Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 754 posts

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#591

Post by Aloha »

cdogl wrote: post #584
throwaway35i2 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you the sort of person that hires someone that can successfully organize a coup against corporate leadership? It feels like there is an impedance mismatch here.

If I'm confident in my competence and the candidate has a trustworthy and compelling narrative about how they undermined incompetent leadership to achieve a higher goal - yep, for sure.

Also, ones persons incompetent is anothers performer.

Like, being crosswise in organizational politics does not imply less of a devotion of organizational goals, but rather often simply different interpretation of those goals.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#592

Post by adastra22 »

HAL3000 wrote: post #357
threeseed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The board's job is not to do right There is why you do something. And there is how you do something. OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research focused team. But how they went about this is appalling, unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance. They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two cam…

As someone who has orchestrated two coups in different organizations, where the leadership did not align with the organization's interests and missions, I can assure you that the final stage of such a coup is not something that can be executed after just an hour of preparation or thought. It requires months of planning. The trigger is only pulled when there is sufficient evidence or justification for such action. Bui…

Username… checks out?

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#593

Post by adastra22 »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #526
emptysongglass wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especially knowing that all that effort went into putting together a successful coup over other work. Coups, in general, are the domain of the petty. One need only look at Ilya and D'Angelo to see this in action. D'Angelo neutered Quora by pushing out its co-founder,…

Max Levchin was an organizer of two coups while at PayPal. Both times, he believed it was necessary for the success of the company. Whether that was correct or not, they eventually succeeded and I don’t think the coups really hurt his later career.

PayPal had an exit, but it absolutely did not succeed in the financial revolution it was attempting. People forget now that OG PayPal was attempting the digital financial revolution that later would be bitcoin’s raison d'être.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#594

Post by maxlamb »

polishdude20 wrote: post #550
crazygringo wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're confusing business with politics. You're right that a literal coup d'état is the forced takeover of a state with the backing of its own military. But in the business and wider world, a coup (without the d'état part) is, by analogy, any takeover of power that is secretly planned and executed as a surprise. (We can similarly talk about a company "declaring war" which means to compete by mobilizing all resour…

I think of it as more of a mutiny.

A mutiny is when the entire boat’s crew rebels at once, a coup is only when a few high-level powerful people remove the folks at the top.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#595

Post by dagmx »

bmitc wrote: post #355
dagmx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It often comes down to auteur theory. Unless someone is truly well versed in the production of something, they latch on to the most public facing aspect of that production and the person at the highest level of authority (to them, even though directors and CEOs often have to answer to others as well) That’s not to say they don’t have an outsized individual effect, but it’s rare their greatness is solo

When you say director, do you mean film director or a director in a company? Film directors are insane with the amount of technical, artistic, and people knowledge that they need to have and be able to utilize. The amount of stuff that a film director needs to manage, all on the ground, is insane. I wouldn't say that for CEOs, not by a long shot. CEOs mainly sit in meetings with people reporting things to them and th…

I mean a film director and I disagree with your assessment that they have to be savvy in many fields. Many of the directors whose projects I’ve worked on are very much not savvy outside their narrow needs of directing talent and relying on others like the DoP or VFX Supervisor , editors etc to do their job.

In fact most movie productions don’t even have the director involved with story. Many are just directors for hire and assigned by the studio to scripts.

Of course there are exceptions but they are the rarities.

And the big reason directors don’t hit their big strides till later is movies take a long time to make and it’s hard to work your way up there unless you start as an indie darling. But even as an indie, let’s say you start at 20, your film would likely come out by the time you’re 22-24 based on average production times. You’d only be able to do 2 or 3 films by 30, and in many cases would be put on studio assignments till you get enough clout to do what you want. And with that clout comes the ability to hire better people to manage the other aspects of your shoot.

Again, I think this is people prescribing to auteur theory. It takes a huge number of people to pull off a film, and the film director is rarely well versed in most. Much like a CEO, they delegate and give their opinion but few extend beyond that.

