This is embarassing for OpenAI no matter how you slice it.
OpenAI has never claimed they want Sam back. The article claims OpenAI's investors want him back.
I will agree that OpenAI could have done a better job of letting him go if there truly were irreconcilable differences.
prolonged public exchange between sama and the board _before_ any firings where they throw accusations at each other followed by microsoft pulling out, followed by people quitting and immediately resulting in a chatgpt outage. followed by the firing of the ceo
the former went on garden leave for 6 months (actually even before the Vega launch) to make a movie with his brother, and then resigned to “spend more time with his family”, before popping up again a month later at intel. That’s what it looks like when they want you to go away but they don’t want to make a big scene over it.
the latter fucked up so badly the board found a reason to kick him out without a golden parachute etc, despite the official reason (dating another employee) being something that was widely known for years, other than being a technical no-no/bad idea in general. he wasn’t kicked out because of that, he was kicked out for the combination of endless fab woes, spectre/meltdown, and bad business/product decisions that let AMD get the traction to become a serious competitor again. That’s what it looks like when the board is absolutely furious and pushes whatever buttons inflict the most pain on you.
Ironic that it’s a bit of an auto-antonym (auto-antoidiom?), it’s ceremonious when they want you to go away quietly and it’s unceremonious when they publicly kick your ass to the curb so hard you’ve got boot marks for a week.