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OpenAI board stands firm in face of staff revolt over Sam Altman's ouster
- upwardbound 3y ago[Deleted a comment with the text content of the article. Article can be found on archive.ph.]
- MonkeyClub 3y agoPerhaps you shouldn't post the entire content of the FT article here? Archive.ph helps avoid direct copyright infringement :)
- upwardbound 3y agoah I see, ok I’ll try to delete the comment
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoHN’s “don’t change the title” rule presumably applies here - don’t rephrase British English from a British newspaper into American English. It’s “ousting”, not “ouster”. (Unless the FT is serving different headlines to different IPs?)
- pxeger1 3y agoI didn’t know that was a BrE/AmE distinction. It’s a very bizarre one.
- jbullock35 3y agoIn the U.S., I get "ousting" from ft.com.
- kolinko 3y agoYes, it's serving differently depending on IP (or browser preference?). In Poland I see "ousting" as well, but Archive.ph and Archive.org both have "ouster": https://archive.ph/c1kr0 https://archive.ph/c1kr0
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoThat’s pretty neat on the FT’s part.
- thinkingemote 3y agoUK here, 1 hour later and neither "ouster" nor "ousting". I see: "OpenAI’s future hangs in balance amid standoff between staff and board"
- saaaaaam 3y agoTangentially, I had never seen the term “ouster” before this week. To someone used to British English it grates horribly. I saw an explanation somewhere that it is because it’s of French origin, but it doesn’t make it stick out any less.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoThere’s a few others that we accept as normal in British English: merger, disclaimer, retainer. They all seem to be vaguely legalistic in usage.
- saaaaaam 3y agoI think we may have read the same article! Or maybe a comment on here :)
- elpocko 3y agoThe regional difference in the title is an interesting application of geolocation imo. "Don't change the title" is an interesting rule anyway for a site that has an automatic title changer that you can't escape, and where you can regularily watch posted titles change like 5 times until they have nothing to do with the original title (but the correct spin for the sensitive HN crowd).
- todd3834 3y agoAt this point I’m assuming the employees signing the letter are aware of enough details to decided whether or not Sam did something so wrong he should have been fired. With this many employees siding with Sam, I can’t imagine this looks good if any of this goes to a jury in the lawsuits that follow.
- ekms 3y agoPretty sure most employees would take the side of whatever seems likely to increases the value of their equity the most. Not sure if it's much of a signal either way on whether he 'did something wrong' or not
- tsimionescu 3y agoThere is a separate article on the front page from Bloomberg claiming employees were told that Altman had (1) given the same project task to two different teams, and (2) gave opposing feedback to different board members about the same person. I have no idea how either of these was supposed to justify the ousting.
- irthomasthomas 3y agoI've every confidence in Sam's return. With the entire staff and Microsoft behind him, how can he fail?
- dkrich 3y agoI think that’s a mistaken assumption. Altman has been immediately held in high regard as the injured party and everyone has dogpiled on the board for being stupid. Lower level employees likely are not privy to the details at this point and are just subscribing to group think, a completely rational behavior. But the longer this goes on with radio silence from the board in the face of massive pressure, the more likely I believe it is that something detrimental to Altman’s character is going to come out that’s going to make the decision seem like the obvious one and suddenly Nadella won’t look like such a genius. In the age of Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, SBF and Trevor Milton I’m surprised there aren’t more people just a tad distrusting.
- Satam 3y agoFrom: https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754277618491416 https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427761849141... Geoffrey Irving @geoffreyirving: Third, my prior is strongly against Sam after working for him for two years at OpenAI: 1. He was always nice to me. 2. He lied to me on various occasions 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for reaso
- ulnarkressty 3y agoEh, at this point are there any successful people that don't have these 'qualities'? We raise our children with stories about great men and fair leaders, when reality is nothing of the sort.
- dkrich 3y agoSeeing a few of these types of accounts. Something tells me more is going to come out about the why. I still think it’s a mistake to assume rational people would act completely irrationally
- serpix 3y agoAssuming people to act rationally can really bite you hard. Life experience has taught that people are mostly irrational beings with occasional rational episodes.
