[gkoberger]

You don't have to like Sam. But people who do big things, by definition, have to get there by pushing things along at a cadence that differs from most other people. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good thing, but I don't get why every article about Sam seems to be surprised that the guy who helped build something nobody thought was possible (AI this decade) got there by doing things in a fast, unique way.

If he followed the norms, he'd be a mid-level manager at FAANG company.

[Apreche]

My question is, what do you count as "doing"?

Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects and tell them to make a revolutionary new building. They go on to make some amazing building that gets all sorts of awards and recognition. Is anyone really so naive as to suggest that I am deserving of any credit whatsoever? In the words of Urkel, "Did I do that?"

There are some leaders in the tech world who have clearly done something. John Carmack did something. Steve Wozniak did something. There are some questionable cases as well. As far as Altman goes, I put him firmly in the same camp as Musk. They haven't done jack shit. I give them no respect, recognition, or credit. They were just wealthy people spending money. I seriously question the people who look at them positively in any way whatsoever.

[gkoberger]

I don’t think you need to like the people you listed (I, for example, hate Musk). But you seem to have no curiosity around understanding the value non-technical people can bring to a project or company or innovation.

You need both to do something great. And there’s thousands of Woz’s out there whose names we don’t know because they never met their Jobs.

[lacrimacida]

But even all Wozzes out there who met their Jobs are still relegated to just Wozzes, all credit being vaccumed up by their respective Jobs. Not saying that their Jobs don’t deserve any the credit, i’m just pointing out the unfair pattern of how all the credit is being vaccumed up. One clearly needs the other but it doesn’t look like a two way street at all.

[adventured]

It's not unfair in the case of Jobs & Woz. Wozniak represented a few years of Apple's earliest history. His contribution was similar to Paul Allen's contribution to Microsoft. Extraordinarily important in the first few years, and that was the end of that. The reality is, people broadly like Woz, and particularly among the HN crowd Steve Jobs is disliked; that's the explanation, it's purely emotional; so they want to give Woz more credit than he deserves.

There's an obsession with trying to discredit people like Jobs (and their contributions), particularly among the hacker news crowd. Fundamentally it's because most hackers don't understand leadership, marketing, sales, etc.

In this thread you'll see people claim Elon Musk is non-technical. That's bordering on belligerent. A person would have to have avoided the dozens of YouTube interviews where he demonstrates his technical understanding to an elaborate degree. Musk is as technical as Bill Gates was in his post coding days at Microsoft (which spanned the bulk of his time at Microsoft) and I've never seen anyone on HN claim Gates as being non-technical. How it works is simple: I dislike this person, therefore I shall tear them down; I'm unable to be objective about the subject, so I shall be emotional and irrational instead.

[darkwraithcov]

What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understanding of the tech behind his businesses akin to an enthusiastic fan .

He comes across as a guy who really wants to seem deep and cerebral, but his takes are pretty surface level compared to other tech CEOs. He couldn’t even give a high level explanation of Twitter’s “crazy” tech stack without having a meltdown.

[dbuser99]

That’s wildly inaccurate. Musk regularly displays a much higher level of tech skills compared to most CEOs, with the exception of a few, like maybe Jensen. You may not like musk, but musks way above someone like altman in technical skills

[tim333]

>couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag

He sold a game he programed at age 12, and wrote at least the initial code for zip2 which Compaq acquired for $307 million.

[nvm0n2]

You should read his biography. The idea Musk isn't technical will seem absurd after that.

[dbingham]

The issue is that if you ask the average person on the street who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name Jobs, not Woz. I'm not sure, but I think the financial compensation also carried that discrepancy.

And that's a really common case.

It is absolutely true that you need both technical and non-technical people to make a business work. There are lots of jobs to be done, hats to be worn, and they are all valuable - many are necessary.

The issue is that our society and economy massively overvalues two roles in particular: those who bring the capital and those who carry the title executive. It's not that those roles don't contribute, they do. But they currently get the vast majority of the generated wealth, credit, and recognition (which then translates into more opportunities to access more capital and thus into an exponential feedback loop).

