10 ms·

I'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

I'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 people complain it's a 'you said, he said' situation where the manipulator inevitably wins. Wether those persons are positive or negative for the company is not all that clear, but they create an incredibly unpleasant work environment.

cma 3y ago
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 competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious. > We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day. > We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract." > I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944 I think the article mentions what may be this same incident, without saying how it was done: > Rabois noted that Altman, as a Stanford dropout, persuaded a major telecommunications company to do business with his start-up Loopt — the same quality, he said, that enabled Altman to persuade Microsoft to invest in OpenAI. From the earlier comment, it seems he persuaded the telecom essentially through fraud though maybe not legally so.
- strangescript 3y ago
  Every good CEO is also a Confidence Man/Woman.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    No, not really. Not even remotely. Business is ruthless, that's fine. It has to stay clear of fraud and deception. And funny enough, most old school companies do, mowt of the time.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I put that in approximately the same place as the founders of Reddit making alts and posting things on early Reddit or Porsche labeling its first-ever car design as Type 7. There's a deceptive "fake it 'til you make it" aspect to both, and both play towards inflating the current appearance of scale/traction/experience, but I don't find them particularly damning.
- bhouston 3y ago
  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 willing to bet on you, and then you become more successful. There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above story. I also had a prospective first client want to visit our offices so I quickly rented an office and asked my part-time contractors to all come into the office that day to fill it out. It worked! And then I could afford an office and hiring those part-time contractors as full-time employees. So it was sort of a self-fulfilling.
  - jen20 3y ago
    > There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above story. Elizabeth? Is that you?
al_borland 3y ago
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.
- oldtownroad 3y ago
  OpenAI is more religion than company. Sam could be a deeply flawed leader and still have extreme loyalty due to what OpenAI has achieved under his leadership. The people at OpenAI are believers in a mission and that means they’re far more likely to allow personal failings to slide. He’s more a Musk figure than a whoever-the-ceo-of-McDonald’s-is figure.
  - seanthemon 3y ago
    do you have evidence to back this up?
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      I don't think its necessary to prove anything he says, the keyword is 'could'. We don't know, and people who actually do don't spill it on HN just because we would like them to. These are generic statements about cult-like leaders, Musk is a prime example. Its hard won affection, not just smooth BS, we here all know that. That being said, people generally don't change, just situations (barring some catastrophic accidents or similar). Whatever actions given person did in the past describe them well enough in present. Again, generic but IMHO always valid so far.
      - seanthemon 3y ago
        "OpenAI is more religion than company" sounds like a factual statement to me.
- fevangelou 3y ago
  You don't need to manipulate all employees. Just key ones ;)
gizajob 3y ago
This whole saga whiffs of Machiavellianism
- antupis 3y ago
  I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the end for the company.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    Nah. Microsoft still exist and is thriving. Altman is the new Bill Gates except he is better at retaining ~~cul~~ employees. Many at HN love him for those qualities.
    - PlugTunin 3y ago
      Can you clarify the meaning of 4 tildes surrounded by the letters 'cul', for those of us who are new around here? Thank you
      - binarytox1n 3y ago
        I believe they meant to use the tildes to indicate a strikethrough text format, as with markdown. The "cul", I would guess is an unfinished "cultists", even though you'd typically strikethrough a completed word. When trying to indicate a "change of mind" it would be better to use a dash: "Better at retaining cul- uh, employees."
    - piuantiderp 3y ago
      He does not hire "mercenaries", only trOO believers...
- henry_viii 3y ago
  > as Machiavelli said: >> Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. https://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing https://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing
theGnuMe 3y ago
This is basic bullying. I would ask for specific examples of the performance decline. That will also be a "he said you said" situation. However, sunlight is the best disinfectant. A bully cannot stand in isolation unless he is enabled. But if left too long they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him (see Trump) or manufacture the vote. In those cases it takes a far larger force to bring about change.
- nerbert 3y ago
