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

Why I Joined OpenAI

brendangregg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 236 posts

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#61

Post by alephnerd »

brendangregg wrote: post #58
brendangregg wrote: post #15

To answer a few people at once: I did mention compensation as a factor in the post, but I didn't elaborate details, so easy to miss. Comp is important of course, but so are the other factors. It feels like I can't go for a day without reading about the cost of AI datacenters in the news, and I can do something about it.

Again, many comments here saying I only care about the money, and while comp is an important factor I think it characterizes me as someone I'm not, and forgets what I've been doing for the past two decades. I've spent thousands of hours of my life writing textbooks for roughly minimum wage, as I want to help others like me (I came from nothing, with no access tech meetups or conferences, and books were the gateway to…

Ignore the haters (who sadly have become extremely common on HN now).

I loved your work back when I was an IC, and I'm sure this is a common sentiment across the industry amongst those of us who started systems adjacent! I still refer to your BPF tools and Systems Performance books despite having not written professional code for years now.

Can't wait to read content similar to what you wrote about when at Netflix and Intel albeit about the newer generation of GPUs and ASICs and the newer generation of performance problems!

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#62

Post by snayan »

brendangregg wrote: post #58
brendangregg wrote: post #15

To answer a few people at once: I did mention compensation as a factor in the post, but I didn't elaborate details, so easy to miss. Comp is important of course, but so are the other factors. It feels like I can't go for a day without reading about the cost of AI datacenters in the news, and I can do something about it.

Again, many comments here saying I only care about the money, and while comp is an important factor I think it characterizes me as someone I'm not, and forgets what I've been doing for the past two decades. I've spent thousands of hours of my life writing textbooks for roughly minimum wage, as I want to help others like me (I came from nothing, with no access tech meetups or conferences, and books were the gateway to…

I mean, I don't know you well, but, I see your posts on here from time to time and from what I gather you are very, very, exceptional at what you do.

Reality is, these AI giants are here and they are using a massive amount of resources. Love them or hate them, that is where we are. Whether or not you accept the job with them, OpenAI is gonna OpenAI.

Given how much the detractors scream about resource uses, you'd think they'd welcome the fact that someone of your calibre is going in and attempting to make a difference.

Which, leads me to believe you're encountering a lot of projecting from people who perhaps can't land the highest of comp roles, and shield their ego by ascribing to the concept of it being selling out, which they would of course never do.

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#63

Post by biggggtalkguy »

indigodaddy wrote: post #31

This article is so full of itself I can hardly stand to read it. I had to just sort of skim it instead. Sorry! This style just doesn't do it for me.

Not the first time either. See this person's previous blog when leaving his earlier company. Lots of Kim kardashian vibe of self inflated self worth.

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#64

Post by kgraves »

alephnerd wrote: post #61
brendangregg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, many comments here saying I only care about the money, and while comp is an important factor I think it characterizes me as someone I'm not, and forgets what I've been doing for the past two decades. I've spent thousands of hours of my life writing textbooks for roughly minimum wage, as I want to help others like me (I came from nothing, with no access tech meetups or conferences, and books were the gateway to…

Ignore the haters (who sadly have become extremely common on HN now). I loved your work back when I was an IC, and I'm sure this is a common sentiment across the industry amongst those of us who started systems adjacent! I still refer to your BPF tools and Systems Performance books despite having not written professional code for years now. Can't wait to read content similar to what you wrote about when at Netflix an…

[flagged]

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#65

Post by biggggtalkguy »

brendangregg wrote: post #58
brendangregg wrote: post #15

To answer a few people at once: I did mention compensation as a factor in the post, but I didn't elaborate details, so easy to miss. Comp is important of course, but so are the other factors. It feels like I can't go for a day without reading about the cost of AI datacenters in the news, and I can do something about it.

Again, many comments here saying I only care about the money, and while comp is an important factor I think it characterizes me as someone I'm not, and forgets what I've been doing for the past two decades. I've spent thousands of hours of my life writing textbooks for roughly minimum wage, as I want to help others like me (I came from nothing, with no access tech meetups or conferences, and books were the gateway to…

[flagged]

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#66

Post by raymond_goo »

kgraves wrote: post #64
alephnerd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignore the haters (who sadly have become extremely common on HN now). I loved your work back when I was an IC, and I'm sure this is a common sentiment across the industry amongst those of us who started systems adjacent! I still refer to your BPF tools and Systems Performance books despite having not written professional code for years now. Can't wait to read content similar to what you wrote about when at Netflix an…

[flagged]

Ah, so you you see into the future, got it!

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#67

Post by [deleted] »

brendangregg wrote: post #15

To answer a few people at once: I did mention compensation as a factor in the post, but I didn't elaborate details, so easy to miss. Comp is important of course, but so are the other factors. It feels like I can't go for a day without reading about the cost of AI datacenters in the news, and I can do something about it.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#68

Post by gsf_emergency_6 »

snayan wrote: post #62
brendangregg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, many comments here saying I only care about the money, and while comp is an important factor I think it characterizes me as someone I'm not, and forgets what I've been doing for the past two decades. I've spent thousands of hours of my life writing textbooks for roughly minimum wage, as I want to help others like me (I came from nothing, with no access tech meetups or conferences, and books were the gateway to…

I mean, I don't know you well, but, I see your posts on here from time to time and from what I gather you are very, very, exceptional at what you do. Reality is, these AI giants are here and they are using a massive amount of resources. Love them or hate them, that is where we are. Whether or not you accept the job with them, OpenAI is gonna OpenAI. Given how much the detractors scream about resource uses, you'd thin…

It's probably impossible to prove I'm not projecting..

However. I am putting my curious foot forward here:

  What were the toughest ethical quandaries you faced when deciding to join OpenAI?
To give a purely hypothetical example which is probably not relevant to your case: if I had to choose DeepSeek or OpenAI, I think I would struggle with openness of the weights..

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#69

Post by perf99999999999 »

Brendan, I'm a big fan of your book, and work. I don't have a problem with you joining OpenAI; best of luck there!

However, I'm not sure your analysis is quite correct, in this case.

If OpenAI can mobilize X (giga)dollars to buy Y amounts of energy, your work there will not reduce X or Y, it will simply help them produce more "tokens" (or whatever "unit of AI") for a given amount of energy.

So in a sense you're helping make OpenAI tools better, more effective, but it's not helping reduce resource usage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Why I Joined OpenAI

#70

Post by belter »

brendangregg wrote: post #58
brendangregg wrote: post #15

To answer a few people at once: I did mention compensation as a factor in the post, but I didn't elaborate details, so easy to miss. Comp is important of course, but so are the other factors. It feels like I can't go for a day without reading about the cost of AI datacenters in the news, and I can do something about it.

Again, many comments here saying I only care about the money, and while comp is an important factor I think it characterizes me as someone I'm not, and forgets what I've been doing for the past two decades. I've spent thousands of hours of my life writing textbooks for roughly minimum wage, as I want to help others like me (I came from nothing, with no access tech meetups or conferences, and books were the gateway to…

Brendan, your work has been transformative. I own all your books and have probably read every technical blog post twice.

I hope there will be harder problem waiting for you, than using flamegraphs to optimize GenAI Porn.

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/14/openai-chatgpt-erotica-ment...

Post reply on HN