5 ms·

At 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

At 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 ago
Pretty 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 ago
There 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 ago
  I've every confidence in Sam's return. With the entire staff and Microsoft behind him, how can he fail?
dkrich 3y ago
I 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.
- bambax 3y ago
  Nadella's attitude is adding mystery to mystery. It's hard to think he doesn't know the truth. Or did Sam tell him a story, nice but fake, and he believed it? That would be spectacular.
  - highduc 3y ago
    He may have no choice but to try to play this card at this point? The stakes are pretty high I suppose. You don't just give up such level of potential control over this tech.
  - chx 3y ago
    There are multiple pieces emerging here and there which paint Mr Altman as deceptive including https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754277618491416 https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427761849141... https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq/?context=99 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the... and the OpenAI board statement as well. Yet Mr Nadella stands with Mr. Altman. What if he thinks his position and company is so strong it can withstand any web of deceit Altman can weave? There is, after all, so much money to be made here it matters even on a Microsoft scale.
    - dkrich 3y ago
      I think that’s easily explained by how levered Microsoft is to OpenAI/Altman. Microsoft would likely suffer hundreds of billions of market cap destruction as well as major reputation damage if this partnership collapsed and on a personal level Nadella would very possibly have to step down, giving him even more reason to want this to succeed. I think people are so tempted to contrive these multilevel conspiracy theories where Nadella and Altman are thinking many moves ahead while the board is just a slow moving group of idiots when the much simpler explanation is they are desperately trying to restore confidence. I think the main tell on this besides what was already said was Nadella making the announcement before market open- this is a guy feeling major pressure from shareholders about the strategy. The problem with that though is that he is making impulsive decisions with imperfect information and taking major reputation risk in the process.

ekms 3y ago

Pretty 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 ago

There 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 ago
I've every confidence in Sam's return. With the entire staff and Microsoft behind him, how can he fail?

dkrich 3y ago

I 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.

bambax 3y ago
Nadella's attitude is adding mystery to mystery. It's hard to think he doesn't know the truth. Or did Sam tell him a story, nice but fake, and he believed it? That would be spectacular.
- highduc 3y ago
  He may have no choice but to try to play this card at this point? The stakes are pretty high I suppose. You don't just give up such level of potential control over this tech.
- chx 3y ago
  There are multiple pieces emerging here and there which paint Mr Altman as deceptive including https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754277618491416 https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427761849141... https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq/?context=99 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the... and the OpenAI board statement as well. Yet Mr Nadella stands with Mr. Altman. What if he thinks his position and company is so strong it can withstand any web of deceit Altman can weave? There is, after all, so much money to be made here it matters even on a Microsoft scale.
  - dkrich 3y ago
    I think that’s easily explained by how levered Microsoft is to OpenAI/Altman. Microsoft would likely suffer hundreds of billions of market cap destruction as well as major reputation damage if this partnership collapsed and on a personal level Nadella would very possibly have to step down, giving him even more reason to want this to succeed. I think people are so tempted to contrive these multilevel conspiracy theories where Nadella and Altman are thinking many moves ahead while the board is just a slow moving group of idiots when the much simpler explanation is they are desperately trying to restore confidence. I think the main tell on this besides what was already said was Nadella making the announcement before market open- this is a guy feeling major pressure from shareholders about the strategy. The problem with that though is that he is making impulsive decisions with imperfect information and taking major reputation risk in the process.