  Absolutely. Also reporting these out of the ordinary behaviors before they become problematic is also a way to keep these guys in line. Once they see that you have a systematic way to report (replace report with "ask if this is normal practice within the company"), they’ll avoid you.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > But if left too long they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him That feels exactly like why the board did what they did. Reading between the lines of everything that has been published, the actual sin that led to Altman's firing seems obvious: (1) Altman went to a board member and proposed something that would decrease the board's power over him (probably kicking someone off the board) (2) That board member tells other board members about the conversation (3) Board asks Altman if he had that conversation. Altman denies it (4) Board fires him for lack of candid communication with board (5) Board doesn't explicitly say what happened publicly, because it's inside baseball. But they absolutely know it did happen, because it they were first parties to it This feels less about safety vs commercialization (in the immediate future) and more about not having faith in a CEO caught in a lie while trying to remove oversight.
larme 3y ago
909 people followed Jim Jones to jonestown and died, so? [edited]: sorry means to replied one comment replied to this comment
louwrentius 3y ago
Worldcoin You must be a sociopath to think that's a good idea. > “Sam lives on the edge of what other people will accept,” said one of the people who had worked with him closely. “Sometimes he goes too far.” Silicon Valley has a profound problem with (a lack of) morals and ethics.
mikrl 3y ago
>When people complain it's a 'you said, he said' situation where the manipulator inevitably wins There’s no such thing as a free lunch. These types must have weaknesses of their own. I’m growing the cynicism necessary to tolerate them, but I’d like to know more robust strategies to manage them and keep them in check. I find it hard to truly hate people, but with this type I can muster some pretty flowery invective on the spot.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Unfortunately, it's a time disparity issue. Someone who politics for more time (with some aptitude) will generally beat out someone who doesn't. One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating solely based on them. In the end, I think it comes down to organizational culture. The companies I've seen with healthier executive ranks all had a very strong culture/tradition of "brook no bullshit" and shunned/discouraged up and coming colleagues from doing the same. As well as a focus on a central, objective mission (e.g. "Does this help us X?"). You still got bad apples, but their behavior wasn't nearly as pervasive as I've seen other places.
  - mikrl 3y ago
    Yea I’m fortunate to have worked in more good companies than pathological ones, so maybe whatever my strategy is has worked so far.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    > One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating solely based on them. That's the only thing off in your comment. Those KPIs are always set by politics, always have surprisingly subjective measurements, and always have unpredictable consequences that are cleared out by politics. An environment with all formal strictly set objective metrics is one of the easiest ones to manipulate.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      The worst option, except for all the other ones. What's the better alternative?
moralestapia 3y ago
(I'll hijack your comment a bit, just want to share my experience working in something related to it) I've had a chance to work with some HR people who genuinely wanted to improve the work environment on their respective companies (I know! Please believe me, lol). One of the bigger issues was corruption in general, of which this sort of behavior could fall under. The line of reasoning for that is that people usually resort to these behaviors in order to immorally/unlawfully attain some material benefit to them (it is very strange to find a pure blooded sociopath that just does it for the sake of it). When people artificially distort any system that is set up (for acquisitions, promotions, terminations, you name it) so that it no longer serves the company's interest but that of a group of rogue employees, well ... that's corruption. This framing is nice as it makes company exec's take a look at it from a business' gain/loss perspective instead of "meh, it's just employee's gossip". Anyway, the proposed solution was a sort of ombudsman for companies (it's actually a tech thing, not an actual person), a private channel where people could raise these issues without fear of retaliation. There cannot be a clear cut criteria by which one could define whether a particular employee is being corrupt or not, but we've observed something like a bi-modal distribution where problematic individuals truly stand out! Quoting Warren Buffet, "there's never just one cockroach in the kitchen"; you usually observe a lot of employees with no comments on them, a few getting like one or two remarks per month (and you can just ignore those, shit happens everyday) and then you have this guy who is getting 10+ comments per week and that's who you really need to sit down with and ask what's going on. Obviously this relies on the HR person being fair and honest, not part of the plot, and that comes with its own set of caveats; but at least, it's much easier to control that for one person than for 100s. Overall, the whole thing felt like an improvement. But, conclusion, the app didn't go much farther than being used at a couple companies, and then we realized it would be very hard to monetize, the team disbanded and we all moved on to other things :P.
asoneth 3y ago
I have had similar experiences. The best career decision I ever made was to prioritize working with Good People and one of my few regrets was putting up with smart jerks for so long.

