I’m curious about the bit about 95% of the employees threatening to quit, is he that good of a CEO that the workers there feel a personal loyalty to him? Or is it more a loss of faith in the company itself? If the CEO of my company got fired, I probably wouldn’t notice or care much. I don’t think they’re doing a bad job either, they’re just so far removed from me that they don’t really factor into my day.
The firing was incredibly destabilizing to the perceived value of the business and the future of its partnerships. Whether or not the employees like Sam or not is irrelevant to them acting in the interests of self preservation for their creations and ambitions, and their jobs.
Firing Sam was a threat to that and it’s increasingly looking like the board chose to be volatile and unpredictable rather than measured in how they dealt with the claims they were making against him. So in the end it’s not terribly surprising that this has been the outcome.
EDIT: for the slow kids at the back, this doesn’t make Sam a good person or the next messiah. Business decisions can’t be explained in terms of heroes and villains regardless of how much Jobs-through-Elon stanning you’ve seen in the public domain.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, overcoming an attempted boardroom coup that sent the company into chaos over the past several days.
The company said in a statement late Tuesday that it has an “agreement in principle” for Altman to return alongside a new board composed of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo.
When asked what “in principle” means, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company had “no additional comments at this time.”
OpenAI’s nonprofit board seemed resolute in its initial decision to remove Altman, shuffling through two CEOs in three days to avoid reinstating him.
Meanwhile, the employees of OpenAI revolted, threatening to defect to Microsoft with Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman if the board didn’t resign.
During the whole saga, the board members who opposed Altman withheld an actual explanation for why they fired him, even under the threat of lawsuits from investors.
The original article contains 356 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 59%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
First board meeting: awkward silence … welcome back Sam!
They cleared out the board except for one holdover.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills
—Crazy awesome pills
