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

Post by matisseverduyn » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #526

emptysongglass wrote: post #517

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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.

Post by dagmx » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #460

Apocryphon wrote: post #439

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> CEOs mainly sit in meetings with people reporting things to them and then the CEO providing very high-level guidance. Isn’t that essentially the job of a film producer? You do see a lot of productions where there’s a ton of executive producer titles given out as almost a vanity position.

A producer, yes, but not the film's director.

Post by trenchgun » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 3:27 AM UTC

intexpress wrote: post #529

Michelangelo11 wrote: post #240

I've seen some discussion on HN in which people claimed that even really important engineers aren't -too- important and that Ilya is actually replaceable, using Apple's growth after Woz' departure as an example. But I don't think that's the best situation to compare this to. I think a much better one is John Carmack firing Romero from id Software after the release of Quake. Some background: During a period of about 1…

> Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept cranking out hit after hit for years, essentially shrugging off Romero's firing like nothing happened. I don't think that is accurate... The output of id Software after Romero left (post Quake 1) was a clear step down. The technology was fantastic but the games were boring and uninspired, at best "good" but never "great". It took a full 20 years for them to make something interestin…

Post by mandeepj » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 3:39 AM UTC

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…

Post by jabroni_salad » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 3:52 AM UTC

vGPU wrote: post #443

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…

And the stupid thing is, they could have just used the allegations his sister made against him as the reason for the firing and ridden off into the sunset, Scott-free.