Earlier quoted context omitted.
Billionaire-jesus and his followers, reborn every 10 years.
When did this start, actually? the first I can really think of is Jobs (at least in the billionaire category); treatment of Hubbard had a lot of the same vibes, but not the money.
Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
71–80 of 798 posts
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME one almost always implies the other.
Not in my experience, at all. Working beneath someone who’s difficult to work for can make your every day at work terrible. Working with someone who’s hard to work with is much more maintainable since you’re more in control of the interactions and can effect change by working with people higher in the org.
Oh, I mean that if someone’s a bad subordinate or peer they’ll probably also be a bad boss, or vice versa. I’d agree that a bad boss tends to be a worse thing to have than the other too.
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#73I'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 can believe the staff likes or even loves him, but the following him part was mostly because of money/shares and because they know he's influential and well connected to people with money. And peer pressure may have had a part in that letter signing. You don't want to be on the side of the losers if Altman gets his way.
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#74Yeah, 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.
>how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Did they? You should try scrolling through the original thread and ctrl-Fing [edit: removed the single word that was getting me downvoted to oblivion, my point is that people were quick to jump to very serious/troubling conclusions to explain his firing and explicitly weren't jumping to innocent] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611
This was so buried that completely escaped me. But it's full of nuggets
https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232...
> I’m not four years old with a 13 year old “brother” climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore.
> (You’re welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.)
> I’ve finally accepted that you’ve always been and always will be more scared of me than I’ve been of you.
I don't know how to use twitter - is she responding to someone, or talking to herself?
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
This endorsement of Sam from 2011 is actually pretty damning, though it is so long ago if it were the only thing it wouldn't be a huge red flag: >I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday, but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like this: > "We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a…
This is sort of par for the course in the world of early stage startups. No one wants to be your first customer as it is risky, but you need that first customer. So you "fake it until you make it." It is similar to dressing the part you want - at least when that mattered. You buy more expensive clothes than you should be able to afford so that people think you are more successful than you are, and then they are more…
I think OPs point was that this was sama finding the line of what was the most egregious thing that is acceptable to admit in public which is almost certainly not the most egregious thing he's done and could be a large part of the explaination of why people's opinion of him knowing certain private actions diverges so much from everyone else.
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is sort of par for the course in the world of early stage startups. No one wants to be your first customer as it is risky, but you need that first customer. So you "fake it until you make it." It is similar to dressing the part you want - at least when that mattered. You buy more expensive clothes than you should be able to afford so that people think you are more successful than you are, and then they are more…
> There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above story. Elizabeth? Is that you?
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.
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#77I'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.
If there _was_ a good reason to fire Sam, and the board had appropriately and clearly communicated their decision, I think less of the staff would have signed a the petition to walk. From the public's perspective, and probably most rank and file employees, this decision came from left field and had no logic behind it. The waffling and back peddling that followed certainly didn't help perception
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#78Now that he’s back with MSOAI I think we’ve got AGI disaster in 7 years. Thin possibility of good path for humanity. I wish he’d stuck to his guns and gone his own way, no MS, and no OAI. No disrespect to MS, they good, but this path is bad.
If you want to be a doomer, you don't need agi, just autonomous weapons, which ML can definitely help build.
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#79I am no behaviorist expert, but for me, someone who in world of trouble can post tweets as relaxing as Sam's, and do smile poses comes of as extremely manipulative.
Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
#80He may turn from powerful and well liked startup poster-child to simply powerful (like Larry Ellison, Bezos, Gates and countless other CEOs have in the past).