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Sam Altman's Coworkers Say He Can Barely Code and Misunderstands Basic Concepts

67 points by cebert 6mo ago

xvxvx 6mo ago
"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer." It's not a small chance, it's close to 100%. If your bullshit detector is not going off, you have a serious problem.
- avree 6mo ago
  I think it's a very small chance. Look at how many absolutely technically useless CEOs, such as Elon Musk, are still perceived by many in the industry and outside of it. The WeWork guy got funding for a new startup immediately post collapse. It takes a lot to reach SBF/Madoff levels.
  - Grimblewald 6mo ago
    Sbf built a pyramid scheme that collapsed. Sam altman has built a pyramid scheme that will soon collapse. The collapse is the point. This way insurance companies, advertisers, etc can buy the company and its assets, the customer data, that gives them a level of access to people laws and anti-trusts would otherwise prevent. the entire thing is built to collapse.
    - staticshock 6mo ago
      You know the saying, "when you owe the bank a million dollars, that's your problem, but when you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's the bank's problem"? I suspect the theory behind OpenAI is to grow to be "too big to fail" as fast as they can, because once they cross that threshold, their liquidity/solvency problems will cease to be theirs, and become everyone else's.
BoredPositron 6mo ago
I bet he is a menace but so are probably 90% of c-suite tech execs. Like with Elon and Zuck it's the insecurities which make it at least funny to watch from the sidelines.
- d2dfsd 6mo ago
  Im going to get into trouble for saying this but many of these CEOs seem to be a mix of vertically challenged, challenged in terms of looks/social aura/charasima and so on. Perhaps these are necessary characteristics to have drive.. the problem is they end up taking out that energy on the rest of society. E.g. Zuck with "dumb fucks" and we've already seen Musk unmasked. You never saw this kind of stuff with Steve Jobs who admittedly wasnt perfect - but he wasn't challenged physically / social standing. Perhaps that's why he wasn't a weirdo like the rest of them.
  - skybrian 6mo ago
    Didn’t Jobs have nutty beliefs about food and healthcare?
  - hgoel 6mo ago
    I feel like this is largely just what Musk/Zuck/Jeff's generation of rich fucks is like. Kind of like how the ones before them (Gates, Jobs etc) were more hated for being dirty/ruthless businessmen, but weren't known for being so openly and pathetically insecure. On the other hand, I'm probably just finding a generational distinction where there is none. Edit: And anyway, SBF, Altman etc are not the same generation as Musk etc IIRC
    - zulux 6mo ago
      Gates is weapons-grade awkward and just plain weird. 56K internet was slow to notice. But the poor schmuck had to hire Russians to boink him, and he got a VD from it per the Epsein files.
      - hgoel 6mo ago
pram 6mo ago
I am amused at how pissy he can get in interviews. Who thought it was a great idea to have this guy doing PR?
glerk 6mo ago
> I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff What's with all the hit pieces on Sam Altman lately? He's a CEO, his job is to grow the business, not to code. That part is handled by the engineers that he hired. How many CEOs out there are also great programmers? Sure, I would prefer Sam Altman to have more technical depth given the business he is leading, but lack of technical depth doesn't make him a Bernie Madoff.
- cal_dent 6mo ago
  exactly. frankly its just a bunch of pissy holier than thou engineer thing. He seems to be pretty good at raising capital and selling dreams which his predominantly what Openai seemingly wants to be right now. New Yorker article less so because its just a standard ceo profile piece that digs out pretty pertinent things for a ceo role
- mikeryan 6mo ago
  Well there's the whole issue that Open AI wasn't a "business" when it started, it was in fact a non-profit focused on safe AGI for humanity. That said the whole "He's a CEO thing" is a convenient escape hatch now that it's a for-profit business (just ignore the whole way it got there). Just because you're a successful CEO doesn't mean you're not a shitty person or immune from so-called "hit pieces".
  - glerk 6mo ago
    Yeah sure no one high profile is immune from hit pieces, and I'm not pretending Sam Altman is flawless. But I would want the attacks to be fair. OpenAI pivoting from their original business model is fair criticism. "Sam Altman doesn't know how to code, therefore he's the next Bernie Madoff" is not. Intellectually dishonest stuff like this doesn't belong on HN front page.
    - mikeryan 6mo ago
      I agree this article doesn’t add to the conversation except as additional color that belongs in a larger story. I think it’s about as strong as trying to absolve Sam by saying “he’s a CEO so he does CEO things.”
mbgerring 6mo ago
I’m old enough to remember that Sam Altman’s claim to fame before OpenAI, before running YC, was running a failed also-ran location-based whatever Web 2.0 scam startup thing that accomplished nothing and that no one remembers. His entire “career” is based on persuading people with money to give him more of it. The incentive structures are such that everyone sucks up to people in a position to give you a lot of money, so all these people with no real skills, talent or track record get regarded as “geniuses”, but like, even when you understand why this happens, it doesn’t make it any less rage-inducing. What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?
- tkel 6mo ago
  Reminds me of Elon Musk. Grifting off of techno-futuro-optimism. Hyperloop, Boring tunnel, going to mars, self-driving cars, etc. Perhaps it's common to CEOs, lying/manipulating to people to create hype in order to convince them to give you money.
  - giancarlostoro 6mo ago
    Sure, but Elon Musk had known engineering roles at various companies, and built a space company nobody, not even himself thought would succeed, into the most viable and affordable way to get things into space. Idk if I had to be stranded on an island with either Elon or Sam, I think I'd rather be stuck with Elon.
    - Gud 6mo ago
      Honestly I’d just start swimming.
- wpm 6mo ago
  We need to start talking about people like this truthfully: they are sick. Fucked up. Broken. They do not deserve fame or fortune, they deserve a padded cell, close observation by psychologists and neurologists and try and figure out how we can stop it happening. Horribly manipulative Smaug-likes who only care for themselves, why must the rest of us be beholden to them? To be victims to the havoc they wreak? Why do we put up with it?
ergocoder 6mo ago
