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Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'
- nwmcsween 1y agoSam Altman complaining about "unethical" corporate behavior is pure gold
- blotfaba 1y agoIn a for-profit system, literally everybody is a mercenary. Thoughts, prayers, and vibes don't put food on my table or pay my bills and compute expenses.
- zeofig 1y agoThat's rich. Almost as rich as Sam.
- agnosticmantis 1y agoWhat’s the profile of these talents like? And what are the skills that are most highly sought after? Is it the researchers or the system engineers that scale the prototypes? Or other skills/expertise?
- scotty79 1y agoPoaching. Such a nasty word for merely offering and employee a better deal. A place where his work is not underpaid.
- jacquesm 1y agoSam vs Zuck... tough choice. I'm rooting for neither. Sam is cleverly using words here to make it seem like OpenAI are 'the good guys' but the truth is that they're just as nasty and power/money hungry as the rest.
- jeremyjh 1y agoAnd thus far, considerably less “open”.
- fluidcruft 1y agoSam Altman literally casts himself a God apparently and that's somehow to be taken as an indictment of his rivals. Maybe it's my GenX speaking but that's CEO bubblespeak for "OpenAI is fucked, abandon ship".
- sidcool 1y agoStrictly between the two, I'd go with Sam
- silent_echo 1y agoSuchir Balaji
- morepork 1y agoThis looks similar to what Meta (then Facebook) did a decade ago and basically broke the agreements between Apple, Google, etc. to not poach each others employees
- absurdo 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting trollish comments. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44440053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44440053 and marked it off topic.
- zmmmmm 1y agoIt says something that he still believes he has "missionaries" after betraying all the core principles that OpenAI was founded on. What exactly is their mission now other than generating big $?
- benatkin 1y agoThey haven't released much closed source, open weights in comparison to their competitors, but they made their Codex agent Open Source while Claude Code is still closed source.
- jonplackett 1y agoThat’s just a wrapper though isn’t it. The secret sauce is still secret.
- benatkin 1y agoAnd with the others as well, the secret sauce of training is still secret. Their competitors' "open source" in Gemma, Llama, etc is closed source. It's like Mattermost Team Edition where the binary is shipped under the MIT license. OpenAI should be held to a higher standard based on their name and original structure and pitch and they've fallen short, but I think to say they completely threw it out is an exaggeration. They hit the same roadblocks of copyright and other sorts of scrutiny that others did.
- beebmam 1y agoA company's mission is not an individual's mission. I personally would never hire an engineer whose main pursuit is money or promotions. These are the laziest engineers that exist and are always a liability.
- cschep 1y agothis is so, so out of touch.
- Cantinflas 1y ago
- g42gregory 1y agoHe says, while driving $4 million car. :-)
- angst 1y ago“I don’t think Sam is the guy who should have the finger on the button for AGI.” - Ilya Sutskever, Co-founder, co-lead of Superalignment Team , Departed early 2024 - May 15, 2025, The Atlantic Anyway, I concur it's a hard choice as one other comment mentions.
- catgary 1y ago[flagged]
- Gigablah 1y agoIs that the du jour unit of measurement for morality now?
- linotype 1y agogestures broadly at every other thing we've known about Mark Zuckerberg since "Dumb Fucks" in college
- WJW 1y agoEven if it's zero, he could still be a shitty person who shouldn't have access to that button. If anyone should have such access at all, of course.
- renewiltord 1y agoI suppose as an American taxpayer and American voter, he is responsible for as many ethnic cleansings as anyone else. Supposedly, Armenians leaving Nagorno-Karabakh is ethnic cleansing, and the US did give aid to Azerbaijian so that makes Americans facilitators of ethnic cleansing, though admittedly so are the Canadians.
- godelski 1y agoIs this a button any one person should have their finger on?
- 1y ago
- Taek 1y agoIt's weird to hear Sam Altman call the employees of OpenAI 'missionaries' based on their intense policies that seem determined to control how people think and act. Imagine if in 2001 Google had said "I'm sorry, I can't let you search that" if you were looking up information on medical symptoms, or doing searches related to drugs, or searching for porn, or searching for Disney themed artwork. It's hard for me to see anyone with such a strong totalitarian control over how their technology can be used as a good guy.
- philip1209 1y agoThe modern iPhone vs. Android battle
- HeartStrings 1y agoLook… it’s afraid
- zombiwoof 1y agoWhen even Scam Altman disliked Zuck we have reached AI bottom
- zbyforgotp 1y agoZuck poaches AI devs and places them under Wang - how does that work? Wang doesn’t make impression of being a brilliant researcher or coder just a great deal maker (to put it diplomatically).
- qnleigh 1y agoAn observation: most articles with titles of the form "A SLAMS B" put forward a narrow, one-sided view of the issue they report on. Oftentimes they're shallow attempts to stir outrage for clicks. This one is just giving a CEO a platform to promote how awesome he thinks his company is. All these articles and videos of people "slamming" each other; it doesn't move the needle, and it's not really news.
- bux93 1y agoSeems to me that articles with titles in the form "A SLAMS B" take a single negative comment that A made about something associated with B and build a few paragraphs around it as if it were a huge controversy, while in the mean time both A and B already forgot about the issue.
- ChuckMcM 1y agoI don't know, maybe all the big AI companies could come to an agreement not to poach each others employees?[1] It is always surprising to me when billionaire CEOs are complaining that their own employees are min-maxing their earning potential. [1] https://www.ere.net/articles/tech-firms-settle-case-admit-secret-agreements-to-not-poach-employees https://www.ere.net/articles/tech-firms-settle-case-admit-se...
- karel-3d 1y agoWhy is it still called Meta? Do they still do the Metaverse thing?
- alex_young 1y agoIt’s kind of rich that he’s complaining about Facebook paying engineers ’too much’, given the history here. A decade ago Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Adobe all had anti poaching agreements, and Facebook wouldn’t play ball, paid people more, won market share, and caused the salary boom in Silicon Valley. Now Facebook is paying people too much and we should all feel bad about it?
- byyoung3 1y agothen why convert to for-profit?
- noufalibrahim 1y agoOne variable that I think it missing here is that Meta is profitable whereas OpenAI is not.
- eleveriven 1y agoIf Meta is offering better comp and a clean slate with strong leadership, some people are going to take that bet
- gilfoyle 1y agoSam Altman went from "I'm doing this because I love it" to proposing to receive 7% equity in the for-profit entity in a matter of months. Now he calls out researchers leaving for greener pastures as mercenaries while the echo of "OpenAI is nothing without its people" hasn't faded.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gadders 1y agoi.e. "I've already made my generational wealth. How dare my employees try and get some for their own families?"
- yaro330 1y agoPoor Sama, let us play a sad song on the smallest violin.
- nspattak 1y agoso let me get this straight, do they like free markets or not ?
