Before Sam Altman's Ouster, OpenAI's Leaders Were Warned of Abusive Behavior (msn.com) 64
"This fall, a small number of senior leaders approached the board of OpenAI with concerns about chief executive Sam Altman," the Washington Post reported late Friday:
Altman — a revered mentor, and avatar of the AI revolution — had been psychologically abusive, the employees alleged, creating pockets of chaos and delays at the artificial-intelligence start-up, according to two people familiar with the board's thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. The company leaders, a group that included key figures and people who manage large teams, mentioned Altman's allegedly pitting employees against each other in unhealthy ways, the people said.
Although the board members didn't use the language of abuse to describe Altman's behavior, these complaints echoed some of their interactions with Altman over the years, and they had already been debating the board's ability to hold the CEO accountable. Several board members thought Altman had lied to them, for example, as part of a campaign to remove board member Helen Toner after she published a paper criticizing OpenAI, the people said.
The new complaints triggered a review of Altman's conduct during which the board weighed the devotion Altman had cultivated among factions of the company against the risk that OpenAI could lose key leaders who found interacting with him highly toxic. They also considered reports from several employees who said they feared retaliation from Altman: One told the board that Altman was hostile after the employee shared critical feedback with the CEO and that he undermined the employee on that person's team, the people said...
The complaints about Altman's alleged behavior, which have not previously been reported, were a major factor in the board's abrupt decision to fire Altman on Nov. 17, according to the people. Initially cast as a clash over the safe development of artificial intelligence, Altman's firing was at least partially motivated by the sense that his behavior would make it impossible for the board to oversee the CEO.
Bloomberg reported Friday: The board had heard from some senior executives at OpenAI who had issues with Altman, said one person familiar with directors' thinking. But employees approached board members warily because they were scared of potential repercussions of Altman finding out they had spoken out against him, the person said.
Two other interesting details from the Post's article:
Although the board members didn't use the language of abuse to describe Altman's behavior, these complaints echoed some of their interactions with Altman over the years, and they had already been debating the board's ability to hold the CEO accountable. Several board members thought Altman had lied to them, for example, as part of a campaign to remove board member Helen Toner after she published a paper criticizing OpenAI, the people said.
The new complaints triggered a review of Altman's conduct during which the board weighed the devotion Altman had cultivated among factions of the company against the risk that OpenAI could lose key leaders who found interacting with him highly toxic. They also considered reports from several employees who said they feared retaliation from Altman: One told the board that Altman was hostile after the employee shared critical feedback with the CEO and that he undermined the employee on that person's team, the people said...
The complaints about Altman's alleged behavior, which have not previously been reported, were a major factor in the board's abrupt decision to fire Altman on Nov. 17, according to the people. Initially cast as a clash over the safe development of artificial intelligence, Altman's firing was at least partially motivated by the sense that his behavior would make it impossible for the board to oversee the CEO.
Bloomberg reported Friday: The board had heard from some senior executives at OpenAI who had issues with Altman, said one person familiar with directors' thinking. But employees approached board members warily because they were scared of potential repercussions of Altman finding out they had spoken out against him, the person said.
Two other interesting details from the Post's article:
- While over 95% of the company's employees signed an open letter after Altman's firing demanding his return, "On social media, in news reports and on the anonymous app Blind, which requires members to sign up with a work email address to post, people identified as current OpenAI employees also described facing intense peer pressure to sign the mass-resignation letter."
- The Post also spotted "a cryptic post" on X Wednesday from OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever about lessons learned over the past month: "One such lesson is that the phrase 'the beatings will continue until morale improves' applies more often than it has any right to,'" (The Post adds that "The tweet was quickly deleted.")
The Post also reported in November that "Before OpenAI, Altman was asked to leave by his mentor at the prominent start-up incubator Y Combinator, part of a pattern of clashes that some attribute to his self-serving approach."
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Keep practicing, you may land your dream job working for Musk one day.
Re:When Gen-Z cries psychological abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen abusive managers. Those that dismiss that such creatures exist are usually of the same toxic personality type.
What is it with the tech bros that they think being a fucking asshole is some sort of badge of honor. Did your parents teach you being a sociopathic prick was a good thing?