People like to gatekeep coding as if it was some sort of mythical skills that only extremely smart people could do. Tons of people can code. Coding is not some sort of mythical skill. Millions of people can code. For some reason, this narrative is almost always applying on people who are politically incompatible with the left like Elon and Sam.
- boshalfoshal 6mo ago
  Apart from your last paragraph which is a little contentious, I agree with what you say. I dont understand why people here require that every tech ceo to be some professional programmer or engineer. I don't think you _need_ to be that deep in it as the CEO. There are plenty of leaders at OpenAI that already fit the bill. Sam is good at getting funding, seeing the bigger picture, and rallying towards a cause. That is the job of a CEO. It doesn't matter (imo) that he doesn't know how many parameters the next release will have. All that matters is he knows the impact of the new release and knows who to defer to for actual technical decisions.
zulux 6mo ago
The hard part for some of us: Can we learn anything from this to help our own careers?
squirrellous 6mo ago
This is probably the least important bad thing you could say about Altman. Also why is a low effort commentary piece of the NYT article on the HN front page?
fhe 6mo ago
even if this were true, PG (who can code, and can tell if someone else can) didn't think it was an issue when handing over YC to Altman.
- Grimblewald 6mo ago
  Perhaps that says less of altman and more of YC.
adamnemecek 6mo ago
Neither did Steve Jobs and no one cared.
- Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
  I think there's more nuance to it from what I can find on the internet. Jobs definitely had knowledge about coding and other technical issues to do his job. Here's Eric Schmidt on this: He was exactly the same way he was at Apple: strongly opinionated, knew what he was doing. He was so passionate about object-oriented programming. He had this extraordinary depth. I have a PhD in this area, and he was so charismatic he could convince me of things I didn’t actually believe. I should tell you this story. We’re in a meeting at NeXT, before Steve went back to Apple. I’ve got my chief scientist. After the meeting, we leave and try to unravel the argument to figure out where Steve was wrong—because he was obviously wrong. And we couldn’t do it. We’re standing in the parking lot. He sees us from his office, and he comes back out to argue with us some more. It was over a technical issue involving Objective C, a computer language. Why he would care about this was beyond me. I’ve never seen that kind of passion. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs-10062011.html http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-j... (This comment has essentially been taken from reddit[0] @thirdxeye as I think that he summed it better than I could) [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/34y49x/did_steve_jobs_actually_know_how_to_code/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/34y49x/did_steve_job...
alierfan 6mo ago
[dead]
gpjt 6mo ago
Wait, that's it? Seven paragraphs, all short? Two quotes, one from some anonymous MS exec? Is the site sending some minimal version of the article to me because I'm using Brave, or is this the lowest-content article I've seen in weeks (and I'm on Twitter)?
WheelsAtLarge 6mo ago
This doesn’t really surprise me. Most company leaders don’t have a detailed view of day to day work, they couldn’t step in and do every employee’s job. What they are good at is creating a clear story and direction that brings people together around a shared goal. That’s what Sam has done, especially in how he’s sold that vision to investors and raised billions. You could say the same about leaders like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. It’s not necessarily a perfect system, but it’s often how companies grow and attract funding. No, they are not the perfect humans. It's just how business works.
loky4i44 6mo ago
who even though he can code ? and why that matters ?
- nh23423fefe 6mo ago
  envy
il-b 6mo ago
Well, ChatGPT works. Why would anyone care whether the CEO can code?
trashcan2137 6mo ago
According to a Polish saying: unused organs fade away. Makes me really reconsider if it doesn't extend to morals and skills as well.
keernan 6mo ago
It's interesting how often posts get flagged if there is any negativity towards a billionaire tech bro.
- LenaRyouna 6mo ago
  This isn't Reddit, go back to Reddit if you want to default every conversation as a billionaire that isn't redistributing wealth = bad.
- nh23423fefe 6mo ago
  Why would predictable blather be interesting?
josefritzishere 6mo ago
As a culture the west needs to understand that CEOs aren't exalted super geniuses. Most of them are shockingly average in their intelligence, some are even below average. In their focus area they are usually competent, but not as much as someone who is still actively doing that type of work. But usually the "special" quality they have in abundance is sociopathy. https://thecontextofthings.com/2019/10/17/so-are-most-ceos-sociopaths/ https://thecontextofthings.com/2019/10/17/so-are-most-ceos-s...
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
craftoman 6mo ago
Elon Musk can’t even install Python on his machine.
Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
Why is this flagged?
Chance-Device 6mo ago
I don’t think Sam Altman has claimed to be a tech genius, and I don’t think he needs to be one for the role he’s in, CEO and engineer are not the same thing and require different skill sets. If people want to attack him, there are probably better vectors than this one. The real question is - is he actually a good CEO? Has he done any better for the company than someone else would have? I think that’s the real unanswered question and stands quite apart from any ethical or character critiques.
- bigyabai 6mo ago
  The definition of "good CEO" is too mercurial for that question to be answerable. A CEO can afford to make incredibly boneheaded decisions that others call genius, like Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman-Fried did. Rushing to evaluate executive performance based on murky results or impressive transaction volume is how investors end up losing billions. The title is indeed an obvious puff-piece, but it does reflect the general hatred towards America's professional liars. Maybe Sam has what it takes to be a great CEO, but posterity is already recording him as a dishonest sociopath and federal sycophant.
  - Chance-Device 6mo ago
    Are you basically saying that all CEOs are equally useless so it’s a meaningless question? I sympathise with the cynicism but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I do think there’s some way of evaluating performance here, even if I don’t know exactly what it is.

