It's also naive to think it was a struggle for principles. The rapid commercialization vs. principles is what the actors claim to rally their respective troops, in reality it was probably a naked power grab, taking advantage of the weak and confuse org structure. Quite an ill prepared move, the "correct" way to oust Altman was to hamstring him in the board and enforce a more and more ceremonial role until he would have quit by himself.
https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=38375767
It will be super interesting to see the subtle struggles for influence between these three.
The staff never mutinied. They threatened to mutiny. That's a big difference!
Yesterday, I compared these rebels to Shockley's "traitorous eight" [1]. But the traitorous eight actually rebelled. These folk put their name on a piece of paper, options and profit participation units safely held in the other hand.
[1] >>38348123
The safest option was to sign the paper, once the snowball started rolling. There was nothing much to lose, and a lot to gain.
I'm not sure what faction Bret and Larry will be on. Sam will still have power by virtue of being CEO and aligned with the employees.
1. Have some explanation
2. Have a new CEO who is willing and able to do the job
If you can't do these things, then you probably shouldn't be firing the CEO.
Nobody comes out of this looking good. Nobody. If the board thought there was existential risk, they should have been willing to commit to it. Hopefully sensible start-ups can lure people away from their PPUs, now evident for the mockery they always were. It's beyond obvious this isn't, and will never be, a trillion dollar company. That's the only hope this $80+ billion Betamax valuation rested on.
I'm all for a comedy. But this was a waste of everyones' time. At least they could have done it in private.
There isn't just a big red button that says "destroy company" in the basement. There will be partnerships to handle, severance, facilities, legal issues, maybe lawsuits, at the very least a lot of people to communicate with. Companies don't just shut themselves down, at least not multi billion dollar companies.
Stock options usually have a limited time window to exercise, depending on their strike price they could have been faced with raising a few hundred thousand in 30 days, to put into a company that has an uncertain future, or risk losing everything. The contracts are likely full of holes not in favor of the employees, and for participating in an action that attempted to bankrupt their employer there would have been years of litigation ahead before they would have seen any cent. Not because OpenAI would have been right to punish them, but because it could and the latent threat to do it is what keeps people in line.