[HN Gopher] Reflections on OpenAI
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Reflections on OpenAI
Author : calvinfo
Score : 280 points
Date : 2025-07-15 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (calv.info)
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Maybe I'm paranoid but this sounds too good to be true. Almost
| like something planted to help with recruiting after meta poached
| their best guys.
| Reubend wrote:
| The fact that they gave little shout outs at the end makes me
| think they wanted to avoid burning bridges by criticizing the
| company.
| istjohn wrote:
| They didn't mind burning MS
| bink wrote:
| They almost certainly still own shares/options in the
| company.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI,
| and LLMs are easily the technological innovation of the decade.
|
| I really can't see a person with at least minimal self-
| awareness talking their own work up this much. Give me a break
| dude. Plus, you haven't built AGI yet.
|
| Can't believe there's so little critique of this post here.
| It's incredibly self-serving.
| torginus wrote:
| It sounds to me in contrast to the grandiose claims OpenAI
| tries to make about its own products - it views AI as 'regular
| technology', and is pragmatically tries to build viable
| products using it.
| bhl wrote:
| > The Codex sprint was probably the hardest I've worked in nearly
| a decade. Most nights were up until 11 or midnight. Waking up to
| a newborn at 5:30 every morning. Heading to the office again at
| 7a. Working most weekends.
|
| There's so much compression / time-dilation in the industry:
| large projects are pushed out and released in weeks; careers are
| made in months.
|
| Worried about how sustainable this is for its people, given the
| risk of burnout.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not sustainable, at all, but if it's happening just a
| couple times throughout your career, it's doable; I know people
| who went through that process, at that company, and came out of
| it energized.
| babelfish wrote:
| This is what being a wartime company looks like
| lvl155 wrote:
| I am not saying that's easy work but most motivated people do
| this. And if you're conscious of this that probably means you
| viewed it more as a job than your calling.
| beebmam wrote:
| Those that love the work they do don't burn out, because every
| moment working on their projects tends to be joyful. I
| personally hate working with people who hate the work they do,
| and I look forward to them being burned out
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| "You don't really love what you do unless you're willing to
| do it 17 hours a day every day" is an interesting take.
|
| You can love what you do but if you do more of it than is
| sustainable because of external pressures then you will burn
| out. Enjoying your work is not a vaccine against burnout. I'd
| actually argue that people who love what they do are more
| likely to have trouble finding that balance. The person who
| hates what they do usually can't be motivated to do more than
| the minimum required of them.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Weird how we went from like the 4 hour workweek and all
| those charts about how people historically famous in their
| field spent only a few hours a day on what they were most
| famous for, to "work 12+ hours a day or you're useless".
|
| Also this is one of a few examples I've read lately of "oh
| look at all this hard work I did", ignoring that they had a
| newborn and someone else actually did all of the hard work.
| alwa wrote:
| I read gp's formulation differently: "if you're working 17
| hours a day, you'd better stop soon unless you're doing it
| for the love of doing it." In that sense it seems like you
| and gp might agree that it's bad for you and for your
| coworkers if you're working like that because of external
| pressures.
|
| I don't delight in anybody's suffering or burnout. But I do
| feel relief when somebody is suffering from the pace or
| intensity, and alleviates their suffering by striking a
| more sustainable balance for them.
|
| I feel like even people energized by efforts like that pay
| the piper: after such a period I for one "lay fallow"--
| tending to extended family and community, doing phone-it-in
| "day job" stuff, being in nature--for almost as long as the
| creative binge itself lasted.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| I would indeed agree with things as you've stated. I
| interpreted "the work they do" to mean "their craft" but
| if it was intended as "their specific working conditions"
| I can see how it'd read differently.
|
| I think there are a lot of people that love their craft
| but are in specific working conditions that lead to
| burnout, and all I was saying is that I don't think it
| means they love their craft any less.
| procinct wrote:
| Sure, but this schedule is like, maybe 5 hours of sleep per
| night. Other than an extreme minority of people, there's no
| way you can be operating on that for long and doing your best
| work. A good 8 hours per night will make most people a better
| engineer and a better person to be around.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| My hot take is I don't think burn out has much to do with raw
| hours spent working. I feel it has a lot more to do with sense
| of momentum and autonomy. You can work extremely hard 100 hour
| weeks six months in a row, in the right team and still feel
| highly energized at the end of it. But if it feels like wading
| through a swamp, you will burn out very quickly, even if it's
| just 50 hours a week. I also find ownership has a lot to do
| with sense of burnout
| matwood wrote:
| And if the work you're doing feels meaningful and you're
| properly compensated. Ask people to work really hard to fill
| out their 360 reviews and they should rightly laugh at you.
| parpfish wrote:
| i hope thats not a hot take because it's 100% correct.
|
| people conflate the terms "burnout" and "overwork" because
| they seem semantically similar, but they are very different.
|
| you can fix overwork with a vacation. burnout is a deeper
| existential wound.
|
| my worst bout of burnout actually came in a cushy job where i
| was consistently underworked but felt no autonomy or sense of
| purpose for why we were doing the things we were doing.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > You can work extremely hard 100 hour weeks six months in a
| row, in the right team and still feel highly energized at the
| end of it.
|
| Something about youth being wasted on young.
| rvz wrote:
| > Worried about how sustainable this is for its people, given
| the risk of burnout.
|
| Well given the amount of money OpenAI pays their engineers,
| this is what it comes with. It tells you that this is not a
| daycare or for coasters or for the faint of heart, especially
| at a startup at the epicenter of AI competition.
|
| There is now a massive queue of lots of desperate 'software
| engineers' ready to kill for a job at OpenAI and will not
| tolerate the word "burnout" and might even work 24 hours to
| keep the job away from others.
|
| For those who love what they do, the word "burnout" doesn't
| exist for them.
| alwa wrote:
| If anyone tried to demand that I work that way, I'd say
| absolutely not.
|
| But when I sink my teeth into something interesting and
| important (to me) for a few weeks' or months' nonstop sprint,
| I'd say no to anyone trying to rein me in, too!
|
| Speaking only for myself, I can recognize those kinds of
| projects as they first start to make my mind twitch. I know
| ahead of time that I'll have no gas left the tank by the end,
| and I plan accordingly.
|
| Luckily I've found a community who relate to the world and each
| other that way too. Often those projects aren't materially
| rewarding, but the few that are (combined with very modest
| material needs) sustain the others.
| bradyriddle wrote:
| I'd be curious to know about this community. Is this a formal
| group or just the people that you've collected throughout
| your life?
| alwa wrote:
| The latter. I mean, I feel like a disproportionate number
| of folks who hang around here have that kind of
| disposition.
