Thank you for that comment. There are many people here who seem to believe that the OpenAI employees--and nearly everyone else involved in this drama--are motivated only by money. While of course money matters, people are also motivated by pride, vanity, idealism, loyalty, companionship,
interest in the work itself, and many other things. Explanations of this fascinating situation that don't reflect that complexity are not convincing to me.
I'm 36. Fully agree with your comment and the above as well.
Resigned 6 years ago due to differences at the top after 10 yrs building.
A bad guy was treating everyone poorly. Ranged from rage beratements to gross narcissistic manipulation aimed at gaining control over decent human beings.
Tried to press top guys to allign and confront to protect my team and others. Made very obvious business sense as well ofc. They refused. Too risky... Too much trouble.
Walked away from the best money I ever made. Would do it again. I'm not gonna watch people be mistreated. Also it's bad business, I was exhausted playing solo defense and after management failed to make moves I fully became convinced that every person should hit the job market for mental health reasons alone.
5 years on, the other guy besides me slated for c suite left as well. He helped at first then balked when the going got tough. Now the two partners have gotten in a dispute about succession planning and I expect everyone to be unemployed potentially within the next 3 months.
There's no money I would take to work there again or anywhere else where that kind of toxicity is present. The only worthy cause there became to confront the toxicity. Without the right allies though... The biggest thing I could do was just resign. 6 years later one partner realized I was right and he should have backed me.
After a certain point... Money doesn't matter. Given the 900k avg salary in that outfit... I have to assume they are overwhelmingly beyond that threshold. Furthermore all evidence to me indicates that Altman personally looks for folks who can get money, but care much more about other factors... He is wise to do that. Hard to find those folks, but worth it every time imo.
I respect both of y'alls experiance btw. I saw this confused cynical misunderstanding re salary expressed all over the comments for this story as it's unfolded since Friday. I consider it a full misread built largely from folks getting mistreated/burned by the many fools throughout practically every industry who fail to realize before returning to the ground that money doesn't really buy happiness... Probably never will.
I'm 66, in case that matters.