[JumpCrisscross]

> who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name Jobs, not Woz

Woz was critical to early Apple. He was not involved in its modern iteration. Also, plenty of important and influential people are unknown in the popular imagination.

[dbingham]

Yeah, I should have added a line clarifying that I'm unsure about the exact case of Apple, but even so, Jobs definitely had collaborators on the modern iteration who - again - do not get appropriate credit or financial compensation.

The point is that this is a general problem that falls out of the structure of our economy and business enterprises. And it's one that's fixable with a little societal refactoring (changing the laws around business structures and how they're formed).

[Johnny555]

>Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects and tell them to make a revolutionary new building. They go on to make some amazing building that gets all sorts of awards and recognition. Is anyone really so naive as to suggest that I am deserving of any credit whatsoever?

You should try hiring a group of really smart people and getting them to work together to create something great before you dismiss the skills of the person doing that.

[VirusNewbie]

My question would be, is that what Sam does? I wasn't aware that he was involved in building the founding team. I think that's certainly a skill, but I haven't yet heard that's his secret sauce.

[Johnny555]

I don't honestly know what he does, but given that he's got both investors and employees loyal to him makes me think that he does a lot more than say "Here's a pile of money, I'm going to lock you smart people in a room and take credit for whatever you come up with"

[paulryanrogers]

Employees faced losing their equity if the market got spooked, so not sure the petition is objective evidence of loyalty. Apparently some employees near him wanted him out.

[Johnny555]

The petition sure didn't sound like employees trying to get away from Altman:

"We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman."

[foobaw]

You're implying that you knew how to hire and identify smart architects and provided them the right vision to build a good building.

There wouldn't be a counterfactual in your hypothetical scenario, but I'm confident that the difference between someone that got lucky and hired "smart" architects versus a visionary doing the same task would be drastic.

Money can only get you so far.

[bmitc]

Is there an indication that Altman has a special talent for this over others?

[adventured]

Yes, the accomplishments of OpenAI represent that in action. It's an exceptional outcome to say the least.

If everybody could do it, they would be doing it. Altman's abilities are every bit as rare as that of a 10x software developer. The same was true of Jobs, and the same is true of Musk (regardless of whether someone likes him or not; who cares if he's likable, it's an infantile emotional derangement to obsess so much over likability).

[bmitc]

> Yes, the accomplishments of OpenAI represent that in action. It's an exceptional outcome to say the least.

What specifically backs that up? Didn't others create the technology? Is it that hard to hire and organize when you've got a top researcher that everyone wants to work with? By many accounts, he was just using OpenAI to further other businesses and investments.

[throwaway2037]

> Is it that hard to hire and organize when you've got a top researcher that everyone wants to work with?

Hire a top researcher? Ok, you could get lucky with a few. But keep? Good luck if you are an incompetent manager. If Sam Altman was the "know-nothing" that so many on HN claim him to be, then the top researchers would leave and go to Meta, Google Brain, etc. It makes no sense that this core research team has been so stable. Is this not evidence enough for you?

[asfgkadnhiok]

That's extremely easy. There are awards and magazines and Wikipedia. Smart architects are smart because they're able to come up with the "right vision" all on their own.

We know it's possible for someone with no technical ability to look like genius just by having lots of money. I knew people who believed Musk was going to bring about an AI revolution all on his own because of his very special brain, but his tenure at Twitter was laughable to anyone who has passed CS 101. What makes you convinced all the rich "geniuses" who haven't revealed themselves to be idiots are actually smart for real this time?

[jokethrowaway]

> but his tenure at Twitter was laughable to anyone who has passed CS 101

Honest question: why? Just because your bubble denounces him and he's doing things differently than other big tech, in a way that upset developers / managers that doesn't mean he's automatically wrong.