|
| That just turns out to be the kind of person who likes to
| be around me, and I around them. It's something I wish I
| had been more deliberate about cultivating earlier in my
| life, but not the sort of thing I regret.
|
| In my case that's a lot of artists/writers/hackers, a fair
| number of clergy, and people working in service to others.
| People quietly doing cool stuff in boring or difficult
| places... people whose all-out sprints result in ambiguity
| or failure at least as often as they do success. Very few
| rich people, very few who seek recognition.
|
| The flip side is that neither I nor my social circles are
| all that good at consistency--but we all kind of expect and
| tolerate that about each other. And there's lots of
| "normal" stuff I'm not part of, which I probably could have
| been if I had tried. I don't know what that means to the
| business-minded people around here, but I imagine it
| includes things like corporate and nonprofit boards,
| attending sports events in stadia, whatever golf people do,
| retail politics, Society Clubs For Respectable People,
| "Summering," owning rich people stuff like a house or a car
| --which is fine with me!
|
| More than enough is too much :)
| ishita159 wrote:
| I think senior folks at OpenAI realized this is not
| sustainable and hence took the "wellness week".
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| How did they have any time left to be a parent?
| ambicapter wrote:
| > I returned early from my paternity leave to help
| participate in the Codex launch.
|
| Obvious priorities there.
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| That part made me do a double take. I hope his child never
| learns they were being put second.
| suncemoje wrote:
| I'm sure they'll look back at it and smile, no?
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| The author left after 14 months at OpenAI, so that seems like a
| burnout duration.
| ojr wrote:
| for the amount of money they are giving that is relatively
| easy, normal people are paid way less in harder jobs, for
| example, working in an Amazon Warehouse or doing door-to-door
| sales, etc.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I couldn't imagine asking my partner to pick up that kind of
| childcare slack. Props to OP's wife for doing so, and I'm glad
| she got the callout at the end, but god damn.
| kaashif wrote:
| Working a job like that would literally ruin my life. There's
| no way I could have time to be a good husband and father under
| those conditions, some things should not be sacrificed.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I don't really have an opinion on working that much, but
| working that much _and_ having to go into the office to spend
| those long hours sounds like torture.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > The thing that I appreciate most is that the company is that it
| "walks the walk" in terms of distributing the benefits of AI.
| Cutting edge models aren't reserved for some enterprise-grade
| tier with an annual agreement. Anybody in the world can jump onto
| ChatGPT and get an answer, even if they aren't logged in.
|
| I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any at
| all. What it actually does is create a prisoner's dilemma
| situation where some use it to become more efficient only because
| it makes them faster and then others do the same to keep up. But
| I think everyone would be FAR better off without AI.
|
| What keeping AI free for everyone is akin to is keeping an
| addictive drug free for everyone so that it can be sold in larger
| quantities later.
|
| One can argue that some technology is beneficial. A mosquito net
| made of plastic immediately improves one's comfort if out in the
| woods. But AI doesn't really offer any immediate TRUE improvement
| of life, only a bit more convenience in a world already saturated
| in it. It's past the point of diminishing returns for true life
| improvement and I think everyone deep down inside knows that, but
| is seduced by the nearly-magical quality of it because we are
| instinctually driven to seek out advantags and new information.
| ookblah wrote:
| i don't really understand this thought process. all technology
| has it's advantages and drawbacks and we are currently going
| through the hype and growing pains process.
|
| you could just as well argue the internet, phones, tv, cars,
| all adhere to the exact same prisoner's dilemma situation you
| talk about. you could just as well use AI to rubber duck or
| ease your mental load than treat it like some rat-race to
| efficiency.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| True, but it is meaningful to understand whether the
| "quantity" advantages - drawbacks decreases over time, which
| I believe it does.
|
| And we should indeed apply the logic to other inventions:
| some are more worth using than others, whereas in today's
| society, we just use all of them due to the mechanisms of the
| prisoner's dilemma. The Amish, on the other hand, apply
| deliberation on whether to use certain technologies, which is
| a far better approach.
| christiangenco wrote:
| > I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any
| at all. What it actually does is create a prisoner's dilemma
| situation where some use it to become more efficient only
| because it makes them faster and then others do the same to
| keep up. But I think everyone would be FAR better off without
| AI.
|
| Personally, my life has significantly improved in meaningful
| ways with AI. Apart from the obvious work benefits (I'm
| shipping code ~10x faster than pre-AI), LLMs act as my personal
| nutritionist, trainer, therapist, research assistant, executive
| assistant (triaging email, doing SEO-related work, researching
| purchases, etc.), and a much better/faster way to search for
| and synthesize information than my old method of using Google.
|
| The benefits I've gotten are much more than conveniences and
| the only argument I can find that anyone else is worse off
| because of these benefits is that I don't hire junior
| developers anymore (at max I was working with 3 for a
| contracting job). At the same time, though, all of them are
| _also_ using LLMs in similar ways for similar benefits (and
| working on their own projects) so I 'd argue they're net much
| better off.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| A few programmers being better off does not make an entire
| society better off. In fact, I'd argue that you shipping code
| 10x faster just means in the long run that consumerism is
| being accelerated at a similar rate because that is what most
| code is used for, eventually.
| simonw wrote:
| I spent much of my career working on open source software
| that helped other engineers ship code 10x faster. Should I
| feel bad about the impact my work there had on accelerating
| consumerism?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I don't know if you should feel bad or not, but even I
| know that I have a role to play in consumerism that I
| wish I didn't.
|
| That doesn't necessitate feeling bad because the reaction
| to feel good or bad about something is a side effect of
| the sort of religious "good and evil" mentality that
| probably came about due to Christianity or something. But
| *regardless*, one should at least understand that because
| our world has reached a sufficient critical mass of
| complexity, even the things we do that we think are
| benign or helpful can have negative side effects.
|
| I never claim that we should feel bad about that, but we
| should understand it and attempt to mitigate it
| nonetheless. And, where no mitigation is possible, we
| should also advocate for a better societal structure that
| will eventually, in years or decades, result in fewer
| deleterious side effects.
| simonw wrote:
| The TV show The Good Place actually dug into this quite a
| bit. One of the key themes explored in the show was the
| idea that there is no ethical consumption under
| capitalism, because eventually the things you consume can
| be tied back to some grossly unethical situation
| somewhere in the world.
| jfyi wrote:
| That theme was primarily explored through the idea it's
| impossible to live a truly ethical life in the modern
| world due to unknowable externalities.
|
| I don't think the takeaway was meant to really be about
| capitalism but more generally the complexity of the
| system. That's just me though.
| simonw wrote:
| "I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any
| at all."
|
| OK, if you're going to say things like this I'm going to insist
| you clarify which subset of "AI" you mean.
