[random_cynic]

No that hasn't at all been the case. The board acted like the most incompetent group of individuals who've even handed any responsibility. If they went through due process, notified their employees and investors, and put out a statement of why they're firing the CEO instead of doing it over a 15 min Google meet and then going completely silent, none of this outrage would have taken place.

[OnAYDIN]

Actually the board may not have acted in most professional way but in due process they kind of proved Sam Altman is unfireable for sure, even if they didn't intend to.

They did notify everyone. They did it after firing which is within their rights. They may also choose to stay silent if there is legitimate reason for it such as making the reasons known may harm the organization even more. This is speculation obviously.

In any case they didn't omit doing anything they need to and they didn't exercise a power they didn't have. The end result is that the board they choose will be impotent at the moment, for sure.

[jonas21]

Firing Sam was within the board's rights. And 90% of the employees threatening to leave was within their rights.

All this proved is that you can't take a major action that is deeply unpopular with employees, without consulting them, and expect to still have a functioning organization. This should be obvious, but it apparently never crossed the board's mind.

[freedomben]

A lot of these high-up tech leaders seem to forget this regularly. They sit on their thrones and dictate wild swings, and are used to having people obey. They get all the praise and adulation when things go well, and when things don't go well they golden parachute into some other organization who hires based on resume titles rather than leadership and technical ability. It doesn't surprise me at all that they were caught off guard by this.

[m3kw9]

Not sure how much of the employees leaving have to do with negotiating Sam back, must be a big factor but not all, during the table talk Emmett, Angelo and Ilya must have decided that it wasn’t a good firing and a mistake in retrospect and it is to fix it.

[eksapsy]

Getting your point, although the fact that something is within your rights, may or may not mean certainly that it's also a proper thing to do ... ?

Like, nobody is going to arrest you for spitting on the street especially if you're an old grandpa. Nobody is going to arrest you for saying nasty things about somebody's mom.

You get my point, to some boundary both are kinda within somebody's rights, although can be suable or can be reported for misbehaving. But that's the keypoint, misbehavior.

Just because something is within your rights doesn't mean you're not misbehaving or not acting in an immature way.

To be clear, Im not denying or agreeing that the board of directors acted in an immature way. I'm just arguing against the claim that was made within your text that just because someone is acting within their rights that it's also a "right" thing to do necessary, while that is not the case always.

[qudat]

> proved Sam Altman is unfireable [without explaining why to its employees].

[xvector]

Their communication was completely insufficient. There is no possible world on which the board could be considered "competent" or "professional."

[random_cynic]

If you read my comment again, I'm talking about their competence, not their rights. Those are two entirely different things.

[paulddraper]

> They may also choose to stay silent

They may choose to, and they did choose to.

But it was an incompitant choice. (Obviously.)

[squigz]

> The board acted like the most incompetent group of individuals who've even handed any responsibility.

This is overly dramatic, but I suppose that's par for this round.

> none of this outrage would have taken place.

Yeah... I highly doubt this, personally. I'm sure the outrage would have been similar, as HN's current favorite CEO was fired.

[pas]

HN sentiment is pretty ambivalent regarding Altman. yes, almost everyone agrees he's important, but a big group things he's basically landed gentry exploiting ML researchers, an other thinks he's a genius for getting MS pay for GPT costs, etc.

[hackernewds]

I think a page developed by YC thinks a lot more about him than that ;)

[komali2]

Just putting my hand up as one of the dudes that happened to enter my email on a yc forum (not "page") but really doesn't like the guy lol.

I also have a Twitter account. Guess my opinion on the current or former Twitter CEOs?

[SilasX]

Agreed. It's naive to think that an decision this unpopular somehow wouldn't have resulted in dissent and fracturing if only they had given it a better explanation and dotted more i's.

Imagine arguing this in another context: "Man, if only the Supreme Court had clearly articulated its reasoning in overturning Roe v Wade, there wouldn't have been all this outrage over it."

(I'm happy to accept that there's plenty of room for avoiding some of the damage, like the torrents of observers thinking "these board members clearly don't know what they're doing".)

[maxlin]

Exactly. 3 CEO switches in a week is ridiculous

[caleb-allen]

Maybe it came at the advice of Rishi Sunak when he and Altman met last week!

[abkolan]

Four CEO changes in five days to be precise.

Sam -> Mira -> Emmet -> Sam

[Hendrikto]

That are three changes. Every arrow is one.

[physicles]

Classic fence post error.

[nonethewiser]

And technically 2 new CEOs

[qup]

The three hard problems: naming things and off-by-one errors

[Crespyl]

I always heard:

There are two hard problems: naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.

[maxlin]

1 hard problems.

naming things, cache invalidation, off-by one errors, and overflows.

[freedomben]

Thank you for not editing this away. Easy mistake to make, and gave us a good laugh (hopefully laughing with you. Everyone who's ever programmed has made the same error).

[low_tech_punk]

Set semantic or List semantic?

[abkolan]

Edit: Making no excuses, this one is embarrassing.

[patcon]

> The board acted like the most incompetent group of individuals who've eve[r been] handed any responsibility.

This whole conversation has been full of appeals to authority. Just because us tech people don't know some of these names and their accomplishments, we talk about them being "weak" members. The more I learn, the more I think this board was full of smart ppl who didn't play business politics well (and that's ok by me, as business politics isn't supposed to be something they have to deal with).

Their lack of entanglements makes them stronger members, in my perspective. Their miscalculation was in how broken the system is in which they were undermined. And you and I are part of that brokenness even in how we talk about it here

[braiamp]

> If they went through due process, notified their employees and investors, and put out a statement of why they're firing the CEO

Did you read the bylaws? They have no responsibility to do any of that.

[paulddraper]

  Here lies the body of William Jay,
  Who died maintaining his right of way –
  He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
  But he's just as dead as if he were wrong.

    - Dale Carnegie

[ksd482]

That's not the point. Whether or not it was in the bylaws, this would have been the sensible thing to do.

[eksapsy]

you don't have responsibility for washing yourself before going to a mass transport vehicle full of people. it's within your rights not to do that and be the smelliest person in the bus.

does it mean it's right or professional?

getting your point, but i hope you get the point i make as well, that just because you have no responsibility for something doesn't mean you're right or not unethical for doing or not doing that thing. so i feel like you're losing the point a little.

[zerohalo]

> none of this outrage would have taken place.

most certainly would have still taken place; no one cares about how it was done; what they care about it being able to make $$; and it was clearly going to not be as heavily prioritized without Altman (which is why MSFT embraced him and his engineers almost immediately).

> notified their employees and investors they did notify their employees; they have fiduciary duty to investors as a nonprofit.