Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today. Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened. Here is what we know: - Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon. - At 12:19pm, Greg got a text from Ilya asking for a quick call. At 12:23pm, Ilya sent a Google Meet link. Greg was told that he was being removed from the board (but was vital to the company and would retain his role) and that Sam had been fired. Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post. - As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, other than Mira who found out the night prior. The outpouring of support has been really nice; thank you, but please don’t spend any time being concerned. We will be fine. Greater things coming soon.
@TrungTPhan @gdb @sama “Trung do you have 15min?”
@TrungTPhan @gdb @sama Hahahaha…excellent takeawayfor future senior leaders: the “Google Meet” link is the sign
@TrungTPhan @gdb @sama The real shocker here is that after $10B from Microsoft, OpenAI still refuses to use Teams
@TrungTPhan @gdb @sama Maybe had they replied by sending a teams link back they wouldn’t have been canned.
This is terrible! I don’t get how companies can fire people this way. Everytime it’s a meeting few hours before, without any information. And never they will listen or ask for a debrief to help them grow, everytime it’s a one way discussion and there is no support at all. Sad no company try to create and share a better process.