|
| Presumably you're OK with the last few decades of machine
| learning algorithms for things like spam detection, search
| relevance etc.
|
| I'll assume your problem is with the last few years of
| "generative AI" - a loose term for models that output text and
| images instead of purely being used for classification.
|
| Are predictive text keyboards on a phone OK (tiny LLMs)? How
| about translation engines like Google Translate?
|
| Vision LLMs to help with wildlife camera trap analysis? How
| about to help with visual impairments navigate the world?
|
| I suspect your problem isn't with "AI", it's with the way
| specific AI systems are being built and applied. I think we can
| have much more constructive conversations if we move beyond
| blanket labeling "AI" as the problem.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| 1. Here is the subset: any algorithm, which is learning
| based, trained on a large data set, and modifies or generates
| content.
|
| 2. I would argue that translation engines have their
| positives and negatives, but a lot of them are negative,
| because they lead to translators losing their jobs, and a
| loss in general for the magical qualities of language
| learning.
|
| 3. Predictive text: I think people should not be presented
| with possible next words, and think of them on their own,
| because that means they will be more thoughtful in their
| writing and less automatic. Also, with a higher barrier to
| writing something, they will probably write less and what
| they do write will be of greater significance.
|
| 4. I am against all LLMs, including wildlife camera trap
| analysis. There is an overabundance of hiding behind research
| when we really already know the problem fairly well. It's a
| fringe piece of conservation research anyway.
|
| 5. Visual impairments: one can always appeal to helping the
| disabled and impaired, but I think the tradeoff is not worth
| the technological enslavement.
|
| 6. My problem is categorically with AI, not with how it is
| applied, PRECISELY BECAUSE AI cannot be applied in an ethical
| way, since human beings en masse will inevitably have a
| sufficient number of bad actors to make the net effect always
| negative. It's human nature.
| simonw wrote:
| Thanks for this, it's a good answer. I think "generative
| AI" is the closest term we have to that subset you describe
| there.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Just to add one final point: I included modification as
| well as generation of content, since I also want to
| exclude technologies that simply improve upon existing
| content in some way that is very close to generative but
| may not be considered so. For example: audio improvent
| like echo removal, ML noise removal, which I have already
| shown to interpolate.
|
| I think AI classification and stuff like classification
| is probably okay but of course with that, as with all
| technologies, we should be cautious of how we use it as
| it can be used also in facial recognition, which in turn
| can be used to create a stronger police state.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I wish your parent comment didn't get downvoted, because
| this is an important conversation point.
|
| "PRECISELY BECAUSE AI cannot be applied in an ethical way,
| since human beings en masse will inevitably have a
| sufficient number of bad actors"
|
| I think this is vibes based on bad headlines and no actual
| numbers (and tbf, founders/CEO's talking outta their a**).
| In my real-life experience the advantages of specifically
| generative AI far outweighs the disadvantages, by like a
| really large margin. I say this as someone academically
| trained on well modeled Dynamical systems (the opposite of
| Machine Learning). My team just lost. Badly.
|
| Case-in-point: I work with language localization teams that
| have fully adopted LLM based translation services (our
| DeepL.com bills are huge), but we've only hired more
| translators and are processing more translations faster.
| It's just..not working out like we were told in the
| headlines. Doomsday Radiologist predictions [1], same
| thing.
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/technology/ai-jobs-
| radiol...
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > I think this (esp the sufficient number of bad actors)
| is vibes based on bad headlines and no actual numbers. In
| my real-life experience the advantages of specifically
| generative AI far outweighs the disadvantages, by like a
| really large margin.
|
| We define bad actors in different ways. I also include
| people like tech workers, CEOs who program systems that
| take away large numbers of jobs. I already know people
| whose jobs were eroded based on AI.
|
| In the real world, lots of people hate AI generated
| content. The advantages you speak of are only to those
| who are technically minded enough to gain greater
| material advantages from it, and we don't need the rich
| getting richer. The world doesn't need a bunch of techies
| getting richer from AI at the expense of people like
| translators, graphic designers, etc, losing their jobs.
|
| And while you may have hired more translators, that is
| only temporary. Other places have fired them, and you
| will too once the machine becomes good enough. There will
| be a small bump of positive effects in the short term but
| the long term will be primarily bad, and it already is
| for many.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I think we'll have to wait and see here, because all the
| layoffs can be easily attributed to leadership making
| crappy over-hiring decisions over COVID and now not being
| able to admit to that and giving hand-wavy answers over
| "I'm firing people because AI" to drive different
| headline narratives (see: founders/CEO's talking outta
| their a**).
|
| It may also be the narrative fed to actual employees,
| saying "You're losing your job because AI" is an easy way
| to direct anger away from your bad business decisions. If
| a business is shrinking, it's shrinking, AI was
| inconsequential. If a business is growing AI can only
| help. Whether it's growing or shrinking doesn't depend on
| AI, it depends on the market and leadership decision-
| making.
|
| You and I both know none of this generative AI is good
| enough unsupervised (and realistically, with deep human
| edits). But they're still massive productivity boosts
| which have always been huge economic boosts to the
| middle-class.
|
| Do I wish this tech could _also_ be applied to real
| middle-class shortages (housing, supply-chain etc.),
| sure. And I think it will come.
| 8note wrote:
| hiding from mosquitos under your net is a negative. the point
| of going out to the woods is to be bitten by mosquitos and
| youve ruined it.
|
| its impossible to get benefit from the woods if youve brought a
| bug net, and you should stay out rather than ruining the woods
| for everyone
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Rather myopic and crude take, in my opinion. Because if I
| bring out a net, it doesn't change the woods for others. If I
| introduce AI into society, it does change society for others,
| even those who don't want to use the tool. You have really no
| conception of subtlety or logic.
|
| If someone says driving at 200mph is unsafe, then your
| argument is like saying "driving at any speed is unsafe".
| Fact is, you need to consider the magnitude and speed of the
| technology's power and movement, which you seem incapable of
| doing.
| randometc wrote:
| What's the GTM role referenced a couple of times in the post?
| tptacek wrote:
| Go-to-market. Outbound marketing and sales, pipeline
| definition, analytics.
| randometc wrote:
| That's how I imagined it, kind of a hybrid of what I've seen
| called Product Marketing Manager and Product Analyst, but
| other replies and OpenAI job postings indicate maybe it's a
| different role, more hands on building, getting from research
| to consumer product maybe?
| skywhopper wrote:
| "Go To Market", ie the group that turns the tech into products
| people can use and pay for.
| koolba wrote:
| GTM = go to market
|
| An actual offering made to the public that can be paid for.
| tptacek wrote:
| This was good, but the one thing I most wanted to know about what
| it's like building new products inside of OpenAI is how and how
| much LLMs are involved in their building process.
