbox, they almost never feed me misinformation (and never deliberately), and they've yet to tell me to my face that the purpose of their interactions with other people is not to convince or even commu…

> I have more meaningful intellectual conversations with LLMs in a given day than in a month on social networks.

If by "social networks" you mean platforms like X, Reddit or HN, then sure, but bar is pretty low there.

But let's not forget that both technologies mainly isolate and alienate you from real world and real people. The fact that the more recent one doesn't suck as much yet is not very comforting.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#228

Post by wolvesechoes »

sebastiennight wrote: post #187
hightrix wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where should these very smart people work then in your opinion? Anywhere else. Ads are a net negative to society and provide no value. ANY activity outside of pushing ads is a better contribution to society as a whole.

So, let's reinvest those resources into surveillance and war?

I mean, war, in all its cruelty and tragedy, at the same time it brings the worst from people is also able to bring out the best.

Ad business, and business in general, doesn't. It only brings out the worst.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#229

Post by wolvesechoes »

kortilla wrote: post #146
jayd16 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consequences are different this time because why? Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

The potential upside in positives is actually there. New cures, personalized really good medicine, breakthroughs in every scientific field, etc. The people are there because they are betting on AGI, not chatbots that make software engineering go faster.

It is not enough to invent a new medicine. You also need to make it easily available. People investing in AI are not interested in giving new awesome medicine to people that couln't afford it.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#230

Post by kortilla »

sandeepkd wrote: post #165
kortilla wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The potential upside in positives is actually there. New cures, personalized really good medicine, breakthroughs in every scientific field, etc. The people are there because they are betting on AGI, not chatbots that make software engineering go faster.

any concrete evidences to support this theory from the past 12 months would be helpful here (where evidence > marketing fluff)

Talk to employees at anthropic and OpenAI. Listen to the talks from the higher-ups. Sam Altman even said something to the effect of “we don’t need a working business model because AGI will figure out how to make money”.
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