- lanthissa 1y agothere has yet to be a value openAI originally claimed to have that has lasted a second longer than there was profit motive to break it. they went from open to closed. they went from advocating ubi to for profit. they went from pacific to selling defense tech. they went from a council overseeing the project to a single man in control. and thats fine, go make all the money you can, but don't try do this sick act where you try to convince people to thank you for acting in your own self interest.
- otikik 1y ago"We are missionaries" is the new "We are a family".
- thih9 1y agoWhat I hear is: “The person that profits from employees who don’t prioritize money encourages employees to not prioritize money.” Unsurprising, unhelpful for anyone other than sama, unhealthy for many.
- BoorishBears 1y agoThis concept is not at all tied to trying to depress salaries and goes back decades: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/mercenaries-vs-missionaries-john-doerr-sees-two-kinds-of-internet-entrepreneurs/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/mercenaries-vs-m... I don't imagine Sam Altman said this because he thinks it'll somehow save him money on salaries down the line.
- rightbyte 1y agoThe 2000 article seem to refer to prospect capitalists and Altmam refers to workers. I don't think the context is the same. In the context of Altman, he wants 'losers'.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jrvarela56 1y agoSays the mercenary...
- PostOnce 1y agoParachute Sam into an island of cannibals, come back in 5 years, and he'll be king. Unless, of course, one of the cannibals is Mark Zuckerberg; then he might just get eaten.
- komali2 1y agoIf you're getting poached, pay more. If you can't pay more, give away your equity instead. Nobody owes you their labor, especially if you're already a billionaire.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoStartups with unstable revenue models often don't stand a chance against FANG company budgets. Also, high-level talent is rarely fungible with standard institutional training programs, and have options that are more rewarding than a CEOs problems. Unfortunately, productive research doesn't necessarily improve with increased cash-burn rates. As many international post docs simply refuse to travel into the US these days for "reasons". =3 "The CEO and the Three Envelopes" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725206 )
- bux93 1y agoWage cuts will continue until morale improves
- Festro 1y agoWhat an odd turn of phrase. Historically speaking, mercenaries have absolutely slaughtered missionaries in every confrontation. If missionaries could be mercenaries, they would.
- conartist6 1y agoYeah apparently being well fed and paid and extensive lly prepared helped? It's like these mercenaries were actually what you would call "professionals"
- antupis 1y agoThe term comes from John Doerr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6iwEYmbCwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6iwEYmbCwk . But Altman kicked most missionaries out during corporate turmoil in 2023, so not sure where this comes from.
- tim333 1y agoFrom that by the way >...one hand The Mercenaries they have enormous Drive they're opportunistic like Andy Grove they believe only the paranoids survive they're really sprinting for the short run but that's quite different I suggest to you than the missionaries who have passion not paranoia who are strategic not opportunistic and they're focused on the big idea in partnerships. It's the difference between focusing on the the competition or the customer. It's a difference between worshiping at the altar of Founders or having a meritocracy where you get all the ideas on the table and the best ones win it's a difference between being exclusively interested in the financial statements or also in the mission statements it's a difference between being a loner on your own or being part of a team having an attitude of entitlement versus contribution or uh as Randy puts it living a deferred Life Plan versus a whole life that at any given moment is trying to work difference between just making money anybody tells you they don't want to make money is lying or making money and making meaning Al also or my bottom line is it's the difference between success or success and significance.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zurfer 1y agoEverybody talks about what this does to OpenAI, but I do wonder how this shakes out for Meta. If the person next to you gets paid 20x more than you, you might be a bit unhappy when they are not 20x more helpful.
- yard2010 1y agoPay up mofo, or shut up.
- keeeba 1y agoJust checking my notes here. This is the same Sam Altman who abandoned OpenAI’s founding mission in favour of profit? No it can’t be
- cies 1y agoOr the one who's sister filed a suit against him for sexual abuse? "missionary" pfff...
- arccy 1y ago[flagged]
- conartist6 1y agoYeah I can't help but think he is starting to more closely fit the definition for mercenary. For example, I'm on a mission to build a better code editor for the world. That's cost me 4 years of my life and several hundred thousand dollars. He wanted one, so he bought it for 3 billion. I think he's doomed to fail there for pretty much the exact reasons he states here...
- achrono 1y agoThe word "beat" and "mercenaries" are also quite important here -- to me, this is Altman's way of saying "you losers who left OpenAI, you will pay a steep price, because we will mess with you really deeply". The threat to Meta is just a natural consequence of that, to the extent that Meta clings onto said individuals.
- p1dda 1y ago'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries' And hypocrites will never stop whining
- yieldcrv 1y agoIf you aren’t accepting the highest bid then you are contributing to your gender’s wage gap in the wrong direction. And before you make your rebuttal, if you wouldn’t accept $30,000 equivalent for your same tech job in Poland or whatever developed nation pays that low, then you have no rebuttal at all.
- forgetcolor 1y agoAmazing the distinction Sam sees between himself and Zuck while most see no distinction at all.
- noisy_boy 1y agoThat means he is moaning because Meta is able to inflict sufficient pain for him to feel it. Seems Meta is pretty serious about it. Job market forces working as they should.
- basisword 1y agoI think it's more that he's reinforcing the 'mission' and defining the good guys/bad guys so that he doesn't lose more employees to Meta.
- noisy_boy 1y agoCould be but how many of the people in OpenAI still believe in that 'mission' thing after all the drama he has been involved in for so long?
- charlescearl 1y ago“I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole; of course there will always be some mercenaries.” In the context of the decisions of largely East Asia born technical staff, can’t help but reflect on the role of actual western missionaries and mercenaries in East Asia over the last 100+ years & also the DeepSeek targeted sinophobia. https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_missions_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_missions_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Beleaguer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Beleaguer https://monthlyreview.org/2025/02/01/imperialism-and-white-settler-colonialism-in-marxist-theory/ https://monthlyreview.org/2025/02/01/imperialism-and-white-s...
- d4rkn0d3z 1y agoThere is a fairly strong scientific/historical argument that suggests neither mercenaries nor missionaries have had made any significant contribution to the outcome of any important human conflict or endeavour. Rather microscopic life is in control, and we are keen to rationalize the outcomes into stories of human heroes and villians. Therefore, wish for the army with the best immune system. In other words, we should probably be asking what viral/bacterial content is transferred in these employee trades and who mates with who. This information is probaly as important to the outcome as the notions of "AGI" swirling around.
- rayiner 1y agoDanger Will Robinson. Antitrust law exists again.