| wilkomm wrote:
| That's a good question!
| vFunct wrote:
| He describes 78,000 public pull requests per engineer over 53
| days. LMAO. So it's likely 99.99% LLM written.
|
| Lots of good info in the post, surprised he was able to share
| so much publicly. I would have kept most of the business
| process info secret.
|
| Edit: NVM. That 78k pull requests is for all users of Codex,
| not all engineers of Codex.
| nembal wrote:
| wham. thanks for sharing anecdotal episodes from OAI's inner
| mecahnism from an eng perspective. I wonder if OAI wouldn't be
| married to Azure would the infra be more resilient, require less
| eng effort to invent things to just run (at scale).
|
| What i haven't seen much is the split between eng and research
| and how people within the company are thinking about AGI and the
| future, workforce, etc. Is it the usual SF wonderland or is there
| an OAI specific value alignment once someone is working there.
| simonw wrote:
| Whoa, there is a _ton_ of interesting stuff in this one, and
| plenty of information I 've never seen shared before. Worth
| spending some time with it.
| tomrod wrote:
| Agreed!
| codemac wrote:
| o7
| upghost wrote:
| Granted the "OpenAI is not a monolith" comment, interesting that
| use of AI assisted coding was a curious omission from the article
| -- no mention if encouraged or discouraged.
| tines wrote:
| Interesting how ChatGPT's style of writing has made people start
| bolding so much text.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Possibly the dumbest, blandest, most annoying kind of cultural
| transference imaginable. We dreamed of creating machines in our
| image, and now we're shaping ourselves in the image of our
| machines. Ugh.
| layer8 wrote:
| I remember this being common business practice for written
| communication (email, design documents) circa 20 years ago, so
| that people at least read the important points, or can quickly
| pick them out again later.
| pchristensen wrote:
| People have bolded important points to make text easier to scan
| long before AI.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| "Safety is actually more of a thing than you might guess if you
| read a lot from Zvi or Lesswrong. There's a large number of
| people working to develop safety systems. Given the nature of
| OpenAI, I saw more focus on practical risks (hate speech, abuse,
| manipulating political biases, crafting bio-weapons, self-harm,
| prompt injection) than theoretical ones (intelligence explosion,
| power-seeking). That's not to say that nobody is working on the
| latter, there's definitely people focusing on the theoretical
| risks. But from my viewpoint, it's not the focus."
|
| This paragraph doesn't make any sense. If you read a lot of Zvi
| or LessWrong, the misaligned intelligence explosion _is_ the
| safety risk you 're thinking of! So readers "guesses" are
| _actually_ right that OpenAI isn 't really following Sam
| Altman's:
|
| "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the
| greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. There are
| other threats that I think are more certain to happen (for
| example, an engineered virus with a long incubation period and a
| high mortality rate) but are unlikely to destroy every human in
| the universe in the way that SMI could."[0]
|
| [0] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
| humbleferret wrote:
| What a great post.
|
| Some points that stood out to me:
|
| - Progress is iterative and driven by a seemingly bottom up,
| meritocratic approach. Not a top down master plan. Essentially,
| good ideas can come from anywhere and leaders are promoted based
| on execution and quality of ideas, not political skill.
|
| - People seem empowered to build things without asking permission
| there, which seems like it leads to multiple parallel projects
| with the promising ones gaining resources.
|
| - People there have good intentions. Despite public criticism,
| they are genuinely trying to do the right thing and navigate the
| immense responsibility they hold.
|
| - Product is deeply influenced by public sentiment, or more
| bluntly, the company "runs on twitter vibes."
|
| - The sheer cost of GPUs changes everything. It is the single
| factor shaping financial and engineering priorities. The expense
| for computing power is so immense that it makes almost every
| other infrastructure cost a "rounding error."
|
| - I liked the take of the path to AGI being framed as a three
| horse race between OpenAI (consumer product DNA), Anthropic
| (business/enterprise DNA), and Google (infrastructure/data DNA),
| with each organisation's unique culture shaping its approach to
| AGI.
| mikae1 wrote:
| _> I liked the take of the path to AGI being framed as a three
| horse race between OpenAI (consumer product DNA), Anthropic
| (business /enterprise DNA), and Google (infrastructure/data
| DNA)_
|
| Wouldn't want to forget Meta which also has consumer product
| DNA. They literally championed the act of making the consumer
| the product.
| smath wrote:
| lol, I almost missed the sarcasm there :)
| krashidov wrote:
| > giant python monolith
|
| this does not sound fun lol
| jjani wrote:
| > The thing that I appreciate most is that the company is that it
| "walks the walk" in terms of distributing the benefits of AI.
| Cutting edge models aren't reserved for some enterprise-grade
| tier with an annual agreement. Anybody in the world can jump onto
| ChatGPT and get an answer, even if they aren't logged in. There's
| an API you can sign up and use-and most of the models (even if
| SOTA or proprietary) tend to quickly make it into the API for
| startups to use.
|
| The comparison here should clearly be with the other frontier
| model providers: Anthropic, Google, and potentially Deepseek and
| xAI.
|
| Comparing them gives the exact opposite conclusion - OpenAI is
| the _only_ model provider that gates API access to their frontier
| models behind draconic identity verification (also, Worldcoin
| anyone?). Anthropic and Google do not do this.
|
| OpenAI hides their model's CoT (inference-time compute,
| thinking). Anthropic to this day shows their CoT on all of their
| models.
|
| Making it pretty obvious this is just someone patting themselves
| on the back and doing some marketing.
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| Yes, also OpenAI being this great nimble startup that can turn
| on a dime, while in reality Google reacted to _them_ and has
| now surpassed them technically in every area, except image
| prompt adherence.
| hinterlands wrote:
| It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin on
| their work experience.
|
| I don't think this makes OpenAI special. It's just a good
| reminder that the overwhelming majority of "why I left" posts are
| basically trying to justify why a person wasn't a good fit for an
| organization by blaming it squarely on the organization.
|
| Look at it this way: the flip side of "incredibly bottoms-up"
| from this article is that there are people who feel rudderless
| because there is no roadmap or a thing carved out for them to
| own. Similarly, the flip side of "strong bias to action" and
| "changes direction on a dime" is that everything is chaotic and
| there's no consistent vision from the executives.
|
| This cracked me up a bit, though: "As often as OpenAI is maligned
| in the press, everyone I met there is actually trying to do the
| right thing" - yes! That's true at almost every company that ends
| up making morally questionable decisions! There's no Bond villain
| at the helm. It's good people rationalizing things. It goes like
| this: we're the good guys. If we were evil, we could be doing
| things so much worse than X! Sure, some might object to X, but
| they miss the big picture: X is going to indirectly benefit the
| society because we're going to put the resulting money and power
| to good use. Without us, you could have the bad guys doing X
| instead!