67 points by cebert 6mo ago

xvxvx 6mo ago

"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer." It's not a small chance, it's close to 100%. If your bullshit detector is not going off, you have a serious problem.

avree 6mo ago
I think it's a very small chance. Look at how many absolutely technically useless CEOs, such as Elon Musk, are still perceived by many in the industry and outside of it. The WeWork guy got funding for a new startup immediately post collapse. It takes a lot to reach SBF/Madoff levels.
- Grimblewald 6mo ago
  Sbf built a pyramid scheme that collapsed. Sam altman has built a pyramid scheme that will soon collapse. The collapse is the point. This way insurance companies, advertisers, etc can buy the company and its assets, the customer data, that gives them a level of access to people laws and anti-trusts would otherwise prevent. the entire thing is built to collapse.
  - staticshock 6mo ago
    You know the saying, "when you owe the bank a million dollars, that's your problem, but when you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's the bank's problem"? I suspect the theory behind OpenAI is to grow to be "too big to fail" as fast as they can, because once they cross that threshold, their liquidity/solvency problems will cease to be theirs, and become everyone else's.

BoredPositron 6mo ago

I bet he is a menace but so are probably 90% of c-suite tech execs. Like with Elon and Zuck it's the insecurities which make it at least funny to watch from the sidelines.

d2dfsd 6mo ago
Im going to get into trouble for saying this but many of these CEOs seem to be a mix of vertically challenged, challenged in terms of looks/social aura/charasima and so on. Perhaps these are necessary characteristics to have drive.. the problem is they end up taking out that energy on the rest of society. E.g. Zuck with "dumb fucks" and we've already seen Musk unmasked. You never saw this kind of stuff with Steve Jobs who admittedly wasnt perfect - but he wasn't challenged physically / social standing. Perhaps that's why he wasn't a weirdo like the rest of them.
- skybrian 6mo ago
  Didn’t Jobs have nutty beliefs about food and healthcare?
- hgoel 6mo ago
  I feel like this is largely just what Musk/Zuck/Jeff's generation of rich fucks is like. Kind of like how the ones before them (Gates, Jobs etc) were more hated for being dirty/ruthless businessmen, but weren't known for being so openly and pathetically insecure. On the other hand, I'm probably just finding a generational distinction where there is none. Edit: And anyway, SBF, Altman etc are not the same generation as Musk etc IIRC
  - zulux 6mo ago
    Gates is weapons-grade awkward and just plain weird. 56K internet was slow to notice. But the poor schmuck had to hire Russians to boink him, and he got a VD from it per the Epsein files.
    - hgoel 6mo ago

pram 6mo ago

I am amused at how pissy he can get in interviews. Who thought it was a great idea to have this guy doing PR?