- basfo 1y agoIt always makes me laugh this millionaire rhetoric about “THE MISSION.” I once had a CEO who suddenly wanted us to be on call 24/7, every other week. His argument? Commitment. The importance of "the mission". Becoming a market leader, and so on. As AlbertaTech says, “we make sparkling water.” I mean, what’s the mission? A can of sparkling water on every table? Spreading the joy of carbonated water to the world? No. You sell sparkling water because you want to make a profit. That kind of speech is just a way to hide the fact that you're trying to cut three full-time positions and make your employees work off-hours to increase margins. Or, like in this case, pay them less than the competition with the same objective. Sam Altman might actually have a mission, turning us all into robot slaves, but that’s a whole different conversation.
- defraudbah 1y agoMillionaires will beat missionaries, that's how zuck sees it and I cannot say he's wrong
- qwertox 1y agoSam Altman is not a bit different than Mark Zuckerberg. His mission is to make money and get as much information to process about individuals, to be used for his benefit, all the rest is just blah blah.
- d--b 1y agoI think half of him truly believes that his work ultimately will benefit humanity as a whole and half of him is a cynical bastard like the rest of them. Ultimately, he’ll just realize that humanity doesn’t give a fuck, and that he’s in it for himself only. And the typical butterfly-to-caterpillar transition will be complete.
- doctorwho42 1y agoWell a lot of AI bros think that AI can generate novel solutions to all of the world's problems, they just need more data and processing power. I.E. the AI God (all knowing), which when you take a step back is utter lunacy. How can LLM's generate solutions to climate change if it's a predictive model. All of this to say, they delude themselves that the future of humanity needs "AI" or we are doomed. Ironically, the creation and expansion of LLM's drastically increased the power usage of humanity to its own detriment.
- saubeidl 1y agoI honestly believe the current AI hype and its associated wasteful power usage will be what seals humanities fate. Big Tech has become a doomsday cult.
- taco_emoji 1y agoWe have essentially zero reason to believe he cares about any benefit to humanity at all.
- blitzar 1y agoI too truly believe that if you make me the richest person in the world, at the expense of all other people, it will be a benefit to humanity.
- Drunkfoowl 1y ago[dead]
- cue_the_strings 1y agoWhen you hear him saying it, it's funny. When you hear this reiterated by employees, who actually believe it, then it's sad. Obviously not in this situation, but I've actually heard this from people. Some of them were even pros. "There is no fool like an educated fool."
- a4isms 1y agoVocational Awe and the Lies We Tell Ourselves (2018): https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-... HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24602956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24602956 This has always applied to tech workers.
- getpokedagain 1y agoThis is one of the most fascinating things I've found in the past ten or so years. When did people in general begin to buy into the bullshit spewed by big shots in corporate or really any commercial venture. People at least implicitly understood that the boss just wanted money and would fuck you, nature or his own firmly held beliefs to get it. People are now shocked when a company cuts a loved product or their boss fires them when someone cheaper comes along.
- swat535 1y agoSince when the employees believed it? Anyone who has worked at OpenAI or is currently working there has lost all credibility in my eyes. When their dear leader, Sam was "fired", they staged a coup to save their paychecks. These people are just out there to may a buck and scam people with "AGI" and now that there is plenty of competition and superior models, I'm hearing crickets from them. All they had going for them was first to market and they managed to damage the brand, lose their top talent, deliver a subpar product and convert a nonprofit into for profit.
- bilsbie 1y agoDumb question. If they’re willing to pay so much for AI talent. Why won’t companies hire experienced software engineers willing to learn AI on the job? Seems like there should be a big market for that.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoPerhaps it takes too long. The talent they do have would have to split their duties in order to train the incoming engineers.... Just a guess.
- bluGill 1y agoDon't those have phd's? They are the smartest with background that would take a while to learn. you are on the right, but only for companies investing for the long term
- bravesoul2 1y agoI think there isn't a shortage but it let's you get the best now. The very best. Born genius plus didn't cruise, worked hard too, kind of best.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y agoMeta just wants to have a story for its stock price to go up. It is definitely worth spending a couple hundred million to make your stock price go up tens of billions for several months. Presumably not all of that hundreds of millions in investment will be waste, too. Meta knows they have close to a 0% chance of overtaking ChatGPT or Gemini.
- runeblaze 1y agothere kind of is, but also note we are talking about the exceptional talent here. I don’t think Meta is mass poaching the pure engineer types at OpenAI either
- roguecoder 1y agoThey are: https://openai.com/residency/ https://openai.com/residency/ However, skilling people up on specialized skill sets in a reasonable time frame requires having people around to teach them. And those people need to know not just the skills, but how to teach them well. And it takes time away from those people doing the job, so that approach will slow development in the short run. But the companies are trying.
- yeyeyeyeyeyeyee 1y agoI don't even know what that's supposed to mean.
- megaloblasto 1y agoI can't stand missionaries.
- elif 1y agoI've seen paying people too much completely erode the core of teams. It's really hard to convince yourself to work 60 hour weeks when you have generational FU$ and a family you love.
- michaelanckaert 1y agoIs working than 60 hours a week necessary to have a good team? Sure, having FU$ as you put it removes the necessity to keep the scale of your work life balance tipped to the benefit if your employer. But again, a good work life balance should not imply erosion the team.
- bravesoul2 1y agoI'd say it would be easier to do 60 hours when you can afford servants to take care of the rest of life.
- nilkn 1y agoThere's limited or no evidence of this in other domains where astonishing pay packages are used to assemble the best teams in the world (e.g., sports).
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoSports have a much, much tighter feedback loop on performance than anything in software, and certainly tighter than R&D. Same with a lot of the financial roles with comp distributions like this.
- nilkn 1y agoEither Meta makes rapid progress on frontier-level AI in the next year or it doesn't -- there's definitely a feedback loop that's measured in tangible units of time. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that when Zuck personally hires you at this level of compensation, there will be performance expectations and you won't stick around for long if you don't deliver. Even in top-tier sports, many underperformers manage to stick around for a couple years or even a half-decade at seven or eight figure compensation before being shown the door.
- mikkom 1y agoSays a guy who is poaching openAI
- akkad33 1y agoWhy the bible lingo?
- octocop 1y agoI don't think it's strange because it feels like Meta is trying to do what OpenAI originally set out to do with making AI accessible to everyone.
- tom_m 1y agoWhat drama. Hype it up. Make the bubble bigger. If Sam Altman is upset, he should look in the mirror for making his people work so many hours. They didn't leave because of the pay.
- ActionHank 1y agoEvery single one of these companies are like IBM selling servers, we're all waiting for the home computer, that's when things will really take off.
- softwaredoug 1y agoMercenaries over missionaries. Many employers want employees to act like cult members. But then when going gets tough, those are often the first laid off, and the least prepared for it. Employers, you can't have it both ways. As an employee don't get fooled.
- neves 1y agoWe are not a company, we are a family
- softwaredoug 1y agoThese CEOs will be the first to say "we are a team, not a family" when they do layoffs.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago"I have decided that you need to go spend more time with your family. Really I'm just doing you a favor."