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| I would never post any criticism of an employer in public. It
| can only harm my own career (just as being positive can only
| help it).
|
| Given how vengeful Altman can reportedly be, this goes double
| for OpenAI. This guy even says they scour social media!
|
| Whether subconsciously or not, one purpose of this post is
| probably to help this guy's own personal network along; to try
| and put his weirdly short 14-month stint in the best possible
| light. I think it all makes him look like a mark, which is
| desirable for employers, so I guess it is working.
| m00x wrote:
| Calvin cofounded Segment that had a $3.2B acquisition. He's
| not your typical employee.
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| He is still manipulatable and driven by incentive like
| anyone else.
| m00x wrote:
| What incentives? It's not a very intellectual opinion to
| give wild hypotheticals with nothing to go on other than
| "it's possible".
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| I am not trying to advance wild hypotheticals, but
| something about his behavior does not quite feel right to
| me. Someone who has enough money for multiple lifetimes,
| working like he's possessed, to launch a product
| minimally different than those at dozens of other
| companies, and leaving his wife with all the childcare,
| then leaving after 14 months and insisting he was not
| burnt out but without a clear next step, not even, "I
| want to enjoy raising my child".
|
| His experience at OpenAI feels overly positive and
| saccharine, with a few shockingly naive comments that
| others have noted. I think there is obvious incentive.
| One reason for this is, he may be in burnout, but does
| not want to admit it. Another is, he is looking to the
| future: to keep options open for funding and connections
| if (when) he chooses to found again. He might be lonely
| and just want others in his life. Or to feel like he's
| working on something that "matters" in some way that his
| other company didn't.
|
| I don't know at all what he's actually thinking. But the
| idea that he is resistant to incentives just because he
| has had a successful exit seems untrue. I know people who
| are as rich as he is, and they are not much different
| than me.
| Bratmon wrote:
| > It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin
| on their work experience
|
| Much more common for OpenAI, because you lose all your vested
| equity if you talk negatively about OpenAI after leaving.
| rvz wrote:
| Absolutely correct.
|
| There is a reason why there was a cult-like behaviour on X
| amongst the employees in supporting to bringing back Sam as
| CEO when he was kicked out by the OpenAI board of directors
| at the time.
|
| _" OpenAI is nothing without it's people"_
|
| All of "AGI" (which actually was the lamborghinis,
| penthouses, villas and mansions for the employees) was all on
| the line and on hold if that equity went to 0 or would be
| denied selling their equity if they openly criticized OpenAI
| after they left.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, and the reason for that is that employees at OpenAI
| believed (reasonably) that they were cruising for Google-
| scale windfall payouts from their equity over a relatively
| short time horizon, and that Altman and Brockman leaving
| OpenAI and landing at a well-funded competitor, coupled
| with OpenAI corporate management that publicly opposed
| commercialization of their technology, would torpedo those
| payouts.
|
| I'd have sounded cult-like too under those conditions (but
| I also don't believe AGI is a thing, so would not have a
| countervailing cult belief system to weigh against that
| behavior).
| kaashif wrote:
| > I also don't believe AGI is a thing
|
| Why not? I don't think we're anywhere close, but there
| are no physical limitations I can see that prevent AGI.
|
| It's not impossible in the same way our current
| understanding indicates FTL travel or time travel is.
| fragmede wrote:
| The Silenced No More Act" (SB 331), effective January 1,
| 2022, in California, where OpenAI is based, limits non-
| disparagement clauses and retribution by employers, likely
| making that illegal in California, but I am not a lawyer.
| swat535 wrote:
| Even if it's illegal, you'll have to fight them in court.
|
| OpenAI will certainly punish you for this and most likely
| make an example out of you, regardless of the outcome.
|
| The goal is corporate punishment, not the rule of the law.
| tedsanders wrote:
| OpenAI never enforced this, removed it, and admitted it was a
| big mistake. I work at OpenAI and I'm disappointed it
| happened but am glad they fixed it. It's no longer hanging
| over anyone's head, so it's probably inaccurate to suggest
| that Calvin's post is positive because he's trying to protect
| his equity from being taken. (though of course you could
| argue that everyone is biased to be positive about companies
| they own equity in, generally)
| gwern wrote:
| > It's no longer hanging over anyone's head,
|
| The tender offer limitations still are, last I heard.
|
| Sure, maybe OA can no longer cancel your vested equity for
| $0... but how valuable is (non-dividend-paying) equity you
| can't sell? (How do you even borrow against it, say?)
| tedsanders wrote:
| Nope, happy to report that was also fixed.
|
| (It would be a pretty fake solution if equity
| cancellation was halted, but equity could still be
| frozen. Cancelled and frozen are de facto identical until
| the first dividend payment, which could take decades.)
| tptacek wrote:
| Most posts of the form "Reflections on [Former Employer]" on HN
| are positive.
| ben_w wrote:
| > It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin
| on their work experience.
|
| FWIW, I have positive experiences about many of my former
| employers. Not _all_ of them, but many of them.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > There's no Bond villain at the helm. It's good people
| rationalizing things.
|
| I worked for a few years at a company that made software for
| casinos, and this was absolutely not the case there. Casinos
| absolutely have fully shameless villains at the helm.
| torginus wrote:
| Here's what I think - while Altman was busy trying to convince
| the public the AGI was coming in the next two weeks, with vague
| tales that were equaly ominous and utopistic, he (and his
| fellow leaders) have been extremely busy at trying hard to turn
| OpenAI into a product company with some killer offerings, and
| from the article, it seems they were rather good and successful
| in that.
|
| Considering the high stakes, money, and undoubtedly the ego
| involved, the writer might have acquired a few bruises along
| the way, or might have lost out on some political in fights
| (remember how they mentioned they built multiple Codex
| prototypes, it must've sucked to see some other people's
| version chosen instead of your own).
|
| Another possible explanation is that the writer's just had
| enough - enough money to last a lifetime, just started a
| family, made his mark on the world, and was no longer compelled
| (or have been able to) keep up with methed-up fresh college
| grads.
| matco11 wrote:
| > remember how they mentioned they built multiple Codex
| prototypes, it must've sucked to see some other people's
| version chosen instead of your own
|
| Well it depends on people's mindset. It's like doing a
| hackathon and not winning. Most people still leave inspired
| by what they have seen other people building, and can't wait
| to do it again.
|
| ...but of course not everybody likes to go to hackathons
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| > It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin
| on their work experience.
|
| I liked my jobs and bosses!