Twitter is still running and it has a business trajectory that looks positive (subscriptions are great). Probably if we didn't have a board of do-nothing for years twitter could have turned into the Line of the west. Maybe it could have captured all the profits which ended up on patreon and onlyfans.

If it wasn't for his anti remote stance and general disregard for life-work balance I'd love to work for him. Finally, an organisation when things get done with few hard working people, and not hundreds of drones collecting a paycheck and slowing me down and complaining all the time.

[Master_Odin]

Do you have a source for saying the monetary outlook is good? As far as I'm aware, advertising dollars has always been the lion's share of revenue, and he's tanked that and the valuation of the site has readily dropped.

[VirusNewbie]

>Twitter is still running and it has a business trajectory that looks positive (subscriptions are great)

I'm generally a fan of Musk, I'm glad he bought Twitter, I drive a Tesla etc. but this looks like delusion to think this.

Twitter is not doing well. Musk cut too fast and too deep, and it shows with the number of outages and problems Twitter has had. It wasn't a few months ago that they had to rate limit everyone from scolling their feed for a day, they had hours of downtime this last month alone.

This is not good for a company that makes its money by serving ads, which it also has seemed to be bad at. Running a blogging site isn't that hard, but runnign your own adnetwork is, and Twitter is doing a pretty bad job.

They are losing quite a lot of moeny according to Musk(!!!).

[matrix_overload]

>Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects and tell them to make a revolutionary new building.

Each one will end up pulling in their own direction, fighting with others over minor things, and nothing will ever get done.

Managing smart people, resolving conflicts, and making sure stuff gets done is a rare and underappreciated skill.

[tim333]

The guy's who fund these things deserve some credit for that at least. Take the Medici's for example, bankers who:

>claimed to have funded the invention of the piano and opera, financed the construction of Saint Peter's Basilica and Santa Maria del Fiore, and were patrons of Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Francesco Redi, among many others in the arts and sciences.

Sure they didn't do the paintings but a lot of that stuff probably wouldn't have happened without them.

[godzillabrennus]

Someone has to be skilled enough in fundraising to be able to raise the money to get the talent to do the thing. That alone is a difficult skill to master. It’s often harder to do than to be able to create great things. Carmack and Woz are legends for a reason.

[Apreche]

None of these people were skilled at fundraising. Their opportunities were inherited.

[throwaway2037]

> Their opportunities were inherited.

I agree with your first sentence, but I am confused by your second sentence. Are you referring to this part? "Carmack and Woz are legends for a reason."

[wslh]

> Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects and tell them to make a revolutionary new building. They go on to make some amazing building that gets all sorts of awards and recognition. Is anyone really so naive as to suggest that I am deserving of any credit whatsoever? In the words of Urkel, "Did I do that?"

This example doesn't work, at least, since the industrial revolution. If an average person wins the lottery they would need to solve a lot (really a lot) of issues to move a business forward and most probably go bankrupt except if he/she puts the money in low risk financial instruments.

There is no "I do that" in the complex world of business. It is a nice Disney story with a few examples. Organization does the work and that includes anonymous engineers, not only CEOs and founders. The great ignition could start at a garage (e.g. Apple) but the road is long.

[kortilla]

> As far as Altman goes, I put him firmly in the same camp as Musk. They haven't done jack shit.

What Musk did with SpaceX is in no way comparable to just paying an architect to build a building. Unless the entire biography from Isaacson was fabricated, he was extremely hands on in design decisions, company direction, and hiring.

If you think none of those were relevant to the success of spacex, you’re completely delusional.

[gamblor956]

Per dozens of engineers at SpaceX...the biography from Isaacson contains numerous exaggerations and outright fabrications.

Elon Musk's involvement in design decisions was limited to the typical executive level involvement in hardware design, in the sense that he was presented multiple options by the engineers and designers and got to pick which one they went with.

Indeed, with SpaceX it's usually immediately obvious when Musk was involved: does something fail spectacularly in a way it wasn't supposed to? That was Musk, getting involved in something he didn't understand and overriding the engineers and other professionals. (Contrast the first Starship launch this year, which Musk micromanaged, vs the second launch in November in which he had minimal involvement due to being distracted by X and Tesla.)