- anshumankmr 1y agoRelevant Silicon Valley Scene:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ
- kayodelycaon 1y agoFerengi Rules of Acquisition: #6: Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity. #111: Treat people in your debt like family… exploit them. #211: Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them.
- belter 1y ago#91: Your boss is only worth what he pays you.
- meepmorp 1y ago
- jstop107 1y agoThis was an important argument in the book The Network State. Corporate politics is the small game right now. Sam is trying to build a Global network state
- techterrier 1y agoPeople taking my money in exchange for doing a thing - Missionaries People taking someone else's money in exchange for doing a thing - Mercenaries got it
- pizzafeelsright 1y agoMissionaries are sent, called by faith. Mercs don't take money, they earn it. Why not be both?
- moonshadow565 1y agoHoly order
- tempodox 1y agoPlease, spare me that hypocritical holier-than-thou crap. Who would fall for that?
- iamleppert 1y agoSam needs to pony up and reach into that purse of his if he wants to keep his few remaining staff.
- hearsathought 1y agoMercenaries are just missionaries with better funding. Altman needs more capital to compete.
- throwaway31131 1y agoWhat goes around comes around... From March of this year, "As we know, big tech companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon have been engaged in a fierce battle for the best tech talent, but OpenAI is now the one to watch. They have been on a poaching spree, attracting top talent from Google and other industry leaders to build their incredible team of employees and leaders." https://www.leadgenius.com/resources/how-openai-poached-top-tier-ai-talent-and-where-they-have-been-hunting https://www.leadgenius.com/resources/how-openai-poached-top-...
- not2b 1y agoWe shouldn't use the word "poaching" in this way. Poaching is the illegal hunting of protected wildlife. Employees are not the property of their employers, and they are free to accept a better offer. And perhaps companies need to revisit their compensation practices, which often mean that the only way for an employee to get a significant raise is to change companies.
- roguecoder 1y agoIndeed! It would be illegal _not_ to poach employees: https://www.goodspeedmerrill.com/blog/2023/12/what-is-a-no-poaching-agreement-and-why-is-it-illegal/ https://www.goodspeedmerrill.com/blog/2023/12/what-is-a-no-p...
- kylecordes 1y agoThat's the kind of thing you say when you don't want to pay the market price.
- tehjoker 1y agothis shit sounds so fake it makes me want to die. all these capitalist perverts pretending that they believe in anything at all is completely preposterous and is at odds with capitalism. you’re all mercenaries and criminals Sam.
- WaltPurvis 1y agoI'm pretty sure Sam Altman's only mission in life is to be as personally wealthy as Mark Zuckerberg. Is that mission really supposed to inspire undying loyalty and insane workloads from OpenAI staffers?
- thepasswordis 1y agoRemember: we’re all in this together! Is there a single person that takes what Sam is saying here seriously?
- ndgold 1y agoActually, I think that people who do it for the love of the game are the true winners here, whether they work for a company or not. You can't beat intrinsic motivation.
- roguecoder 1y agoIntrinsic motivation + a seven figure paycheck seems strictly better than intrinsic motivation alone
- Hoasi 1y agoCompetition is good, right? Open source the models! Open source the employees, too. Why not? Enough with Sam's whining.
- roguecoder 1y agoIt's the same way billionaires argue for free trade, until it comes to immigration. As soon as it might help people who work for a living, suddenly none of their principles apply.
- lawlessone 1y agoWhy doesn't Sam try hire more juniors and train them up?
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoBy 2025, haven't all employees learned to see through this? Just like the "we're all family" tropes. It's all just attempts at brains washing employees into working longer hours, because of the 'purpose'. But they wont benefit, they can be let go anytime.
- JoshTko 1y ago"ChatGPT can you give me a catchy phrase I can use to sway the public discourse against Meta that puts OpenAI in the most favorable light? Also sprinkle in some alliteration if you could"
- fudgy73 1y agoI don't think I've ever seen someone use two semicolons in one sentence.
- roguecoder 1y agoIt is hilarious how much capitalists hate capitalism as soon as it benefits workers.
- isx726552 1y ago“Poaching”? It’s called the free market. Capitalists always hate capitalism when it comes to employees getting paid what they are worth. If the market will bear it, he should embrace it and stop whining.
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- jasonm23 1y agoSam Altman... missionary... I see, that's how the most manipulative person in AI ... oh damn. - - - We're faced with a future defining moment, in the hands of emotional infants.... "God" or "the collective actions of humanity" ... save us.
- gmerc 1y agoHe's just talking to his cult.
- tuannx 1y agoMeta AI Talent Jiahui Yu: $100M signing bonus, $10M+/year. Alexandr Wang: $100M+ bonus, salary undisclosed. Senior AI Talent: $18M–$100M bonus, $2M–$10M/year. Strategy: Huge bonuses to poach from OpenAI, Google. Real Madrid Transfers Cristiano Ronaldo: $80M transfer (2009), $15M/year. Gareth Bale: $120M transfer (2013), $17M/year. Kylian Mbappé: $115M bonus (2024), $36M/year. Strategy: Big fees and wages for “Galacticos” to dominate.
- HardCodedBias 1y ago[flagged]
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- ilioscio 1y agoAt least from the outside, OpenAI's messaging about this seems obnoxiously deluded, maybe some of those employees left because it starts feels like a cult built on foundations of self importance? Or maybe they really do know some things we don't know, but it seems like a lot of people are eager to keep giving them that excuse. But then again, maybe they have such a menagerie of individuals with their heads in the clouds that they've created something of an echo chamber about the 'pure vision' that only they can manifest.
- reactordev 1y agoI think it’s more of the latter. We’ve already seen others beat them in their own game. Only for them to come back with a new model. In the end, this is the same back and forth that Apple and Sun shared in the late 90s or Meta and Google in 2014. We could have made non-competes illegal today but we didn’t.
- toast0 1y ago(post employment) Non-competes have been non-enforcable in California since 1872. They became illegal in California last year. A federal rule would be nice, but the state rule where a lot of the development happens could be sufficient.
- dandanua 1y agoIn our times, every narcissist sees himself as a saint and a messiah on a mission to save the world, while doing the complete opposite of that. And they get very angry when they see other narcissists trying to do the same.
- DebtDeflation 1y agoThis is the most succinct description of our current reality that I've ever seen. Kudos!
- bdangubic 1y agolovely words. except there isn’t single one that gives two shits about the world
- _stillmind 1y agohttps://archive.ph/9i9vo https://archive.ph/9i9vo
- ipsum2 1y agoThe game theoretic aspect of this is quite interesting. If Meta will make OpenAI's model improvements open source, then the value of every poached employee will be worth significantly less as time goes on. That means it's in the employees best interest to leave first, if their goal is to maximize their income.