Re:When Gen-Z cries psychological abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen abusive managers. Those that dismiss that such creatures exist are usually of the same toxic personality type.
Yep. There are a lot of complete assholes around. Most of them like to claim they are not assholes but superior. That is never actually the case.
What is it with the tech bros that they think being a fucking asshole is some sort of badge of honor. Did your parents teach you being a sociopathic prick was a good thing?
What is worse is that it is also completely stupid and costs their employer and the economy tons of money. There are basically no roles where being an asshole is in any way an asset or beneficial. The only thing it shows is that somebody failed top grow up and failed as a human being and is now blaming everybody else for that.
Re:When Gen-Z cries psychological abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
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Stockholm Syndrome and greed is quite enough to explain that.
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Nobody said, 'oh, he must be having his $500K-$900K/year engineers [levels.fyi] compete against each other in an unpleasant manner.'
Which is it?
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Obviously, you did not understand what I wrote and are now trying to move goalposts in an attempt to mask you incompetence. How pathetic. You clearly are not worth talking to.
Re:When Gen-Z cries psychological abuse (Score:4, Informative)
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You don't get a 95% sign rate without manipulation. That's one-party vote territory.
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Satanism.
Narcissists (Score:3)
They are excellent manipulators, it's their stock in trade. They have virtually no self-esteem and they feel that they have to manipulate others to prevent them from finding out just how empty they are inside. Creating anxiety, wearing down your self-esteem and negative reinforcement (operant conditioning) are their tactics of choice. Vindictiveness, mental games and isolation are other tools in their arsenal.
When confronted on their abusive behavior by a crowd, they'll try to gaslight their way out of it
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Did you just assume the OP's gender and their neurodiversity?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Abusive managers exist.
Over-sensitive workers exist.
These two things are not mutually exclusive.
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I've seen abusive managers. Those that dismiss that such creatures exist are usually of the same toxic personality type.
I agree with timeOday. The point isn't dismissal of any particular behavior only to point out the use of such terms may not convey anything of substantive value given the wildly different tolerance and value judgements that can exist between people employing these terms.
Re: When Gen-Z cries psychological abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm Gen-X. Sometimes "hostile" and "toxic" are the right words. I've run into one or two highly successful and charismatic CEOs who are borderline sociopaths. I'm not saying Altman is one of them. But just because the terms applied to him are nebulous, it does not automatically mean his critics are wrong.
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Psychologists have claimed that up to 80% of CEOs meet the threshold to be called sociopaths.
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it could mean almost anything, or nothing.
And here are the words... "toxic," "hostile." Buzzwords of hypersensitivity.
I stay down in the trenches because I'm not good at politics. Get close to the C-suite and you should expect it.
There are things that are hard to do if you're "nice". Calling out people's mistakes, pushing them to work harder (even after hours), firing sub-par employees, etc. So the most successful leaders Jobs, Musk, Gates, Bezos, all have enough of an inner a-hole to do these things.
But that doesn't mean being a complete a-hole is good management.
I once saw the VP of our division scream spend several minutes screaming at two fairly senior folks in a public office area for a fairly mild screw up, this wasn't unusual
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Politics inhibits progress, blocks detection of faults, and generally results in inferior results.
People who are successful at politics are going to be sociopaths and psychopaths. They are not going to be creative types, nor will they care about quality.
Attitudes DO trickle down, even if money does not.
Staying down in the trenches didn't help Boeing engineers. They've lost multiple airframe on multiple occasions because they're too busy not caring about consequences to actually do anything useful.
Re: When Gen-Z cries psychological abuse (Score:2)
Sounds like youâ(TM)ve confused the word âoepoliticsâ with the word âoeethicsâ and as a result absolutely failed at being a decent human being.
I wonder where the truth is (Score:2)
Re:I wonder where the truth is (Score:5, Interesting)
What does it say about the board that they would hire him back then?
So the problem is that Altman is abusive and self-serving, yet the board, faced with the loss of 70% of the staff, would choose self-interest over standing against abusive behavior. Abuse is OK, as long as they profit.
At least that the story for now.
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The major financial backer essentially ordered them to rehire him.
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What does it say about the board that they would hire him back then?