cma 3y ago

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 competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious. > We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day. > We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract." > I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944 I think the article mentions what may be this same incident, without saying how it was done: > Rabois noted that Altman, as a Stanford dropout, persuaded a major telecommunications company to do business with his start-up Loopt — the same quality, he said, that enabled Altman to persuade Microsoft to invest in OpenAI. From the earlier comment, it seems he persuaded the telecom essentially through fraud though maybe not legally so.

strangescript 3y ago
Every good CEO is also a Confidence Man/Woman.
- hef19898 3y ago
  No, not really. Not even remotely. Business is ruthless, that's fine. It has to stay clear of fraud and deception. And funny enough, most old school companies do, mowt of the time.
sokoloff 3y ago
I put that in approximately the same place as the founders of Reddit making alts and posting things on early Reddit or Porsche labeling its first-ever car design as Type 7. There's a deceptive "fake it 'til you make it" aspect to both, and both play towards inflating the current appearance of scale/traction/experience, but I don't find them particularly damning.
bhouston 3y ago
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 willing to bet on you, and then you become more successful. There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above story. I also had a prospective first client want to visit our offices so I quickly rented an office and asked my part-time contractors to all come into the office that day to fill it out. It worked! And then I could afford an office and hiring those part-time contractors as full-time employees. So it was sort of a self-fulfilling.
- jen20 3y ago
  > There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above story. Elizabeth? Is that you?

al_borland 3y ago

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.

oldtownroad 3y ago
OpenAI is more religion than company. Sam could be a deeply flawed leader and still have extreme loyalty due to what OpenAI has achieved under his leadership. The people at OpenAI are believers in a mission and that means they’re far more likely to allow personal failings to slide. He’s more a Musk figure than a whoever-the-ceo-of-McDonald’s-is figure.
- seanthemon 3y ago
  do you have evidence to back this up?
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    I don't think its necessary to prove anything he says, the keyword is 'could'. We don't know, and people who actually do don't spill it on HN just because we would like them to. These are generic statements about cult-like leaders, Musk is a prime example. Its hard won affection, not just smooth BS, we here all know that. That being said, people generally don't change, just situations (barring some catastrophic accidents or similar). Whatever actions given person did in the past describe them well enough in present. Again, generic but IMHO always valid so far.
    - seanthemon 3y ago
      "OpenAI is more religion than company" sounds like a factual statement to me.
fevangelou 3y ago
You don't need to manipulate all employees. Just key ones ;)

gizajob 3y ago

This whole saga whiffs of Machiavellianism

antupis 3y ago
I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the end for the company.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  Nah. Microsoft still exist and is thriving. Altman is the new Bill Gates except he is better at retaining ~~cul~~ employees. Many at HN love him for those qualities.
  - PlugTunin 3y ago
    Can you clarify the meaning of 4 tildes surrounded by the letters 'cul', for those of us who are new around here? Thank you
    - binarytox1n 3y ago
      I believe they meant to use the tildes to indicate a strikethrough text format, as with markdown. The "cul", I would guess is an unfinished "cultists", even though you'd typically strikethrough a completed word. When trying to indicate a "change of mind" it would be better to use a dash: "Better at retaining cul- uh, employees."
  - piuantiderp 3y ago
    He does not hire "mercenaries", only trOO believers...
henry_viii 3y ago
> as Machiavelli said: >> Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. https://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing https://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing

theGnuMe 3y ago

This is basic bullying. I would ask for specific examples of the performance decline. That will also be a "he said you said" situation. However, sunlight is the best disinfectant. A bully cannot stand in isolation unless he is enabled. But if left too long they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him (see Trump) or manufacture the vote. In those cases it takes a far larger force to bring about change.