- bilbo0s 1y agoOpen source could also be a bait and switch. ie - Zuck has no intention to keep opening up the models he creates. Thus, he knows he can spend the money to get the talent. Because he has every intention to make it back.
- HardCodedBias 1y agoZuck has the best or the second best distribution on the planet. If he neutralizes the tech advantage of other companies his chances of winning rise.
- thephyber 1y agoHow well was Zuck able to use his massive distribution channels to win in his cryptocurrency project, or the Metaverse after that? Meta has become too fickle with new projects. To the extent that LLAMA can help them improve their core business, they should drive that initiative. But if they get sidetracked on trying to build “AI friends” for all of their human users, they are just creating another “solution in search of a problem”. I hope both Altman and Zuck become irrelevant. Neither seems particularly worthy of the power they have gained and aren’t willing to show a spine in face of government coercion.
- jekwoooooe 1y agoAllegedly they were offered 100m just in the first year. I think they will be fine
- ipsum2 1y ago
- freejazz 1y agoLike the culture of OpenAI where Microsoft threatened to poach the entire staff so they caved?
- lenerdenator 1y agoFor a group of people who talk incessantly about the value of unrestricted markets, tech bros sure hate having to participate in free labor markets. Being a missionary for big ideas doesn't mean dick to a creditor.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoCapitalists don't like markets, or at least not the markets that we're told capitalism will bring about. Those markets are supposed to increase competition and drive down prices until companies are making just barely enough to survive. What capitalist wants that for himself? He wants decreased competitions and sky high prices for himself, and increased competition and lower prices for his competitors and suppliers.
- Dracophoenix 1y ago> Capitalists don't like markets, or at least not the markets that we're told capitalism will bring about. The "markets" most people learn about are artificial Econ 101 constructions. They're pedagogical tools for explaining elasticity and competition under the assumption that all widgets are equally and infinitely fungible. An assumption which ignores marginal value, individual preferences, innovation and other things that make real markets. > What capitalist wants that for himself? He wants decreased competitions and sky high prices for himself, and increased competition and lower prices for his competitors and suppliers. The capitalist wants to be left to trade as he sees fit without state intervention.
- reverendsteveii 1y agowhat is his end goal in being left to trade as he sees fit? is it maximizing profit? is that the fundamental goal of all actors in this system?
- Dracophoenix 1y agoHis end goal is the pursuit or promotion of his own self-interest. Whether the consequence of this is the maximization of profits depends upon his goals and circumstances.
- mlinhares 1y agoThat didn't work for the American colonies, Portugal and Spain were very focused on being missionaries and were beaten by the Dutch and Brits that just wanted to make money.
- hollerith 1y agoThe motive for settling the colonies in New England was emphatically not to make money.
- echelon_musk 1y agoHow about the Caribbean?
- bilbo0s 1y agoName the Caribbean nations that were the "winners"?
- echelon_musk 1y agoYou've missed my point entirely.
- MangoToupe 1y agoThat really depends on the time period. The puritanical core of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was certainly replaced by commercial/trade interests long before their war with the crown.
- dragonwriter 1y agoThe idea that the Spanish and Portuguese colonial effort wasn't droven by economic gain above all else is also beyond silly.
- elros 1y agoI believe Portuguese got there looking for a shorter route to India (money) and eventually settled the land for gold, silver, brazilwood, diamonds and sugarcane (money).
- 9283409232 1y agoIs he comparing working at OpenAI to religion? Is that not a crazy analogy to make? Cult like behavior to say the least. It's also funny the entire business of AI is poaching content from people.
- codingwagie 1y agoThe value of these researchers to meta is surely more than a few billion. Love seeing free markets benefit the world
- simianwords 1y agoIm a bit torn about this. If it ends up hurting OpenAI so much that they close shop, what is the incentive for another OpenAI to come up? You can spend time making a good product and get breakthroughs and all it takes is for meta to poach your talent, and with it your IP. What do you have left?
- roguecoder 1y agoTrade secrets and patent laws still apply. But also, every employee getting paid at Meta can come out with the resources to start their own thing. PayPal didn't crush fintech: it funded the next twenty years of startups.
- ipsum2 1y agoHow do you figure? If you assume that Meta gets the state of the art model, revenue is non-existent, unless they start a premium tier or put ads. Even then, its not clear if they will exceed the money spent on inference and training compute.
- HWR_14 1y agoIt's worth a few billion (easily) to keep people's default time sink as aimlessly playing on FV/IG as opposed to chatting with ChatGPT. Even if that scroll is replaced by chatting with llama as opposed to seeing posts.
- spenvo 1y agoOpenAI's tight spot: 1) They are far from profitability. 2) Meta is aggressively making their top talent more expensive, and outright draining it. 3) Deepseek/Baidu/etc are dramatically undercutting them. 4) Anthropic and (to a lesser extent?) Google appear to be beating them (or, charitably, matching them) on AI's best use case so far: coding. 5) Altman is becoming less like-able with every unnecessary episode of drama; and OpenAI has most of the stink from the initial (valid) grievance of "AI-companies are stealing from artists". The endless hype and FUD cycles, going back to 2022, have worn industry people out, as well as the flip flop on "please regulate us". 6) Its original, core strategic alliance with Microsoft is extremely strained. 7) and, related to #6, its corporate structure is extremely unorthodox and likely needs to change in order to attract more investment, which it must (to train new frontier models). Microsoft would need to sign off on the new structure. 8) Musk is sniping at its heels, especially through legal actions. Barring a major breakthrough with GPT-5, which I don't see happening, how do they prevail through all of this and become a sustainable frontier AI lab and company? Maybe the answer is they drop the frontier model aspect of their business? If we are really far from AGI and are instead in a plateau of diminishing returns that may not be a huge deal, because having a 5% better model likely doesn't matter that much to their primary bright spot: Brand loyalty from the average person to ChatGPT is the best bright spot, and OpenAI successfully eating Google's search market. Their numbers there have been truly massive from the beginning, and are I think the most defensible. Google AI Overviews continue to be completely awful in comparison.
- VirusNewbie 1y agoGood analysis, my counter to it is that OpenAI has one of the leading foundational models, while Meta, despite being a top paying tech company, continued to release sub par models that don't come close to the other big three. So, what happened? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the culture and/or infra at Meta? If it was just because Zuckerburg bet on the wrong horses to lead their LLM initiatives, what makes us think he got it right this time?
- fzzzy 1y agoFor one thing, all the trade secrets going from openai and anthropic to meta.
- dinkdonkbell 1y agoDidn't many of the missionaries at OpenAI go to Thinking Machines Lab? https://thinkingmachines.ai/ https://thinkingmachines.ai/
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Yeul 1y agoAI as a religion should scare any investor. Where are the products that you can sell for moolah?