[kortilla]

This is just made up shit though. None of what you are stating is backed by any sources.

>Per dozens of engineers at SpaceX...the biography from Isaacson contains numerous exaggerations and outright fabrications.

Which ones, specifically?

>the sense that he was presented multiple options by the engineers and designers and got to pick which one they went with.

Even if this were the only level of involvement, do you realize how important these are? Do you know how it would have worked out for the company if they focused on payload instead of reusability?

[throwaway2037]

> Contrast the first Starship launch this year, which Musk micromanaged, vs the second launch in November in which he had minimal involvement due to being distracted by X and Tesla.

I tried to a Google search for a source. I cannot find anything. Do you have a good source, or insider information?

[infamia]

> You don't have to like Sam. But people who do big things, by definition, have to get there by pushing things along at a cadence that differs from most other people. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good thing, but I don't get why every article about Sam seems to be surprised that the guy who helped build something nobody thought was possible (AI this decade) got there by doing things in a fast, unique way.

Why are you surprised by folks reaction? What did he successfully build before OpenAI? Nothing as far as I can tell? His main skill seems to be networking, not building product. Also, doing it fast, does not require lying, as seems his habit.

[mlazos]

Sam just got lucky, look who was in the board that ousted him! A bunch of no-names with no experience managing companies with a valuation over 10k except the quora exec. OpenAI was a backwater before ChatGPT and it absolutely exploded. When that happens some people are in over their heads (as the board clearly was). Sam wasn’t to his credit, but regardless non-technical people in this company could be replaced with any run-of-the-mill startup CEO and still have their current valuation. Sam was saved to save investor perception of stability. He’s Ringo.

[BeefDinnerPurge]

It's less about not following the norms and more about not following the norms and doing so at a startup. Big companies know how to cut the tall poppies, it's a core corporate competency even.

[brcmthrowaway]

Which makes me think... how much of the talent in middle management in FAANG could be actually useful in the world when applied somewhere else!

[nucleative]

The reddit fatfire sub is full of middle managers at FAANG who are pulling a few hundred k to a mil in W2 income for the foreseeable future. Their eyes are set on riding off into the sunset at the earliest opportunity. They would probably have more fun working harder if the results benefited them directly but I'm sure many aren't serious risk takers. For those who are, I think they are already off doing their own thing.

[VirusNewbie]

right now, I get a lot more use out of my iPhone, GMail, and Netflix than I do ChatGPT. Could change soon, but something to note.

[richbell]

This comment reminds me of when Bird's CEO described their intentional subversion of municipal legislation as "innovating on the regulatory front."

A lot can be accomplished by skirting pesky rules and regulations. It isn't something commendable.

[gkoberger]

This is a fallacy. You can't say "this other CEO did something" if you're trying to make a point about Sam. If you have a problem with Sam doing something illegal, say it.

I'm not saying Sam has never done anything illegal, but most of the outrage seems to be that he doesn't follow social/business norms (not that he doesn't follow rules/regulations/laws).

[CPLX]

The outrage is mostly focused on the fact that he doesn’t seem to tell the truth.

[throwaway2037]

Can you give a concrete, relevant example? As a point of comparison: Musk has a far worse (in my eyes) about lying on social media than Altman.

[hutzlibu]

Yeah, those annoying "social/business norms".

[richbell]

> This is a fallacy. You can't say "this other CEO did something" if you're trying to make a point about Sam. If you have a problem with Sam doing something illegal, say it.

There is nothing fallacious about my comment. Saying I'm not allowed to compare him to other CEOs is ridiculous.

As another commenter said: he isn't unique.

[stale2002]

> Saying I'm not allowed to compare him to other CEOs is ridiculous

You can compare him to other CEO but you have to justify why the comparison is valid.

You didn't do that.