nerbert 3y ago
Absolutely. Also reporting these out of the ordinary behaviors before they become problematic is also a way to keep these guys in line. Once they see that you have a systematic way to report (replace report with "ask if this is normal practice within the company"), they’ll avoid you.
ethbr1 3y ago
> But if left too long they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him That feels exactly like why the board did what they did. Reading between the lines of everything that has been published, the actual sin that led to Altman's firing seems obvious: (1) Altman went to a board member and proposed something that would decrease the board's power over him (probably kicking someone off the board) (2) That board member tells other board members about the conversation (3) Board asks Altman if he had that conversation. Altman denies it (4) Board fires him for lack of candid communication with board (5) Board doesn't explicitly say what happened publicly, because it's inside baseball. But they absolutely know it did happen, because it they were first parties to it This feels less about safety vs commercialization (in the immediate future) and more about not having faith in a CEO caught in a lie while trying to remove oversight.

larme 3y ago

909 people followed Jim Jones to jonestown and died, so? [edited]: sorry means to replied one comment replied to this comment

louwrentius 3y ago

Worldcoin You must be a sociopath to think that's a good idea. > “Sam lives on the edge of what other people will accept,” said one of the people who had worked with him closely. “Sometimes he goes too far.” Silicon Valley has a profound problem with (a lack of) morals and ethics.

mikrl 3y ago

>When people complain it's a 'you said, he said' situation where the manipulator inevitably wins There’s no such thing as a free lunch. These types must have weaknesses of their own. I’m growing the cynicism necessary to tolerate them, but I’d like to know more robust strategies to manage them and keep them in check. I find it hard to truly hate people, but with this type I can muster some pretty flowery invective on the spot.

ethbr1 3y ago
Unfortunately, it's a time disparity issue. Someone who politics for more time (with some aptitude) will generally beat out someone who doesn't. One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating solely based on them. In the end, I think it comes down to organizational culture. The companies I've seen with healthier executive ranks all had a very strong culture/tradition of "brook no bullshit" and shunned/discouraged up and coming colleagues from doing the same. As well as a focus on a central, objective mission (e.g. "Does this help us X?"). You still got bad apples, but their behavior wasn't nearly as pervasive as I've seen other places.
- mikrl 3y ago
  Yea I’m fortunate to have worked in more good companies than pathological ones, so maybe whatever my strategy is has worked so far.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating solely based on them. That's the only thing off in your comment. Those KPIs are always set by politics, always have surprisingly subjective measurements, and always have unpredictable consequences that are cleared out by politics. An environment with all formal strictly set objective metrics is one of the easiest ones to manipulate.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    The worst option, except for all the other ones. What's the better alternative?

moralestapia 3y ago

(I'll hijack your comment a bit, just want to share my experience working in something related to it) I've had a chance to work with some HR people who genuinely wanted to improve the work environment on their respective companies (I know! Please believe me, lol). One of the bigger issues was corruption in general, of which this sort of behavior could fall under. The line of reasoning for that is that people usually resort to these behaviors in order to immorally/unlawfully attain some material benefit to them (it is very strange to find a pure blooded sociopath that just does it for the sake of it). When people artificially distort any system that is set up (for acquisitions, promotions, terminations, you name it) so that it no longer serves the company's interest but that of a group of rogue employees, well ... that's corruption. This framing is nice as it makes company exec's take a look at it from a business' gain/loss perspective instead of "meh, it's just employee's gossip". Anyway, the proposed solution was a sort of ombudsman for companies (it's actually a tech thing, not an actual person), a private channel where people could raise these issues without fear of retaliation. There cannot be a clear cut criteria by which one could define whether a particular employee is being corrupt or not, but we've observed something like a bi-modal distribution where problematic individuals truly stand out! Quoting Warren Buffet, "there's never just one cockroach in the kitchen"; you usually observe a lot of employees with no comments on them, a few getting like one or two remarks per month (and you can just ignore those, shit happens everyday) and then you have this guy who is getting 10+ comments per week and that's who you really need to sit down with and ask what's going on. Obviously this relies on the HR person being fair and honest, not part of the plot, and that comes with its own set of caveats; but at least, it's much easier to control that for one person than for 100s. Overall, the whole thing felt like an improvement. But, conclusion, the app didn't go much farther than being used at a couple companies, and then we realized it would be very hard to monetize, the team disbanded and we all moved on to other things :P.

asoneth 3y ago

I have had similar experiences. The best career decision I ever made was to prioritize working with Good People and one of my few regrets was putting up with smart jerks for so long.