- roguecoder 1y agoKenneth Copeland suggests religion can be enough
- pera 1y agoReligions and cults are actually extremely lucrative. For many investors the product is the hype.
- lenerdenator 1y agoThe product is a model that takes knowledge and puts it in a form that can act on it without a human doing the acting. You sell it to people who don't want to pay other people while getting the same productivity.
- bagels 1y agoThey have product that they derive revenue from.
- rpjt 1y agoThe most popular religions are super wealthy and lucrative
- rchaud 1y agoReligion delivers a recurring revenue model that isn't taxed and where criminal confessions can't be used in court if made to a high-ranking company officer. It's the perfect business.
- Hoasi 1y agoAlso, some religions have the best branding ever. Studying religions will teach you marketing and virality.
- cs702 1y agoI like sama and many other folks at OpenAI, but I have to call things how I see them: "What Meta is doing will, in my opinion, lead to very deep cultural problems. We will have more to share about this soon but it's very important to me we do it fairly and not just for people who Meta happened to target." Translation from corporate-speak: "We're not as rich as Meta." "Most importantly of all, I think we have the most special team and culture in the world. We have work to do to improve our culture for sure; we have been through insane hypergrowth. But we have the core right in a way that I don't think anyone else quite does, and I'm confident we can fix the problems." Translation from corporate-speak: "We're not as rich as Meta." "And maybe more importantly than that, we actually care about building AGI in a good way." "Other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal to some other mission. But this is our top thing, and always will be." "Missionaries will beat mercenaries." Translation from corporate-speak: "I am high as a kite." (All companies building AGI claim to be doing it in a good way.)
- mzajc 1y ago> "But we have the core right in a way that I don't think anyone else quite does" Translation from corpospeak: "I think my pivot to for-profit is very clever and unique" :)
- ASalazarMX 1y agoThe perfect corollary is that Altman is as mercenary, if not more, than Zuckerberg, given all the power grabs he did in OpenAI. Even the "Open" in OpenAI is a joke. He just has less options because OpenAI is not as rich as Meta.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- philosophty 1y agoTwo rich kids who have mostly paid-to-win their way into the game are predictably fighting using money because that's all they bring to the table.
- sumeno 1y agoDoes he have the same conviction when people from other companies decide to join OpenAI?
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoIt's only bad when other people do it.
- latexr 1y agoIt’s only bad when other people do it to him.
- rchaud 1y ago"Apostates who turned to darkness" vs "Converts who saw the light".
- a4isms 1y agoThere can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God! https://norberthaupt.com/2015/11/22/the-rabbit-god-and-the-duck-god/ https://norberthaupt.com/2015/11/22/the-rabbit-god-and-the-d...
- neilv 1y agoCan someone make an honest argument for how OpenAI staff are missionaries, after the coup? I'd be very happy to be convinced that supporting the coup was the right move for true-believer missionaries. (Edit: It's an honest and obvious question, and I think that the joke responses risk burying or discouraging honest answers.)
- ponector 1y agoThat is just an act of corpo-ceo bulshitting employees and press about high moral standards, mission, etc. Don't trust any of his words.
- noname120 1y agoYes, especially not his
- casualscience 1y agoyeah, I used to work in the medical tech space, they love to tell you how much you should be in it for the mission and that's why your pay is 1/3 what you could make at FAANG... of course, when it came to our sick customers, they need to pay market rates.
- sitkack 1y agoAnytime someone tells you to be in it for the mission, you are expendable and underpaid.
- chaosharmonic 1y agoI don't at all disagree with you, but at the kind of money you'd be making at an org like OAI, it's easy to envision there being a ceiling, past which the additional financial compensation doesn't necessarily matter that much. The problem with the argument is that most places saying this are paying more like a sub-basement, not that there can't genuinely be more important things. That said, Sam Altman is also a guy who stuck nondisparagement terms into their equity agreement... and in that same vein, framing poaching as "someone has broken into our home" reads like cult language.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoI'm sorry how is the mission of OpenAI any different than their competitors? They are for-profit they offer absurd salaries, etc.
- jekwoooooe 1y agoNo no no don’t you get it they have this multi entity “non profit” and something something “capped profit” yet everyone is employed by the for profit. But they just want to give AGI for free right
- neuroelectron 1y ago"Do Not Be Explicitly Useful"—Strategic Uselessness as Liability Buffer This is a deliberate obfuscation pattern. If the model is ever consistently useful at a high-risk task (e.g., legal advice, medical interpretation, financial strategy), it triggers legal, regulatory, and reputational red flags. a. Utility → Responsibility If a system is predictably effective, users will reasonably rely on it. And reliance implies accountability. Courts, regulators, and the public treat consistent output as an implied service, not just a stochastic parrot. This is where AI providers get scared: being too good makes you an unlicensed practitioner or liable agent. b. Avoid “Known Use Cases” Some companies will actively scrub capabilities once they’re discovered to work “too well.” For instance: A model that reliably interprets radiology scans might have that capability turned off. A model that can write compelling legal motions will start refusing prompts that look too paralegal-ish or insert nonsense case law citation. I think we see this a lot from ChatGPT. It's constantly getting worse in real world uses while exceeding at benchmarks. They're likely, and probably forced, to cheat on benchmarks by using "leaked" data.
- bluecalm 1y agoDo I "poach" a stock when I offer more money for it than the last transaction value? "Poaching" employees is just price discovery by market forces. Sounds healthy to me. Meta is being the good guys for once.
- noisy_boy 1y agos/good guys/willing to pay/
- jimmywetnips 1y ago[flagged]
- Freedom2 1y agoSounds like some tariffs should be applied as as well considering there's now a trade imbalance!
- datavirtue 1y agoYou must be new here. No joking allowed.
- datavirtue 1y agoSee.
- aspenmayer 1y agoI can fully believe one can be funny in a way that isn’t validated or understood, or even perceived as humorous. I’m not sure HN is a good bellwether for comedic potential.
- absurdo 1y agoIf you don’t adhere to the guidelines we’ll send mean and angry emails to dang.
- joshdavham 1y agoI think Meta already has very deep cultural problems. If you've ever browsed teamblind.com (which I strongly recommend against as I hate that site), you'll see what the people who work at Meta are like.
- meta_ai_x 1y agoThat's true with every Tech company employees. They all want $1 M TC and work 10 hours / week
- FooBarBizBazz 1y agoThe 4% Rule means everybody with $25M is getting $1M per year for zero hours of work per week. Google tells me Sam has $1.7B.
- darth_avocado 1y agoYou’re describing the management not the employees
- thomassmith65 1y agoOff topic, but the existence of this teamblind.com site escaped my notice till now. Is there a particular reason to hate it (aside from it being social media)?
