[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

[darkwraithcov]

I’m not impressed. You know who is impressive? Wozniak, you can’t tell me those guys are even remotely in the same league. Even Jobs and Gates were/are accomplished designers and programmers, Elon is a joke compared to them.

Calling Twitter a “crazy stack” is hilariously laughable, serious junior dev energy, that at the very least he should be able to describe to another dev a) whats crazy about it b) what it looks like from top to bottom without insulting people for asking.

[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.

[fakedang]

Exactly. People here think knowing how to code is spinning up 5 k8s clusters and running an ELK stack from scratch, when in reality, it can be much less. Musk was an intermediate level coder from his time, which, mind you, was a time where terms like Agile, code hygiene, etc, were non-existent.

Most code critics of Musk today criticize his poor coding skills due to him unable to migrate his skills from that era to today. But as CEO, he doesn't need to do that. I'm sure he understands the code on a shallow level, which is fine for his role.

[darkwraithcov]

Have you looked at that game and the code? Its garbage. https://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

I knew guys in the 90s in high school who were writing exploits and cracking major software. For a layperson who isn’t a dev and didn’t run in those circles, it might seem impressive for a kid, but not for any of the kids I knew. Any kid with a basic understanding of programming could copy the code from a computer magazine line by line and edit it slightly . And just because he wrote it at 12 doesn’t mean he has actual coding skills as an adult, he has even said so himself he is not a “hardcore coder”. Considering there are kids like Mike Wimmer who were taking uni level robotics courses at 12, Elon is incredibly mediocre in comparison and only a simp would believe he was some kind of prodigy.

After all, we are talking about a guy who asked his engineers to print out code to show him to prove how productive they were, and who could not explain Twitter’s craaaaazy stack without telling off an actual dev. Who the F thinks the more lines of code you write the more productive you are? How deeply embarrassing.

[darkwraithcov]

“ While Musk had exceled as a self-taught coder, his skills weren’t nearly as polished as those of the new hires. They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons. ” from his biography

[nvm0n2]

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

[darkwraithcov]

He’s as technical as a middle manager with an MBA at a tech company might be, but barely impressive otherwise. Compare that to someone like Zuckerberg, who I cannot stand, it’s laughable in comparison. He doesn’t have any advanced degrees and hasn’t designed anything without help from actual, world class engineers and devs. No doubt he knows PR and hires really talented people. He went to school for business, and his physics degree is total BS, also you realize that official biographies are sanctioned by the subject and are made to paint him as an adult, his business acumen, etc in the best possible light?

[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?

[p1esk]

this core research team has been so stable

OpenAI VP of research Dario Amodei and a bunch of others left three years ago and started Anthropic.

Ilya Sutskever reportedly told the board before the coup that he’s so unhappy with Sam he was thinking about leaving. He might be out now.

I don’t know if Sam is the right leader for OpenAI - he might be. But it’s good that he’s being watched closely right now.

[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?