For reference I’ve worked on multiple blockbuster films, many superhero projects, some very prestigious directors and many not. The biggest indicator that a director is versed in other domains is if they worked in it to some degree before being a director. That’s where directors like Fincher excel and many others don’t

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#596

Post by hliyan »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #30

I just hope the "AI safety" people don't end up taking LLMs out of the hands of the general public because they read too many Isaac Asimov stories...

It's clear you haven't read any Asimov stories. His robots are impeccably ethical due to the three laws, and the stories explore robopsychologicalb conundrums that arise when people keep putting them in situations that tax the three laws of robotics.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#597

Post by adastra22 »

throwaway35i2 wrote: post #532
emptysongglass wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especially knowing that all that effort went into putting together a successful coup over other work. Coups, in general, are the domain of the petty. One need only look at Ilya and D'Angelo to see this in action. D'Angelo neutered Quora by pushing out its co-founder,…

Are you the sort of person that hires someone that can successfully organize a coup against corporate leadership? It feels like there is an impedance mismatch here.

I’ve hired people that were involved in palace coups at unicorn startups, twice. Justified or not, those coups set the company on a downward spiral it never recovered from.

I’m not sure I can identify exactly who is liable to start a coup, but I know for sure that I would never, ever hire someone who I felt confident might go down that route.

Startups die from suicide, not homicide.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#598

Post by deepGem »

threeseed wrote: post #216
wolverine876 wrote: post #46

> Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI." With all sympathy and empathy for Sam and Greg, whose dreams took a blow, I want to say something about investors [edit: not Ron Conway…

> The board's job is not to do right There is why you do something. And there is how you do something. OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research focused team. But how they went about this is appalling, unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance. They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two cam…

"And there is how you do something"

Sorry I don't see the 'how' as necessarily appalling.

The less appalling alternative could have been weeks of discussions and the board asking for Sam's resignation to preserve the decorum of the company. How would that have helped the company ? The internal rife would have spread, employees would have gotten restless, leading to reduced productivity and shipping.

Instead, isn't this a better outcome ? There is immense short term pain, but there is no ambiguity and the company has set a clear course of action.

To affirm that the board has caused a split in the company is quite preposterous, unless you have first hand information that such a split has actually happened. As far as public information is concerned 3 researchers have quit so far, and you have this from one of the EMs.

"For those wondering what’ll happen next, the answer is we’ll keep shipping. @sama & @gdb weren’t micro-managers. The comes from the many geniuses here in research product eng & design. There’s clear internal uniformity among these leaders that we’re here for the bigger mission."

This snippet in fact shows the genius of Sam and gdb, how they enabled the teams to run even in their absence. Is it unfortunate that the board fired Sam, from the engineer's and builder's perspective yes, from the long term AGI research perspective, I don't know.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#599

Post by adastra22 »

bmitc wrote: post #335
threeseed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The board's job is not to do right There is why you do something. And there is how you do something. OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research focused team. But how they went about this is appalling, unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance. They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two cam…

> They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two camps and have let Sam and Greg go angry and seeking retribution. Given the language in the press release, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Sam Altman, and not the board, blindsided everyone? It was apparently his actions and no one else's that led to the consequence handed out by the board. > Which in turn now creates the th…

The leaked memo today (which was probably reviewed by legal, unlike yesterday’s press release) says there was no malfeasance.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#600

Post by adastra22 »

GCA10 wrote: post #479
bmitc wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two camps and have let Sam and Greg go angry and seeking retribution. Given the language in the press release, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Sam Altman, and not the board, blindsided everyone? It was apparently his actions and no one else's that led to the consequence handed out by the board. > Which in turn now creates the th…

The only appropriate target for Microsoft's anger would be its own deal negotiators. OpenAI's dual identity as a nonprofit/for-profit business was very well known. And the concentration of power in the nonprofit side was also very well known. From the media coverage of Microsoft's investments, it sounds as if MSFT prioritized getting lots of business for its Azure cloud service -- and didn't prioritize getting a boar…

Sure, but Microsoft could also walk away today and leave OpenAI high and dry. They hold ALL the power here.
Post reply on HN