- joshdavham 1y agoI hate teamblind because it makes me feel really negative about our industry. I actually really like tech - the problems we get to work on, the ever-changing technological landscape, the smart and passionate people, etc, etc. But teamblind is just filled with cynical, wealth-obsessed and mean careerists. It's like the opposite of HN in many ways. And if you ever wondered where the phrase "TC or GTFO" originated... it's from teamblind.
- yodsanklai 1y agoI looked at it once, seemed full of young men discussing hair loss issues and how to get a girlfriend.
- _jplc 1y ago[flagged]
- tmaly 1y agothis open competition for talent is better than that time all the big tech firms were working to actively suppress wages.
- ramesh31 1y agoWe're talking about a few hundred people here, globally. The entire goal is to suppress everyone else's wages to zero.
- unit_circle 1y agoSide note: I'm noticing more and more of these simple, hyperbolic headlines specifically of statements that public figures make. A hallmark of the event being reported is a public figure making a statement that will surely have little to no effect whatsoever. Calling these statements "slamming" (a specific word I see with curious frequency) is so riling to me because they are so impotent but are described with such violent and decisive language. Often it's a politician, usually liberal, and their statement is such an ineffectual waste of time, and outwardly it appears wasting time is most of what they do. I consider myself slightly left of center, so seeing "my group" dither and waste time rather than organize and do real work frustrates me greatly. Especially so since we are provided with such contrast from right of center where there is so much decisive action happening at every moment. I know it's to feed ranking algorithms, which causes me even more irritation. Watching the brain rot get worse in real time...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Animats 1y agoYeah, yeah, typical rich guy whining when labor makes some gains.
- blackhaj7 1y agoCouldn't think of a worse steward of AI than Meta/Zuck (not a fan of OpenAI either). One of the most insidious companies out there. Sad to see Nat Friedman go there. He struck me as "one of the good ones" who was keen to use tech for positive change. I don't think that is achievable at Meta
- psunavy03 1y agoBut if they give you tens of millions of reasons to go there . . .
- garciasn 1y agoFor Sam to seemingly claim that Meta is hiring mercenaries while OpenAI is hiring missionaries seems a bit counter to OpenAI's mission of having closed weight models vs an open weights at Meta. I could definitely see those who are 'missionaries' wanting to give it away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- blackhaj7 1y agoAgreed
- mempko 1y agoMissionaries vs mercenaries? Which company is releasing open source models? Please remind me I forgot.
- cjoelrun 1y agoIsn't Meta's open model closer to OpenAI's mission then OpenAI.
- DaSHacka 1y agoIronically, Altman's statement wasnt all that wrong, in a sense. He just mixed up who the "Missionaries" and who the "Mercenaries" were.
- toofy 1y agohilarious seeing that he views it this way when his company is so very well known for taking (strong arguments say stealing) everything from everyone. i’m noticing more and more lately that our new monarchs really do have broken thought patterns. they see their own abuse towards others as perfectly ok but hilariously demand people treat them fairly. small children learn things that these guys struggle to understand.
- roguecoder 1y agoSBF demonstrated how utilitarian thought + massive money can easily spiral into self-centered anti-social behavior. Being a billionaire seems to be inherently bad for human brains.
- jddj 1y agoI think they understand that it's all performative
- kypro 1y agoSam comes across as an extremely calculating person to me. I'm not suggesting he's necessarily doing this for bad reasons, but it's very clear to me the public facing communications he makes are well considered and likely not fully reflective of his actual views and positions on things, but instead what he believes to be power maximising. He's very good at creating headlines and getting people talking online. There's no doubt he's good at what he does, but I don't know why anyone takes anything he says seriously.
- unfitted2545 1y agoThis interview with Karen Hao is really good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8enXRDlWguU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8enXRDlWguU), she interviews people that have had 1 on 1 meetings with Sam, and they always say he aligned with them on everything to the point where they don't actually know what he believes. He will tailor his opinions to try and weave in trust.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
- jackallis 1y agoI don't know which pedastal Sam is standing on to point finger at others? Who are the missionaries and who are the mercenaries? What part of OpenAI is Open?
- seatac76 1y ago“First comes the Missionary, then comes the Mercenary, then comes the Army” Wonder if that applies here.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y ago"Talent" doesn't make a business successful, and paychecks aren't the reason most people switch jobs. This is like Sam announcing to the world "it sucks working for our company, don't come here".
- jrm4 1y agoBig picture, I'll always believe we dodged a huge bullet in that "AI" got big in a nearly fully "open-source," maybe even "post open-source" world. The fact that Meta is, for now, one of the good guys in this space (purely strategically and unintentionally) is fortunate and almost funny.
- Tepix 1y agoDo we know if Meta will stick to its strategy of making weights available (which isn't open source to be clear) now that they have a new "superintelligence" subdivision?
- burroisolator 1y agoAI only got big, especially for coding, because they were able to train on a massive corpus of open source code. I don't think it is a coincidence.
- hardwaresofton 1y agoAnother funny possibly sad coincidence is that the licenses that made open source what it is will probably be absolutely useless going forward, because as recent precedent has shown, companies can train on what they have legally gained access to. On the other hand, AGPL continues to be the future of F/OSS.
- andsoitis 1y ago> OpenAI is the only answer for those looking to build artificial general intelligence Let’s assume for a moment that OpenAI is the only company that can build AGI (specious claim), then the question I would have for Sam Altman: what is OpenAI’s plan once that milestone is reached, given his other argument: > And maybe more importantly than that, we actually care about building AGI in a good way,” he added. “Other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal to some other mission. But this is our top thing, and always will be. If building AGI is OpenAI’s only goal (unlike other companies), will OpenAI cease to exist once mission is accomplished or will a new mission be devised?
- jaza 1y agoI wouldn't worry, I forecast we'll have peace in the Middle East before we have true AGI.
- darth_avocado 1y agoOpenAI’s only goal isn’t building AGI. It is to build it first and make money off it.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoWhat even is the monetization plan for AI. Seems like the cutting edge tech becomes immediately devalued to nothing after a few months when a new open source modal is released. After spending so many billions on this stuff, are they really going to pay it all off selling API credits?
- elzbardico 1y agoSaid the guy whose life mission seems to be to convert a non-profit into a for-profit entity.
- trhway 1y agolook around - CA - missionaries have the best real estate. And another related note on connection between strong promotion of devotion to ideas and it is being a good business - the Abrahamic monotheism was a result of the successful marketing campaign "only the donations made here are donations to the real god" of that Temple back then against several other competing ones. (Curiously that the current historic stage of AI, on the cusp, be it 3 or 30 years, of emergence of AGI is somewhat close to that point in history back then. Thus in particular a flood of messiahs and doom sayers would only increase.)
- timewizard 1y agoIn short: "Liars prosper in the short term."