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I'm not saying this about OpenAI, because I just don't know.
| But Bond villains exist.
|
| Usually the level 1 people are just motivated by power and
| money to an unhealthy degree. The worst are true believers in
| something. Even something seemingly mild.
| smeeger wrote:
| > everyone I met there is actually trying to do the right thing
|
| making human beings obsolete is not the right thing. nobody in
| openAI is doing the right thing.
|
| in another part of the post he says safety teams work primarily
| on making sure the models dont say anything racist as well as
| limiting helpful tips on building weapons of terror... and that
| AGI safety is basically not a focus. i dont think this company
| should be allowed to exist. they dont have ANY right to threaten
| the existence and wellbeing of me and my kids!
| seydor wrote:
| seems like the whole thing was meant to be a jab at Meta
| ishita159 wrote:
| was it?
|
| it was however interesting to know that it isn't just Meta
| poaching OpenAI, but the reverse also happened.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Very apt, OpenAI's start was always poach-central, we know
| this from executive email leaks via Elon/Sam respectively.
|
| Any gibberish on any company's behalf of "poaching" is
| nonsense regardless IMO.
| pchristensen wrote:
| I definitely didn't get that feeling. There was a whole section
| about how their infra resembles Meta and they've had excellent
| engineers hired from Meta.
| bawana wrote:
| This is a politically correct farewell letter. Obviously
| something we little people who need jobs have to resort to so the
| next HR manager doesn't think we are a risk to stock valuation.
| For a deeper understanding, read Empire of AI by Karen Hao. She
| defrocks Sam Altman to reveal he is just another human. Like
| Steve Jobs, he is an adept salesman appealing to the naive
| altruistic sentiments of humans while maintaining his singular
| focus on scale. Not so different from the archetype of
| Rockefeller in his pursuit of monopoly through scale using any
| means, sam is no different than google which even forgot its own
| rallying cry 'dont be evil'. Other actors in the story seem to
| have been infected by the same meme virus, leaving openAI for
| their own empires- Musk left after he and altman conflicted over
| who would be CEO.(birth of xAI). Amodei, his sister and others
| left to start anthropic. Sutskever left to start 'safe something
| or other'(smacks of the same misdirection sam used when openAI
| formed as a nonprofit ) giving the idea of a nonprofit a mantle
| of evil since OPENAI has pivoted to profit.
|
| The bottom line is that scaling requires money and the only way
| to get that in the private sector is to lure those with money
| with the temptation they can multiply their wealth.
|
| Things could have been different in a world before financial
| engineers bankrupted the US (the crises of enron, salomon bros,
| 2008 mortgage debacle all added hundreds of billions to us debt
| as the govt bought the 'too big to fail' kool-aid and bailed out
| wall street by indenturing main street). Now 1/4 of our budget is
| simply interest payment on this debt. There is no room for govt
| spending on a moonshot like AI. This environment in 1960 would
| have killed Kennedy's inspirational moonshot of going to the moon
| while it was still an idea in his head in his post coital bliss
| with Marilyn at his side.
|
| Today our govt needs money just like all the other scrooge-
| infected players in the tower of debt that capitalism has built.
|
| Ironically it seems china has a better chance now. It seems its
| release of deep seek and the full set of parameters is giving it
| a veneer of altruistic benevolence that is slightly more
| believable than what we see here in the west. China may win
| simply on thermodynamic grounds. Training and research in DL
| consumes terawatt hours and hundreds of thousands of chips. Not
| only are the US models on older architectures (10-100x more
| energy inefficient) but the 'competition' of multiple players in
| the US multiplies the energy requirements.
|
| Would govt oversight have been a good thing? Imagine if General
| Motors, westinghouse, bell labs, and ford competed in 1940 each
| with their own manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons ?
| Would the proliferation of nuclear have resulted in human
| extinction by now?
|
| Will AI's contribution to global warming be just as toxic global
| thermonuclear war?
|
| These are the questions that come to mind after Hao's historic
| summary.
| bagxrvxpepzn wrote:
| He joins a proven unicorn at its inflection point and then leaves
| mere days after hitting his vesting cliff. All of this "learning"
| and "experience" talk is sopping wet with cynicism.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please make your substantive points without crossing
| into personal attack and/or name-calling?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bagxrvxpepzn wrote:
| Sorry, I removed the personal attack.
| dang wrote:
| I appreciate the edit, but "sopping wet with cynicism"
| still breaks the site guidelines, especially this one: "
| _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| guywithabike wrote:
| He co-founded and sold Segment. You think he was just at OpenAI
| to collect a check? He lays out exactly why he joined OpenAI
| and why he's leaving. If you think everyone does things only
| for cynical reasons, it might be a reflection more of your
| personal impulses than others.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Just because someone claims they are speaking in good faith
| doesn't mean we have to take their word for it. Most people
| in tech dealing with big money are doing it for cynical
| reasons. The talk of changing the world or "doing something
| hard" is just marketing typically.
| m00x wrote:
| Calvin works incredibly hard and has very little ego. I was
| surprised he joined OpenAI since he's loaded from the
| Segment acquisition, but if anyone it makes sense he would
| do this. He's always looking to find the hardest problem
| and work on it.
|
| That's what he did at Segment even in the later stages.
| tptacek wrote:
| I did not pick up much cynicism in this post. What about it
| seemed cynical to you?
| bagxrvxpepzn wrote:
| Given that he leaves OpenAI almost immediately after hitting
| his 25% vesting cliff, it seems like his employment at OpenAI
| and this blog post (which makes him and OpenAI look good
| while making the reader feel good) were done cynically. I.e.
| primarily in his self-interest. What makes it even worse is
| his stated reason for leaving:
|
| > It's hard to go from being a founder of your own thing to
| an employee at a 3,000-person organization. Right now I'm
| craving a fresh start.
|
| This is just wholly irrational for someone whose credentials
| indicate someone who is capable of applying critical thinking
| towards accomplishing their goals. People who operate at that
| level don't often act on impulse or suddenly realize they
| want to do something different. It seems much more likely he
| intentionally planned to give himself a year of vacation at
| OpenAI, which allows him to hedge a bit while taking a
| breather before jumping back into being a founder.
|
| Is this essentially speculation? Yes. Is it cynical to assume
| he's acting cynically? Yes. Speculation on his true motives
| is necessary because otherwise we'll never get confirmation,
| short of him openly admitting to it (which is still fraught).
| We have to look at behaviors and actions and assess
| likelihoods from there.
| m00x wrote:
| He's likely received hundreds of millions from segment
| acquisition. Do you think he cares about the OpenAI vesting
| cliff?
|
| It's more likely that he was there to see how OpenAI was
| run so he could learn and something similar on his own
| after.
| tptacek wrote:
| There's nothing cynical about leaving a job after cliffing.
| If a company wants a longer commitment than a year before
| issuing equity, it can set a longer cliff. We're all adults
| here.
