2 ms·

I think one lesson we learned from Twitter is that you can cull a large amount of a tech workforce and the product will keep humming along, albeit at a reduced

I think one lesson we learned from Twitter is that you can cull a large amount of a tech workforce and the product will keep humming along, albeit at a reduced rate of change. Also, unlike Twitter, OpenAI pays engineers very competitive salaries and can aggressively re-hire roles.

phpisthebest 3y ago
I dont think there is a large overlap here. Twitter seemed to be adult daycare with a HUGE amount of positions that openly did nothing all day, many many positing publicly about how they only actually worked a few hours a week. Along with a Huge business support staff that seemed to really be pointless I do not see that analog at OpenAI which has mainly engineering positions. Also the idea that you just just "aggressively re-hire role" engineering positions in a emergent field like AI seems to be bit naive to me. How many experience people outside OpenAI are their int he first place?? It seems to me to be very ironic that in other situations is seems to be common for people to hate on corporations that treat their employees like interchangeable widgets that can just be replaced on a dime with a new human, yet here we see people claim that exact thing. Very odd
- jacquesm 3y ago
  There is no comparison between the cadre at Twitter and and the talent pool at OpenAI, I don't think you can replace the bulk of them at all, and nobody worth that kind of compensation is going to touch OpenAI with a 100 foot pole as long as the current board is there.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
You learned the wrong lesson. Twitter is dying and operating at a significantly degraded level, including moderation, content filtering, ad positioning, which caused a third or fourth mass advertiser exodus just few days ago. Also. Leading the world in revolutionary AI is not exactly like maintaining a pre-existing message app. Twitter: - Had 7500 employees before Musk fired most of them. - Now 1300, of which 550 are full-time devs. - That's a company valuated at less than $16 billion currently, and losing about $2 billion a year. OpenAI: - Has 700 employees, including world-leading scientists and researchers that are practically irreplaceable. - If they resign, it'll have 14 employees. - For a company that before Sam Altman was fired was valuated at $90 billion.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    I've pretty good ways to know that. - The puffed-up internal valuation of the company (for employee stock options) is $19 billion. - There's a $15 valuation is by an independent financial services company (Fidelity). - Elon saved ~$2 billion by firing a lot of his workforce (and closing one datacenter), but also... - Lost over $3 billion out of $5 billion ad-revenue a year ago. - And added $1 billion of interest payments (per annum) on a $13 billion loan. - Twitter was roughly break-even prior. 5B - 5B + 2B - 3B - 1B = -2B / annum The monetization (Premium etc.) are not even making up for 1% of that. Do you need the math on that too? There's nothing controversial in what I'm saying. This is pretty much the actual situation.
smegger001 3y ago
Twitter is a very different animal. A twitter clone can be thrown together over a weekend with average web stack coders, making it scalable is a bit more work true but nothing fundamentally new or revolutionary. OpenAI on the other hand is working on new, challenging hard problems in a complex feild of math/computer science.

phpisthebest 3y ago

I dont think there is a large overlap here. Twitter seemed to be adult daycare with a HUGE amount of positions that openly did nothing all day, many many positing publicly about how they only actually worked a few hours a week. Along with a Huge business support staff that seemed to really be pointless I do not see that analog at OpenAI which has mainly engineering positions. Also the idea that you just just "aggressively re-hire role" engineering positions in a emergent field like AI seems to be bit naive to me. How many experience people outside OpenAI are their int he first place?? It seems to me to be very ironic that in other situations is seems to be common for people to hate on corporations that treat their employees like interchangeable widgets that can just be replaced on a dime with a new human, yet here we see people claim that exact thing. Very odd

jacquesm 3y ago
There is no comparison between the cadre at Twitter and and the talent pool at OpenAI, I don't think you can replace the bulk of them at all, and nobody worth that kind of compensation is going to touch OpenAI with a 100 foot pole as long as the current board is there.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

You learned the wrong lesson. Twitter is dying and operating at a significantly degraded level, including moderation, content filtering, ad positioning, which caused a third or fourth mass advertiser exodus just few days ago. Also. Leading the world in revolutionary AI is not exactly like maintaining a pre-existing message app. Twitter: - Had 7500 employees before Musk fired most of them. - Now 1300, of which 550 are full-time devs. - That's a company valuated at less than $16 billion currently, and losing about $2 billion a year. OpenAI: - Has 700 employees, including world-leading scientists and researchers that are practically irreplaceable. - If they resign, it'll have 14 employees. - For a company that before Sam Altman was fired was valuated at $90 billion.

phpisthebest 3y ago
[flagged]
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I've pretty good ways to know that. - The puffed-up internal valuation of the company (for employee stock options) is $19 billion. - There's a $15 valuation is by an independent financial services company (Fidelity). - Elon saved ~$2 billion by firing a lot of his workforce (and closing one datacenter), but also... - Lost over $3 billion out of $5 billion ad-revenue a year ago. - And added $1 billion of interest payments (per annum) on a $13 billion loan. - Twitter was roughly break-even prior. 5B - 5B + 2B - 3B - 1B = -2B / annum The monetization (Premium etc.) are not even making up for 1% of that. Do you need the math on that too? There's nothing controversial in what I'm saying. This is pretty much the actual situation.

smegger001 3y ago

Twitter is a very different animal. A twitter clone can be thrown together over a weekend with average web stack coders, making it scalable is a bit more work true but nothing fundamentally new or revolutionary. OpenAI on the other hand is working on new, challenging hard problems in a complex feild of math/computer science.