- dkrich 3y agoI get that but to assume a board of very smart, competent people would just up and fire a highly respected CEO for no reason when it seemed like they were destined to be enormously successful and right after a well received keynote seems strange to me when it’s the least likely scenario if you just consider the facts that we all know to be true.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoIt's a mistake to claim to confidently know anything at this point. But if the board has some secret reason that makes them look good, I really struggle to understand why they wouldn't have leaked it to the media yet. It's too late for the truth to come out if half your company has already left, and the best people are going to be lining up offers, like, today.
- jimsimmons 3y agoWow kinda respect them testing staffs willingness to quit. The juicy tender is fueling a lot of the motivation here, more than any loyalty or preference to Altman
- tomohelix 3y agoInteresting. If Ilya already signed the letter and wants to bring Sam back, who else on that board has enough power to resist? And early reports said Ilya was the main force too. So apparently he was played and used as a scapegoat for the real mastermind(s?). This drama is incredible. If someone had written a fiction like this, I would have called it a very imaginative but cliched and unrealistic story. Nobody that high on the "smart" hierarchy would do something this dumb. But now it is reality... I don't know if I should be sad or amused.
- samspenc 3y agoIt's possible he was played. But fact of the matter is that now after the 'coup', the board has been reduced to 4 from the prior 6. All 4 were against Sam, now Ilya has switched allegiance. So it's still 3-1. 2 more board members would have to turn to bring Sam back. At this point, I think it's safe to say that all 3 remaining members are still against bringing back Sam - or at least 2 of them staunchly are.
- jacquesm 3y agoThey'd have to if only to protect their own hide. Bringing Sam back would work against them immediately. But the board as it is is dysfunctional, and that can't be allowed to stand either.
- imgabe 3y agoI mean, they have no equity, they didn't create it. They don't really lose anything if OpenAI disappears. Just fewer meetings they have to go to.
- bambax 3y agoIf they didn't like board meetings they wouldn't be there in the first place. Their reputation is on the line. It's arguably more important to them than money.
- neonate 3y agohttps://archive.ph/c1kr0 https://archive.ph/c1kr0
- tillvz 3y agohttps://archive.is/c1kr0 https://archive.is/c1kr0
- WithinReason 3y agohttps://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
- zone411 3y agoAs a follow-up to the most upvoted comment in the previous thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38353330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38353330), Dustin Moskovitz said it was totally false: https://www.threads.net/@moskov/post/Cz482XgJBN0?hl=en https://www.threads.net/@moskov/post/Cz482XgJBN0?hl=en. Listening to random HN commentators might not be a good idea.
- singularity2001 3y agoThere must be some (legal) way to get rid of D'angelo? If severe conflict of interest is not enough, his threatening to destroy the livelihood of almost all employees should remove his board immunity ... somehow?
- jacquesm 3y agoIt is very interesting that nobody so far has brought suit. Either they believe the myth of the infallible board members operating without oversight or they too have skeletons in their closets that they do not want to come out during discovery.
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoAt this point, it's becoming clear that the remaining board members aren't competent to run a lemonade stand let alone sit on the board of OpenAI. They don't have the best interests of the company, its mission, or its employees anywhere on their priorities. Their blasé attitude toward destroying an $80bn company, throwing the lives of its 700+ employees into complete chaos, and giving customers and investors the finger without any public statements is proof of that.
- highduc 3y agoNon-profit org man. We still don't know what happened and their actions might align to their mission. Weird how quite a few people with your narrative mistake it for a for-profit company.
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoI fully understand the nature of the org. I just don't see how destroying it does anything but hurt its mission. Weird how quite a few people with your narrative always project false assumptions onto others.
- irthomasthomas 3y ago"As long-term investors, we would value companies on their customers, deep partnerships, talent and long-term defensible moat,” he said. “Where does that all sit today with OpenAI?” A parson gone to the bad, still wearing the robes and collar. But no man is damned for eternity until the devil claims him for his own. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.