| suncemoje wrote:
| ,,the right people can make magic happen"
|
| :-)
| fidotron wrote:
| > There's a corollary here-most research gets done by nerd-
| sniping a researcher into a particular problem. If something is
| considered boring or 'solved', it probably won't get worked on.
|
| This is a very interesting nugget, and if accurate this could
| become their Achilles heel.
| ACCount36 wrote:
| It's not "their" Achilles heel. It's the Achilles heel of the
| way humans work.
|
| Most top-of-their-field researchers are on top of their field
| because they really love it, and are willing to sink insane
| amount of hours into doing things they love.
| ishita159 wrote:
| this post was such a brilliant read. to read about how they still
| have a YC-style startup culture, are meritocratic, and people get
| to work on things they find interesting.
|
| as an early stage founder, i worry about the following a lot.
|
| - changing directions fast when i lose conviction - things
| breaking in production - and about speed, or the lack of it
|
| I learned to actually not worry about the first two.
|
| But if OpenAI shipped Codex in 7 weeks, small startups have lost
| the speed advantage they had. Big reminder to figure out better
| ways to solve for speed.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >Safety is actually more of a thing than you might guess
|
| Considering all the people who led the different safety teams
| have left or been fired, Superalignment has been a total bust and
| the various accounts from other employees about the lack of
| support for safety work I find this statement incredibly out of
| touch and borderline intentionally misleading.
| imiric wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| One thing I was interested to read but didn't find in your post
| is: does everyone believe in the vision that the leadership has
| shared publicly, e.g. [1]? Is there some skepticism that the
| current path leads to AGI, or has everyone drunk the Kool-Aid? If
| there is some dissent, how is it handled internally?
|
| [1]: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity
| fragmede wrote:
| Externally there's no rigorous definition as to what
| constitutes AGI, so I'd guess internally it's not one
| monolithic thing they're targeting either. You'd need everyone
| to take a class about the nature of intelligence first, and all
| the different kinds of it just to begin with. There's
| undoubtedly dissent internally as to the best way to achieve
| chosen milestones on the way there, as well as disagreement
| that those are the right milestones to begin with. Think
| tactical disagreement, not strategic. If you didn't think that
| AGI were ever possible with LLMs, would you even be there to
| begin with?
| imiric wrote:
| Well, Sam Altman has a clear definition of ASI, and AGI is
| something they've been thinking about for a long time, so
| presumably they must have some accepted definition of it.
|
| My question was whether everyone believes this vision that
| ASI is "close", and more broadly whether this path leads to
| AGI.
|
| > If you didn't think that AGI were ever possible with LLMs,
| would you even be there to begin with?
|
| People can have all sorts of reasons for working with a
| company. They might want to work on cutting-edge tech with
| smart people and infinite resources, for investment or
| prestige, but not necessarily buy into the overarching
| vision. I'm just wondering whether such a profile exists
| within OpenAI, and if so, how it is handled.
| tedsanders wrote:
| Not the author, but I work at OpenAI. There are wide variety of
| viewpoints and it's fine for employees to disagree on timelines
| and impact. I myself published a 100-page paper on why I think
| transformative AGI by 2043 is quite unlikely
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.02519). From informal discussion, I
| think the vast majority of employees don't think that we're
| mere years from a post-scarcity utopia where we can drink mai
| tais on the beach all day. But there is a lot of optimism about
| the rapid progress in AI, and I do think that it's harder to
| forecast the path of a technology that has the potential to
| improve itself. So much depends on your definition of AGI. In a
| sense, GPT-4 is already AGI in the literal sense that it's an
| artificial intelligence with some generality. But in the sense
| of automating the economy, it's of course not close.
| criddell wrote:
| > depends on your definition of AGI
|
| What definition of AGI is used at OpenAI?
|
| My definition: AGI will be here when you can put it in a
| robot body in the real word and interact with it like you
| would a person. Ask it to drive your car or fold your laundry
| or make a mai tai and if it doesn't know how to do that, you
| show it, and then it can.
| tedsanders wrote:
| In the OpenAI charter, it's "highly autonomous systems that
| outperform humans at most economically valuable work."
|
| https://openai.com/charter/
| imiric wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| The hype around this tech strongly promotes the narrative
| that we're close to exponential growth, and that AGI is right
| around the corner. That pretty soon AI will be curing
| diseases, eradicating poverty, and powering humanoid robots.
| These scenarios are featured in the AI 2027 predictions.
|
| I'm very skeptical of this based on my own experience with
| these tools, and rudimentary understanding of how they work.
| I'm frankly even opposed to labeling them as intelligent in
| the same sense that we think about human intelligence. There
| are certainly many potentially useful applications of this
| technology that are worth exploring, but the current ones are
| awfully underwhelming, and the hype to make them seem more
| than they are is exhausting. Not to mention that their
| biggest potential to further degrade public discourse and
| overwhelm all our communication channels with even more spam
| and disinformation is largely being ignored. AI companies
| love to talk about alignment and safety, yet these more
| immediate threats are never addressed.
|
| Anyway, it's good to know that there are disagreements about
| the impact and timelines even inside OpenAI. It will be
| interesting to see how this plays out, if nothing else.
| throwawayohio wrote:
| > As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met
| there is actually trying to do the right thing.
|
| I appreciate where the author is coming from, but I would have
| just left this part out. If there is anything I've learned during
| my time in tech (ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area) it's that the people
| you didn't meet are absolutely angling to do the wrong thing(TM).
| jjulius wrote:
| When your work provides lunch in a variety of different
| cafeterias all neatly designed to look like standalone
| restaurants, directly across from which is an on-campus bank
| that will assist you with all of your financial needs before
| you take your company-operated Uber-equivalent to the next
| building over and have your meeting either in that building's
| ballpit, or on the tree-covered rooftop that - for some reason
| - has foxes on top, it's easy to focus only on the tiny "good"
| thing you're working on and not the steaming hot pile of
| garbage that the executives at your company are focused on but
| would rather you not see.
|
| Edit: And that's to say nothing of the very generous pay...