That Altman somehow went behind their backs? /s
My best guess is blackmail. That would give us even more drama about people I don't care about to continue juicing for more stories that I can't avoid.
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"What does it say about the board that they would hire him back then"
It says that the board lost and was essentially fired. They were at the point where the financial backing was leaving, the staff was leaving, and the leadership was leaving. There was no longer any way for them to affect anything other than whether OpenAI continued inside MicroSoft or outside MicroSoft.
"as long as they profit."
There's only one person from that board that even carries over. The rest get nothing.
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>What does it say about the board that they would hire him back then?
What does it say about the employees, then?
What percent signed that letter?
Even facing peer pressure, if I was being abused, I wouldn't sign. What are they going to do to me? Not invite me to lunch?
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Never assume an abusive employer would balk at breaking the law to win a contest of wills.
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The vast majority of the staff would rather be successful while working for an asshole than accomplish nothing while being led in a round of happy fluffy feelings?
What does that say?
Assholes can be effective leaders. Effective leadership is important. More important than being nice.
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Well, if you let 70% of the staff at a company like this walk out the door, inevitably what happens is your technology walks out the door with them. If they hadn't hired him back immediately, that whole 70% of the company would be working for Microsoft's new AI division right now, and we would be discussing it in an article about the shocking speed of their explosive technical advances.
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You think that is a possibility? Very, very, very unlikely. Somebody reputed to be an abusive ashole on this high level is, in basically all cases, just an abusive asshole on this high level.
Maybe the board should have instead trying to see whether the rape claims his sister makes against him could have been firmed up.
Psycological abuse (Score:2)
Psychological abuse is any structure of leadership where you are forced to not think like yourself to do what the leader wants, for often more than 8 hours a day. The majority of your waking time you are forced to be a cog in the capitalist machine, a mental slave in exchange for the pittance of material wealth. Usually spent on cigs and alcohol to forget or detract from the sustained mental abuse. All for the vain hope that you can be free in your 60s.
Re:Psycological abuse (Score:4, Informative)
Psychological abuse is also extremely unhealthy for the recipients, with medical consequences up to and including death.
Anybody in such a position should look for a new job immediately.
The CEO is an insufferable asshole? (Score:3)
Now that's shocking news, that has never been the case anywhere!
I was always under the impression that was pretty much a qualification criterion for the position.
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CEOs who aren't insufferable aholes are rare, there's maybe 4 or 5 in any generation, but they tend to be the ones who - in the long run - actually achieve the most.
Lesson to be learned here (Score:5, Insightful)
When firing an asshole CEO with "visions" and a charismatic personality, prepare that firing a lot better.
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This is what happens when techie types reject "business administration" and "corporate governance" as a skills you can be good or bad at: they become skills you are only bad at.
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They might have been 100% right in firing him, but if they don't communicate the reasons behind that properly, it was guaranteed to fail. You don't fire such people on a whim and without proper justification.
Stock options (Score:2)
Let's be real: a lot of it was about rescuing stock options. For many, maybe even most employees there was a lot of money at stake. I can certainly believe that the peer pressure was extreme.
As for abusive behavior by startup CEOs? That is just business as normal. Being (or becoming) a sociopath is practically part of the job description. Doesn't make it right, of course...
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It's common, but it's not a requirement, and the big reason a lot of companies have very short lives is because the CEO has really built a personality cult, not a business.
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Indeed. Long-term viable businesses need access to high-value employees. Psychos on C-level positions tend to drive these away.
Not gonna happen (Score:1)
Stop trying to make Altman's ouster happen; it's not gonna happen.
Yeah, maybe (Score:3, Interesting)
Eccentric genius leaders often have odd quirks. I suspect that perfect leaders are somewhere between rare and nonexistent.
Everything is a spectrum. One person's toxic environment may be another's challenging quest.
Demanding excellence is fine for those who internally create the same demands and love working under pressure, but can be seen as oppressive to those who prefer not to be hardcore and care for things like work-life balance.
Actually being able to motivate a team to out perform the best is hard. Many approaches fail miserably. There is no perfect procedure, that if followed exactly, guarantees success.
Add to that the fact that technical talent in a field doesn't translate into talent in managing people, and it's easy to see how problems can happen.
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Eccentric genius?
