zlacker

There are three dragons:

Employees, customers, government.

If motivated and aligned, any of these three could end you if they want to.

Do not wake the dragons.

>>adverb+(OP)
The Board is another one, if you're CEO.

>>pdntsp+s7
I think the parent comment’s point is that the board is not one, since the board was defeated (by the employee dragon).

>>elliot+v9
I think the analogy is kind of shaky. The board tried to end the CEO, but employees fought them and won.

I've been in companies where the board won, and they installed a stoolie that proceeded to drive the company into the ground. Anybody who stood up to that got fired too.

>>pdntsp+s7
My comment was more of a reflection of the fact that you might have multiple different governance structures to your organization. Sometimes investors are at the top. Sometimes it's a private owner. Sometimes there are separate kinds of shares for voting on different things. Sometimes it's a board. So you're right, the depending on the governance structure you can have additional dragons. But, you can never prevent any of these three from being a dragon. They will always be dragons, and you can never wake them up.

>>pdntsp+ld
I have an intuition that OpenAI's mid-range size gave the employees more power in this case. It's not as hard to coordinate a few hundred people, especially when those people are on top of the world and want to stay there. At a megacorp with thousands of employees, the board probably has an easier time bossing people around. Although I don't know if you had a larger company in mind when you gave your second example.

>>davesq+Cv
No, I'm thinking a smaller company, like 50 people, $20m ARR. Engineering-focused, but not tech

>>adverb+(OP)
Or tame the dragons. AFAIK Sam hired the employees. Hence they are loyal to him