[Timber-6539]

> “The senior leadership team was unanimous in asking for Sam’s return as CEO and for the board’s resignation, actions backed by an open letter signed by over 95% of our employees. The strong support from his team underscores that he is an effective CEO,” said an OpenAI spokeswoman.

This is where I stopped reading.

At the risk of sounding defensive of Sam Altman. If there's something so fundamentally wrong with him, why does he have such broad support? He's just one man, say that what this article alleges is true, how many tricks does he have up his sleeve to fool the entirety of Silicon Valley?

I mean, we can beat around the bush all day but he managed to get his old/new?? job back at OpenAI. This means to me that his ouster was either unwarranted or the board was acting blindly and should have stepped aside just on account of being clearly incapable of making sound decisions.

This article does not ask the right questions. Doesn't answer any questions either like the many articles written before it riddled with speculation about Sam's much belabored firing.

[az226]

95% of employees voted with their wallets. Their millions of dollars in “stock options” were at risk of being worthless and the tender offer of cashing out was halted. Of course they wanted him back. And of course they would have joined Microsoft too — but almost none of them would have joined had they gotten a standard Microsoft offer, they would only join if they got a matching or near matching offer.

[Timber-6539]

Sounds like he is their golden goose (for both the company and the employees).

[JumpCrisscross]

> why does he have such broad support?

He makes people money. Plenty of terrible people commanded great loyalty. All the loyalty tells you is he’s a good leader. Not where he’s leading us.

(Not saying anything about Sam. Just pointing out that loyalty is orthogonal.)

[Timber-6539]

He should be making investors money. That's his #1 job.

Aside from that, who cares about loyalty to the CEO of a tech company. He's a replaceable employee and OpenAI should be able to continue without him.

What were his actual crimes. It's not clear from the previous board nor anyone who's spoken about the matter what those were.

[sumedh]

> That's his #1 job.

That was not is #1 job as per the charter, that why all this controversy started.

[Timber-6539]

That charter became bogus once OpenAI started taking in billions worth of investor money.

[JumpCrisscross]

> What were his actual crimes

Boards don’t judge crimes. And unlike courts, they have no disclosure obligation. Particularly for a private company.

[Timber-6539]

> they have no disclosure obligation.

If true, that board deserved to be dissolved privately without being given the courtesy of raising any voices against Sam or OpenAI's future.

[pclmulqdq]

OpenAI is a nonprofit. Making investors money is explicitly off the table, despite how much Sam Altman wants that to change.

[Timber-6539]

OpenAI opted to become a for-profit company to take money from investors back in 2019.

https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp

[pclmulqdq]

OpenAI did not become for-profit. OpenAI opened a limited-profit arm. The board of directors who fired Sam Altman is the board of the nonprofit.

[Timber-6539]

> limited-profit arm.

This is another one of those recent buzzwords that mean nothing. Like oil conglomerates making "green energy" donations and calling themselves low carbon emitters.

[voxl]

Many years ago I once tried to share a History channel documentary on the JFK assassination with a friend. They watched up until the first part, the documentary dramaticized the assassination and talked about how the shot seemed impossible based off the shape of the car.

See I had already watched this documentary in full, and knew that this was just a cliffhanger for the second part that explained the car was modified, making the seemingly impossible shot very possible. Yet, my friend said "See? That's enough evidence." and walked away.

I asked, "don't you want to hear the rest?" the response: "nope."

Your comment reminds me of this experience

[Timber-6539]

So did you tell your friend who killed JFK?

[psswrd12345]

> "If there's something so fundamentally wrong with him, why does he have such broad support?"

Stock options and a carefully built cult of personality, my friend

[alm1]

how much do you know about the signature collection process? I can easily see how a large number of these could've been out of fear of retaliation and some out of greed. Many autocrats claim high support numbers on every election, doesn't mean they are beloved.

[Timber-6539]

Sounds like you are you saying the employee signatures were manufactured and we shouldn't trust anything OpenAI says. If so, maybe you should provide the evidence for these claims.

[Invictus0]

> If there's something so fundamentally wrong with him, why does he have such broad support?

75 million people voted for Trump.