He founded an unsuccessful social media company you've never heard of which mysteriously got night for $45 million after raising 30. Then he did a bunch of investing with his very rich brother, joined whither investment company, then raised a bunch of money for open SO while pulling a bait and switch to hire top people.
He's now moonlighting as a crypto huxter.
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Eccentric genius leaders. . .
. . .don't exist. It's a myth we've created to excuse the behavior of dickheads.
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That person is in no way a "genius".
"Everyone look at the trending-topic toxicity!" (Score:1)
Summers (Score:2)
No organization that takes actions due to genuine concerns about abusive behavior ends up with Lawrence Summers on the BOD - Summers is the dictionary definition of abusive behavior (and stupidly abusive at that). Something else was going on.
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"No organization that takes actions due to genuine concerns about abusive behavior ends up with Lawrence Summers on the BOD"
People keep missing the fact that all but one of the people previously on the board of directors is gone.
Got a problem? DEAL WITH IT (Score:2)
If I someone calls me names, I reply in kind.
If I get abuse from a social media poster, I block them.
STOP FUCKING WHINING ABOUT STUFF AND DEAL WITH IT.
Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
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MOD PARENT UP.
Note- culture has shifted due to technology for the worse. Everybody is isolated from true diversity; with technology's help, life is more sheltered and the natural inclinations to avoid unpleasant feelings are given too much power.
Kids in more diverse schools I've observed are self-segregating by appearance while before more was done to integrate them; also there were smaller minority groups who were forced to integrate there are now much larger groups who can take the easy route. Many factor
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MOD PARENT UP.
OP is obviously joking. Try taking the advice with the profanity and all caps to work and HR will have a word because you're evidently _not_ being able to "deal with it".
Note- culture has shifted due to technology for the worse. Everybody is isolated from true diversity; with technology's help, life is more sheltered and the natural inclinations to avoid unpleasant feelings are given too much power.
Before the internet a true Scotsman was hard to find, now they're seemingly everywhere.
Kids in more diverse schools I've observed are self-segregating by appearance while before more was done to integrate them; also there were smaller minority groups who were forced to integrate there are now much larger groups who can take the easy route. Many factors are involved; but now there is almost no counter effort being made and the younger 2 generations are completely wrong headed about it all. We have more emphasis on tribal identities and intolerance of differences or blurring the lines and a lot of stupid labeling with enforcement. Anti stereotypes while more rigid enforcement of other stereotypes. Idiotic BS about how I'm culturally appropriating something for simply adopting something outside my assigned tribe while another in that tribe who is not a member except in racial identity claims exclusive ownership of stuff they don't care about (but who's grandparents might.)
Is this about blackface?
Tolerance died off in the late 90s. Tech has let us join and recruit larger cults to the point half the USA has gone completely out of touch with reality. 1 third more are in bad shape. Traits that were necessary for democracy are dying off and soon the democracy will fall into despotism like all democracies do eventually. way too soon. thanks to social technology...
If tolerance died off in the late 90s, when did it start? With 8 of the Little Rock 9 still around I guess it's a living memory event.
Then why? (Score:4, Interesting)
If this guy was so abusive to employees and caused chaos in the company, why did they all rally around him when he was let go? It seems the normal reaction would be to be pleased and move on.
Re: Then why? (Score:3)
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So basically coercion, which could be criminal. Yep, I thought this smelled extremely bad. _No_ CEO ever in any large organization will have that type of support.
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Maybe M$ has its fingers around OpenAI's neck way tighter than they want to admit.
he could fit the definition of a psychopath (Score:1)
From a search of "what is the clinical definition of a psychopath":
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy, remorse, and conscience. Psychopaths are often manipulative, impulsive, and reckless. They may also be deceitful, dishonest, and have a grandiose sense of self-worth. Some of the key features of psychopathy are: 1. Lack of empathy and remorse 2. Grandiose sense of self-worth 3. Manipulative and deceitful 4. Impulsive and reckless 5. Poor impulse control 6. Callous and
Hearsay (Score:1)
The problem is these are all hearsay. Someone is lying, but how can outsiders tell who is telling the truth and who's lying? Unfortunately this is all too common, truthful testimonies are mixed into a sea of false accusations and misinformation.