If you want to directly claim that Sam did something illegal you need to show or say that.

Instead, what you did, is just point to someone else who did something illegal, and then criticize that other person, while vaguely implying that the criticism applies to Sam.

But the criticism doesn't apply to Sam, because you didn't demonstrate that Sam did anything illegal.

[blackoil]

Not OP, but adding it is called false equivalence or commonly known as comparing apples and oranges. Just because two people are CEO doesn't relate them any more than a person with mustache to Hitler.

[stale2002]

> A lot can be accomplished by skirting pesky rules and regulations. It isn't something commendable.

Well that depends.

Is the thing that is being accomplished very good and are the regulations bad?

For example, what if there is a law that was passed for the sole purpose of protecting a well connected monopoly, so that consumers have to pay more money, only so that this one monopoly could profit.

I'd say that such a law would be bad and should be under minded.

[MicolashKyoka]

Some rules are stupid and reek of cronyism, enshrining established players at the expense of innovation. Those deserve to be challenged.

[_3u10]

Yes, this is why economists recommend against too many rules and regulations.

[skullone]

He's not unique, instead very textbook sociopath. Lines up with the alleged abuse of his younger sister too. There's not much more to him than a wheeler and dealer, self serving abuser.

[queuebert]

Whatever his issues, I think it's clear that humanity absolutely cannot afford people like him to control the emergence of AGI.

[throwaway2037]

I don't like victim blaming, so I will tread carefully here. What makes you believe Annie Altman? If her accusations were sound, she should be working with a district attorney to file charges, or at least sue Sam in civil court. From some light Googling, I don't see either in progress.

[tester756]

Seriously?

It feels like he just wants to do 10 things at the same time.

[gkoberger]

If he was brilliant and high agency, rather than a sociopath, what would be doing differently right now? The phrase "wheeler and dealer" rarely applies to people who have genuinely changed the world forever; why do you put him in that category when he clearly has had tangible results?

Hey, if you don't like Sam, that's fine. But that doesn't make him a sociopath.

[fvbcds]

Brilliant and high agency people don’t shill for big companies. I am not trying to be a dick but agency == honesty.

[pclmulqdq]

I don't know a lot about Sam Altman's history, but I do know that there is a lot of misattribution in tech circles away from the doers and toward the managers. Has he had significant tangible results, or has he managed people who have had those tangible results?

This sort of misattribution seems to show up when you have individuals with sociopathic tendencies running firms that do cool things: Elon Musk is the king of this. The man has not, on his own, had any sort of good results on the world - Tesla and SpaceX seem to do a lot better when he steps away from them - but he has found ways to get himself into a position to take credit from the engineers who do. Hyperloops and Twitter are the results of Elon Musk's original work. That's not to say that the management is necessarily negative: someone needs to fund the work of the good engineers.

[Method-X]

What do you think the leader of multiple billion dollar companies would be doing exactly? People like Musk are like conductors of an orchestra. That's not easy, especially with multiple successful companies.

[pclmulqdq]

The conductor of an orchestra, and the leader of a company, sets the vision and direction. Steve Jobs was exceptional at this. Two examples, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, are clearly not particularly adept at this.

SpaceX and Tesla have the equivalent of the principals of each section of the orchestra feeding their conductor his cues and making sure he gets them right. Google has someone standing on the podium and bowing, but nobody waving the baton at all.

OpenAI is more of a research organization than a product company, and so it's hard to see where someone like Altman can contribute meaningfully to the direction.

[kortilla]

SpaceX is Elon’s original work. There was no preexisting company there.

[asfgkadnhiok]

>If he followed the norms, he'd be a mid-level manager at FAANG company.

If we followed the norms, he's be in prison. If you think fraud and self-dealing are justified if it moves a lot of value to shareholders, write to your senator. Until then the laws should be enforced against the rich as well as the poor.

Of course, I can't much bring myself to care in this case, because all that's at stake is a chatbot.

[gkoberger]

What laws are you accusing him of breaking?