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Former GitHub CEO Friedman and Scale AI CEO Wang Declined OpenAI CEO Role
- nightshadetrie 3y agoTaking the role would be like backstabbing YC. It would feel wrong.
- ipsum2 3y agoEmmett Shear, current CEO of OpenAI, is a YC alum and a YC "visiting group" partner: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-back-to-yc-emmett-shear-and-wayne-crosby https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-back-to-yc-emmett-s...
- thedaly 3y agoDid he turn the position down initially?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 3y agoAnd you wouldn't be in Satya's good books either. They are trying to clean up this mess and now is not the time to be opportunistic.
- hfjjbf 3y ago[dead]
- ecshafer 3y agoThat seems like a mess i wouldnt want to jump into.
- ClassyJacket 3y agoI'll do it.
- pcurve 3y ago"Interim CEO".
- jbverschoor 3y agoThere’s nothing not permanent than a temporary fix
- ulfw 3y agoGreat that it takes people months nowadays interviewing to get hired for a mid level role, but apparently you can offer a half dozen people unvested, uninterviewed CEO roles at a billion dollar company on a whim. Fun how that goes.
- Racing0461 3y agoIt's a big club, and you ain't in it.
- ulfw 3y agoIndeed. Silicon Valley's big "meritocracy" that is always so lauded.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- flappyeagle 3y agoGo start a company and grow it to a billion dollars no one is stopping you
- hfjjbf 3y ago[dead]
- pjerem 3y agoOf course a lot of people are going to stop you. Most, if not all, of the group of people we are talking about were born from rich parents who could afford them to study in the most prestigious universities of America and they were in their prime years when computers expanded everywhere during the 90´s/00’s and also when the economy was booming like never before in the human history. Those people are now in positions of extreme power that never existed before that. In fact, they are all in power to decide if your future billion dollars company will live or die, and if they allow it to live, it will be under their control. And if you somehow manage to fill through the cracks, you’ll ultimately be offered some big money to sell them your company well before you have the opportunity to become one of them.
- swyx 3y agoits gotta sting Emmett Shear that he's now known to be at least 3rd choice for the role... and may not even keep it
- swatcoder 3y agoOn the contrary, it probably feels like he's doing someone a favor. It's not a great role to accept right now.
- swyx 3y agoif you told me 4 days ago that it'd be "doing someone a favor" to take the ceo job at openai... i'd have said you are hallucinating very badly
- tessierashpool 3y agowell, that's one of the things OpenAI is known for
- s5300 3y ago[dead]
- hshsbs84848 3y agoYou think CEOs actually think like that?
- willvarfar 3y agoEmmett was a part-time YC partner. So there might be bad bad blood and he's doing it to spite YC, or it could be that he's in the loop with the insider chat and is stepping up to rescue what money they can and the VCs will pat him on the back?
- Rastonbury 3y agoAltman himself was pushed out of the president role at YC, not sure if Shear was a partner then. If he was he'd know the inside scoop Regarding saving VCs money, if he pushes too hard for commercialization over safety he risks his job.
- ackbar03 3y agoJesus, Alexandr's like 26. Can you imagine being at the helm of openai at 26
- richard___ 3y agomirati is 34...
- zoogeny 3y agoScale.ai was valued at 7.3 billion in 2021, which was before the current AI craze. I mean, OpenAI would be a step up in some regards under ideal circumstances. But under these circumstances he is wise to stay at his 10+ billion dollar company. So, can you imagine having built and being at the helm of Scale.ai at 26?
- DebtDeflation 3y agoIsn't Scale largely a 3rd world sweatshop for labeling training data?
- zht 3y agoI find Alexandr Wang absolutely insufferable on Twitter. I am glad he declined it
- caditinpiscinam 3y agoThat plus the "digital" sweatshops
- HighFreqAsuka 3y agoYou'd be getting on the bad side of some of the most powerful people in tech and taking the helm of a company full of people who don't want you running it. It's not a surprise a lot of people don't want the role.
- infoseek12 3y agoAnd given the present turmoil they aren’t likely to remain in the position very long. Unless there are significant financial inducements, that vest without any tenure requirements, it’s hard to see an upside.
- tempsy 3y agoEmmett Shear is a YC insider and didn't hesitate...
- Obscurity4340 3y agoWhat makes Sam Altman so damn special in this regard? Why is he immune to all these same adversarial interests and inputs where anyone else would be imperiled?
- HighFreqAsuka 3y agoBecause he's the former president of YC. One of the powerful people you'd be pissing of by doing this is Sam Altman.
- Sai_ 3y agoDon’t think the former CEO of GitHub is going to be that alarmed about upsetting Sam Altman. You may be seeing their decision making through the lens of a no-name founder applying to YC for their first cheque.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoCan he like...hack my HN account aha? That would be the extent of my concern or fear of him
- veeralpatel979 3y agoUpdate (11/20/23 8 PM PST): NYT just released a new interview with Sam Altman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359070 (I have not watched it yet, but will soon.)
- alberth 3y agoIn the intro, they say the interview was from last week. So it’s way less interesting.
- wand3r 3y agoLeaving aside much of the other craziness: Who did the board expect would replace him? Did they expect to install Ilya and he bailed last minute? How could you possibly be calling around on a weekend trying to recruit a CEO? Everyone is knocking the board, so I am not going to break new ground here, but WHAT TF were they thinking? My only thought is maybe they expected they could dump sama and slot in another high level figure and they would work it out, but there was so much immediate blowback that they bailed?
- divbzero 3y agoI think they planned for Mira Murati to act as interim CEO, but were surprised when she wanted to rehire Sam Altman.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoI think the board was surprised when nobody bought their claim of Sam’s vague wrongdoing. Actually, I think every plot twist we’ve seen has been a surprise for them as they have consistently acted without 5 minutes of foresight. And not just with the drama. For example, according to Stratechery, the clause in the contract saying Microsoft couldn’t use GPT-4 as a foundation for their own models was recently removed in a contract revision. If you don’t like your CEO, and Microsoft likes your CEO, and Microsoft has the rights to your models and code, it doesn’t take much to add up 2 + 2 + 2 = 6.
- user_named 3y agoI guess they weren't involved in the day to day enough to know that about the contract
- dehrmann 3y agoCan't blame them. This is a worse mess than being the CEO of X.
- croes 3y agoOpenAI at least still has a valuable product.
- gumballindie 3y agoSuch as?
- sumedh 3y agoYou should ask ChatGpt
- gumballindie 3y agoIt “hallucinates” often.
- croes 3y agoCompare the hallucinations of ChatGPT with the BS posted on Twitter.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- siva7 3y agoOnly the desperate would take the job. Nat Friedman and Alex Wang have enough self-respect and are too clever to accept that offer from the board.