glerk 6mo ago

> I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff What's with all the hit pieces on Sam Altman lately? He's a CEO, his job is to grow the business, not to code. That part is handled by the engineers that he hired. How many CEOs out there are also great programmers? Sure, I would prefer Sam Altman to have more technical depth given the business he is leading, but lack of technical depth doesn't make him a Bernie Madoff.

cal_dent 6mo ago
exactly. frankly its just a bunch of pissy holier than thou engineer thing. He seems to be pretty good at raising capital and selling dreams which his predominantly what Openai seemingly wants to be right now. New Yorker article less so because its just a standard ceo profile piece that digs out pretty pertinent things for a ceo role
mikeryan 6mo ago
Well there's the whole issue that Open AI wasn't a "business" when it started, it was in fact a non-profit focused on safe AGI for humanity. That said the whole "He's a CEO thing" is a convenient escape hatch now that it's a for-profit business (just ignore the whole way it got there). Just because you're a successful CEO doesn't mean you're not a shitty person or immune from so-called "hit pieces".
- glerk 6mo ago
  Yeah sure no one high profile is immune from hit pieces, and I'm not pretending Sam Altman is flawless. But I would want the attacks to be fair. OpenAI pivoting from their original business model is fair criticism. "Sam Altman doesn't know how to code, therefore he's the next Bernie Madoff" is not. Intellectually dishonest stuff like this doesn't belong on HN front page.
  - mikeryan 6mo ago
    I agree this article doesn’t add to the conversation except as additional color that belongs in a larger story. I think it’s about as strong as trying to absolve Sam by saying “he’s a CEO so he does CEO things.”

mbgerring 6mo ago

I’m old enough to remember that Sam Altman’s claim to fame before OpenAI, before running YC, was running a failed also-ran location-based whatever Web 2.0 scam startup thing that accomplished nothing and that no one remembers. His entire “career” is based on persuading people with money to give him more of it. The incentive structures are such that everyone sucks up to people in a position to give you a lot of money, so all these people with no real skills, talent or track record get regarded as “geniuses”, but like, even when you understand why this happens, it doesn’t make it any less rage-inducing. What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?

tkel 6mo ago
Reminds me of Elon Musk. Grifting off of techno-futuro-optimism. Hyperloop, Boring tunnel, going to mars, self-driving cars, etc. Perhaps it's common to CEOs, lying/manipulating to people to create hype in order to convince them to give you money.
- giancarlostoro 6mo ago
  Sure, but Elon Musk had known engineering roles at various companies, and built a space company nobody, not even himself thought would succeed, into the most viable and affordable way to get things into space. Idk if I had to be stranded on an island with either Elon or Sam, I think I'd rather be stuck with Elon.
  - Gud 6mo ago
    Honestly I’d just start swimming.
wpm 6mo ago
We need to start talking about people like this truthfully: they are sick. Fucked up. Broken. They do not deserve fame or fortune, they deserve a padded cell, close observation by psychologists and neurologists and try and figure out how we can stop it happening. Horribly manipulative Smaug-likes who only care for themselves, why must the rest of us be beholden to them? To be victims to the havoc they wreak? Why do we put up with it?

ergocoder 6mo ago

People like to gatekeep coding as if it was some sort of mythical skills that only extremely smart people could do. Tons of people can code. Coding is not some sort of mythical skill. Millions of people can code. For some reason, this narrative is almost always applying on people who are politically incompatible with the left like Elon and Sam.

boshalfoshal 6mo ago
Apart from your last paragraph which is a little contentious, I agree with what you say. I dont understand why people here require that every tech ceo to be some professional programmer or engineer. I don't think you _need_ to be that deep in it as the CEO. There are plenty of leaders at OpenAI that already fit the bill. Sam is good at getting funding, seeing the bigger picture, and rallying towards a cause. That is the job of a CEO. It doesn't matter (imo) that he doesn't know how many parameters the next release will have. All that matters is he knows the impact of the new release and knows who to defer to for actual technical decisions.

zulux 6mo ago

The hard part for some of us: Can we learn anything from this to help our own careers?

squirrellous 6mo ago

This is probably the least important bad thing you could say about Altman. Also why is a low effort commentary piece of the NYT article on the HN front page?

fhe 6mo ago

even if this were true, PG (who can code, and can tell if someone else can) didn't think it was an issue when handing over YC to Altman.