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| I've been in circles with very rich and somewhat influential
| tech people and it's a lot of talk about helping others, but
| somehow beneath the veneer of the talk of helping others you
| notice that many of them are just ripping people off, doing
| coke and engaging in self-centered spiritual practices
| (especially crypto people).
|
| I also don't trust that people within the system can assess if
| what they're doing is good or not. I've talked with higher ups
| in fashion companies who genuinely believe their company is
| actually doing so much great work for the environment when they
| basically invented fast-fashion. I've felt it first hand
| personally how my mind slowly warped itself into believing that
| ad-tech isn't so bad for the world when I worked for an ad-tech
| company, and only after leaving did I realize how wrong I was.
| paxys wrote:
| And it's not just about some people doing good and others doing
| bad. Individual employees all doing the "right thing" can still
| be collectively steered in the wrong direction by higher ups.
| I'd say this describes the entirety of big tech.
| archagon wrote:
| Yes. We already know that Altman parties with extremists like
| Yarvin and Thiel and donates millions to far-right political
| causes. I'm afraid the org is rotten at its core. If only the
| coup had succeeded.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| This is just the exact same culture as Deepmind minus the
| "everything on Slack" bulletpoint.
| paxys wrote:
| > An unusual part of OpenAI is that everything, and I mean
| everything, runs on Slack.
|
| Not that unusual nowadays. I'd wager every tech company founded
| in the last ~10 years works this way. And many of the older ones
| have moved off email as well.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > On the other hand, you're trying to build a product that
| hundreds of millions of users leverage for everything from
| medical advice to therapy.
|
| ... then the next paragraph
|
| > As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met
| there is actually trying to do the right thing.
|
| not if you're trying to replace therapists with chatbots, sorry
| ThouYS wrote:
| These one or two year tenures.. I don't know man
| AIorNot wrote:
| I'm 50, worked at few cool places and lots of boring ones. to
| paraphrase, Tolstoy tends to be right -all happy families are
| similar and unhappy families are unhappy in unique ways
|
| OpenAI is currently selected for the brightest and young excited
| minds, (and a lot of money).. bright, young (as in full of
| energy) and excited people will work well anywhere- esp if given
| a fair amount of autonomy.
|
| Young people talking about how hard they worked is not a sign of
| a great corp culture, just a sign that they are in the super
| excited stage of their careers
|
| In the long run who knows, I tend to view these companies as
| groups of like minded people and groups of people change and the
| dynamic changees overnight -so if they can sustain that culture
| sure, but who knows..
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| Calvin is the founder/CTO of Segment, not old but also not some
| doe eyed new grad.
| jonas21 wrote:
| On one hand, yes. But on the other hand, he's still in his
| 30s. In most fields, this would be considered young / early
| career. It kind of reinforces the point that bright, young
| people can get a lot done in the tech world.
| paulcole wrote:
| > In most fields, this would be considered young / early
| career
|
| Is it considered young / early career in this field?
| m00x wrote:
| Calvin is loaded from the Segment exit, he would not work
| if he wasn't excited about the work. The other founders
| just went on to do their own thing or non-profits.
|
| I worked there for a few years and Calvin is definitely
| more of the grounded engineering guy. He would introduced
| him as an engineer and just get talking code. He would
| spend most of his time with the SRE/core team trying to
| tackle the hardest technical problem at the company.
| tptacek wrote:
| I said this elsewhere on the thread and so apologize for
| repeating, but: I know mid-career people working at this firm
| who have been through these conditions, and they were energized
| by the experience. They're shipping huge stuff that tens of
| millions of people will use almost immediately.
|
| The cadence we're talking about isn't sustainable --- has never
| been sustained anywhere --- but if insane sprints like this (1)
| produce intrinsically rewarding outcomes and (2) punctuate
| otherwise-sane work conditions, they can work out fine for the
| people involved.
|
| It's completely legit to say you'd never take a job where this
| could be an expectation.
| theletterf wrote:
| For a company that has grown so much in such a short time, I
| continue to be surprised by its lack of technical writers. Saying
| docs could be better is an euphemism, but I still can't find
| fellow tech writers working there. Compare this with Anthropic
| and its documentation.
|
| I don't know what's the rationale for not hiring tech writers
| other than nobody suggesting it yet, which is sad. Great dev
| tools require great docs, and great docs require teams that own
| them and grow them as a product.
| mlinhares wrote:
| The higher ups don't think there's value in that. Back at
| DigitalOcean they had an amazing tech writing team, with people
| with years of experience, doing some of the best tech docs in
| the industry, when the layoffs started the writing team was the
| first to be cut.
|
| People look at it as a cost a and nothing else.
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| > As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met
| there is actually trying to do the right thing
|
| I doubt many people would say something contrary to this about
| their (former) colleagues, which means we should always take this
| with a (large) grain of salt.
|
| Do I think (most) AT&T employees wanted to let the NSA spy on us?
| Probably not. Google engineers and ICE? Palantir and.. well idk i
| think everyone there knows what Palantir does.
| JonathanRaines wrote:
| Fascinating that you chose to compare OpenAI's culture to Los
| Alamos. I can't tell if you're hinting AI is as world ending as
| nuclear weapons or not.
| troupo wrote:
| > As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met
| there is actually trying to do the right thing.
|
| To quote Jonathan Nightingale from his famous thread on how
| Google sabotaged Mozilla [1]:
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| The question is not whether individual sidewalk labs people have
| pure motives. I know some of them, just like I know plenty on the
| Chrome team. They're great people. But focus on the behaviour of
| the organism as a whole. At the macro level, google/alphabet is
| very intentional.
|
| --- end quote ---
|
| Replace that with OpenAI
|
| [1]
| https://archive.is/2019.04.15-165942/https://twitter.com/joh...
| cess11 wrote:
| 20 years from now, the only people who will remember how much you
| worked is your family, especially your kids.
|
| Seems like an awful place to be.
| viccis wrote:
| >It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI
|
| >...
|
| >OpenAI is also a more serious place than you might expect, in
| part because the stakes feel really high. On the one hand,
| there's the goal of building AGI-which means there is a lot to
| get right.
|
| I'm kind of surprised people are still drinking this AGI Koolaid
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Lucky to be able to write this .. likely just vested with FU
| money!
| yahoozoo wrote:
| It would be interesting to read the memoirs of former OpenAI
| employees that dive into whether they thought the company was on
| the right track towards AGI. Of course, that's an NDA violation
| at best.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| I'm at a point my life and career where I'd never entertain
| working those hours. Missed basketball games, seeing kids come
| home from school, etc. I do think when I first started out, and
| had no kiddos, maybe some crazy sprints like that would've been
| exhilarating. No chance now though
| chribcirio wrote:
| > I'm at a point my life and career where I'd never entertain
| working those hours.
|
| That's ok.
|
| Just don't complain about the cost of daycare, private school
| tuition, or your parents senior home/medical bills.
| dcreater wrote:
| This is silicon valley culture on steroids: I really have to
| question if it is positive for any involved party. Codex almost
| has no mindshare and rightly so. It's a textbook also ran, except
| it came from the most dominant player and was outpaced by Claude
| code on the order of weeks.
|
| Why go through all that? Instead what would have been a much
| better scenario is openai carefully assessing different
| approaches to agentic coding and releasing a more fully baked
| product with solid differentiation. Even Amazon just did that
| with Kiro
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