- trhway 1y agoThey can prosper longer than you can stay liquid or even alive :)
- timewizard 1y agoThat depends on the regulatory environment and the degree of market monopolization.
- elzbardico 1y agoThat's why lobbying is a lucrative business. Rent seekers are gonna rent seek.
- Quarrelsome 1y ago> the Abrahamic monotheism was a result of the successful marketing campaign I thought it was because everyone was accepted, technically equal, and sins were seen as something inherent and forgivable (at least with Christianity) whereas paganism and polythiesms can tend towards rewarding those with greater resources (who can afford to sacrifice an entire bull every religious cycle), thereby creating a form of religious inequality. At least that was one of the somewhat compelling arguments I heard that described the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.
- apwell23 1y agoAnother said: “Yes we’re quirky and weird, but that’s what makes this place a magical cradle of innovation,” wrote one. “OpenAI is weird in the most magical way. We contain multitudes.” i thought i was reading /r/linkedinlunatics
- seydor 1y agoThis is a bad year to talk about missions and ideologies. Just take the money and run
- amarcheschi 1y agoHad he been doing the poaching, he would be saying mercenaries will beat missionaries. Why believe in ceos words at this point
- pier25 1y agoSo he believes OpenAI is in some kind of moral or humanitarian mission? Is he lying or just delusional?
- jrflowers 1y agoHmm on the one hand somebody could have unimaginable wealth but on the other hand they could be in a religion started by a former reddit ceo, it is truly an unsolvable riddle
- jlebar 1y agoI think that leaks like this have negative information value to the public. I work at OAI, but I'm speaking for myself here. Sam talks to the company, sometimes via slack, more often in company-wide meetings, all the time. Way more than any other CEO I have worked for. This leaked message is one part of a long, continuing conversation within the company. The vast majority of what he and others say doesn't get leaked. So you're eavesdropping on a tiny portion of a conversation. It's impossible not to take it out of context. What's worse, you think you learned something from reading this article, even though you probably didn't, making you more confident in your conclusions when you should be less confident. I hope everyone here gets to have the experience of seeing HN discuss something that you're an expert in. It's eye-opening to see how confidently wrong most poasters are. It certainly has humbled my own reactions to news. (In this particular instance I don't think there's so much right and wrong but more that I think if you had actually been in the room for more of the conversation you'd probably feel different.) Btw Sam has tweeted about an open source model. Stay tuned... https://x.com/sama/status/1932573231199707168 https://x.com/sama/status/1932573231199707168
- incoming1211 1y agoSounds like someone is upset they didn't get poached.
- furyofantares 1y agoI've experienced that. Absolutely. But I've also experienced that the outside perspective, wrong as it may be on nearly all details, can give a dose of realism that's easy to brush aside internally.
- KaiserPro 1y agoI too worked at a place where hot button issues were being leaked to international news. Leaks were done for a reason. either because they agree with the leak, really disagree with the leak, or want to feel big because they are a broker of juicy information. Most of the time the leaks were done in an attempt to stop something stupid from happening, or highlight where upper management were making the choice to ignore something for a gain elsewhere. Other times it was there because the person was being a prick. Sure its a tiny part of the conversation, but in the end, if you've got the point where your employees are pissed off enough to leak, that's the bigger problem.
- beoberha 1y agoI understand the massive anti-OpenAI sentiment here, but OpenAI makes a really great product. ChatGPT and its ecosystem are widely used by millions every day to make them more productive. Losing these employees doesn’t bode well for users. Meta doesn’t really have a product unless you count the awful “Meta AI” that is baked into their apps. Unless these acquisitions manifest in frontier models getting open sourced, it feels like a gigantic brain drain.
- jstummbillig 1y agoMeta's real AI product is actually even worse than that and insidious: They try to run over companies who are (in contrast) successfully advancing AI with money they made by hooking teens on IG, and then just use the resulting inferior product as a marketing tool.
- gist 1y agoIn any case this is business and in many cases how business operates. Nice try on Sam's part to try and make it like it's a bad thing and everybody is for the good of the purpose.
- paxys 1y agoPretty telling that OpenAI only now feels like it has to reevaluate compensation for researchers while just weeks ago it spent $6.5 billion to hire Jony Ive. Maybe he can build your superintelligence for you.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoPoachers don't like poachers. We all remember the secret and illegal anti-poaching agreement between Adobe, Apple, Intel, Intuit, Google and Pixar.
- ALLTaken 1y ago[flagged]
- subarctic 1y agoJust looked it up, looks like they bought or merged with a company he worked at or owned part of, at a valuation of 6.5 billion. Not sure about the details, e.g.like how much of that he gets
- SequoiaHope 1y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=ive+openai https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ive+openai
- aspenmayer 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(company) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/technology/openai-jony-ive-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/technology/openai-jony-iv... ( https://archive.is/2025.05.26-084513/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/technology/openai-jony-ive-deal.html https://archive.is/2025.05.26-084513/https://www.nytimes.com... )
- lizknope 1y ago> hinting that the company is evaluating compensation for the entire research organization. TL ; DR Some other company paid more and got engineers to join them because the engineers care more about themselves and their families than some annoying guy's vision.
- sashank_1509 1y agoDo we know what numbers we are talking about here. I’ve heard 1. “So much money your grandchildren don’t need to work” 2. 100M 3. Not 100M So what is it? I’m just curious, I find 100M hard to believe but Zuck is capable of spending a lot.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- homefree 1y agoI hope xAI wins. I think Sam's self-portrayal as a missionary has a lot of irony - I see him as the ultimate mercenary. It's always challenging to judge based entirely on public perceptions, but at some point public evidence adds up. The board firing, getting maybe fired from YC (disputed), people leaving to start anthropic because of him, people stating they don't want him in charge of AGI. All the other execs leaving. His lying in congress, his lying to the board, his general affect just seems off - not in an aspie way, but in some dishonest way. Yeah it's subjective, but it's a point and it's different from Zuckerberg, Musk etc. who come across as earnest. Even PG said if dropped on an island of cannibals you'd come back and Sam would be king. I'm rooting for basically any of the other (American) players in the game to win. At least Zuck is paying something close to the value these people might generate instead of having them sign hostile agreements to claw back their equity and then feigning ignorance. If NBA all stars get 100M$+ contracts, it's not crazy for a John Carmack type to command the same or more - the hard part is being able to identify the talent, not justify the value created by the leverage of the correct talent (which is huge).
- lordfrito 1y agoSam Altman complaining about mercenary behavior from competitors... Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Guess he's unhappy he's not the one being mercenary in this situation.
- logsr 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/WrTKZKG7Ahc https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WrTKZKG7Ahc -- I would probably take Ari Emanuel's word on this one
- alganet 1y agoWhy does this feel like the "Friendship Ended With Musadir" meme? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/friendship-ended-with-mudasir https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/friendship-ended-with-mudasir