Grimblewald 6mo ago
Perhaps that says less of altman and more of YC.

adamnemecek 6mo ago

Neither did Steve Jobs and no one cared.

Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
I think there's more nuance to it from what I can find on the internet. Jobs definitely had knowledge about coding and other technical issues to do his job. Here's Eric Schmidt on this: He was exactly the same way he was at Apple: strongly opinionated, knew what he was doing. He was so passionate about object-oriented programming. He had this extraordinary depth. I have a PhD in this area, and he was so charismatic he could convince me of things I didn’t actually believe. I should tell you this story. We’re in a meeting at NeXT, before Steve went back to Apple. I’ve got my chief scientist. After the meeting, we leave and try to unravel the argument to figure out where Steve was wrong—because he was obviously wrong. And we couldn’t do it. We’re standing in the parking lot. He sees us from his office, and he comes back out to argue with us some more. It was over a technical issue involving Objective C, a computer language. Why he would care about this was beyond me. I’ve never seen that kind of passion. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs-10062011.html http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-j... (This comment has essentially been taken from reddit[0] @thirdxeye as I think that he summed it better than I could) [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/34y49x/did_steve_jobs_actually_know_how_to_code/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/34y49x/did_steve_job...

alierfan 6mo ago

[dead]

gpjt 6mo ago

Wait, that's it? Seven paragraphs, all short? Two quotes, one from some anonymous MS exec? Is the site sending some minimal version of the article to me because I'm using Brave, or is this the lowest-content article I've seen in weeks (and I'm on Twitter)?

WheelsAtLarge 6mo ago

This doesn’t really surprise me. Most company leaders don’t have a detailed view of day to day work, they couldn’t step in and do every employee’s job. What they are good at is creating a clear story and direction that brings people together around a shared goal. That’s what Sam has done, especially in how he’s sold that vision to investors and raised billions. You could say the same about leaders like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. It’s not necessarily a perfect system, but it’s often how companies grow and attract funding. No, they are not the perfect humans. It's just how business works.

loky4i44 6mo ago

who even though he can code ? and why that matters ?

nh23423fefe 6mo ago
envy

il-b 6mo ago

Well, ChatGPT works. Why would anyone care whether the CEO can code?

trashcan2137 6mo ago

According to a Polish saying: unused organs fade away. Makes me really reconsider if it doesn't extend to morals and skills as well.

keernan 6mo ago

It's interesting how often posts get flagged if there is any negativity towards a billionaire tech bro.

LenaRyouna 6mo ago
This isn't Reddit, go back to Reddit if you want to default every conversation as a billionaire that isn't redistributing wealth = bad.
nh23423fefe 6mo ago
Why would predictable blather be interesting?

josefritzishere 6mo ago

As a culture the west needs to understand that CEOs aren't exalted super geniuses. Most of them are shockingly average in their intelligence, some are even below average. In their focus area they are usually competent, but not as much as someone who is still actively doing that type of work. But usually the "special" quality they have in abundance is sociopathy. https://thecontextofthings.com/2019/10/17/so-are-most-ceos-sociopaths/ https://thecontextofthings.com/2019/10/17/so-are-most-ceos-s...

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

craftoman 6mo ago

Elon Musk can’t even install Python on his machine.

Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago

Why is this flagged?

Chance-Device 6mo ago

I don’t think Sam Altman has claimed to be a tech genius, and I don’t think he needs to be one for the role he’s in, CEO and engineer are not the same thing and require different skill sets. If people want to attack him, there are probably better vectors than this one. The real question is - is he actually a good CEO? Has he done any better for the company than someone else would have? I think that’s the real unanswered question and stands quite apart from any ethical or character critiques.

bigyabai 6mo ago
The definition of "good CEO" is too mercurial for that question to be answerable. A CEO can afford to make incredibly boneheaded decisions that others call genius, like Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman-Fried did. Rushing to evaluate executive performance based on murky results or impressive transaction volume is how investors end up losing billions. The title is indeed an obvious puff-piece, but it does reflect the general hatred towards America's professional liars. Maybe Sam has what it takes to be a great CEO, but posterity is already recording him as a dishonest sociopath and federal sycophant.
- Chance-Device 6mo ago
  Are you basically saying that all CEOs are equally useless so it’s a meaningless question? I sympathise with the cynicism but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I do think there’s some way of evaluating performance here, even if I don’t know exactly what it is.