Sam Altman's Coworkers Say He Can Barely Code and Misunderstands Basic Concepts

xvxvx

"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer." It's not a small chance, it's close to 100%. If your bullshit detector is not going off, you have a serious problem.

BoredPositron

I bet he is a menace but so are probably 90% of c-suite tech execs. Like with Elon and Zuck it's the insecurities which make it at least funny to watch from the sidelines.

pram

I am amused at how pissy he can get in interviews. Who thought it was a great idea to have this guy doing PR?

glerk

> I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff What's with all the hit pieces on Sam Altman lately? He's a CEO, his job is to grow the business, not to code. That part is handled by the engineers that he hired. How many CEOs out there are also great programmers? Sure, I would prefer Sam Altman to have more technical depth given the business he is leading, but lack of technical depth doesn't make him a Bernie Madoff.

mbgerring

I’m old enough to remember that Sam Altman’s claim to fame before OpenAI, before running YC, was running a failed also-ran location-based whatever Web 2.0 scam startup thing that accomplished nothing and that no one remembers. His entire “career” is based on persuading people with money to give him more of it. The incentive structures are such that everyone sucks up to people in a position to give you a lot of money, so all these people with no real skills, talent or track record get regarded as “geniuses”, but like, even when you understand why this happens, it doesn’t make it any less rage-inducing. What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?

ergocoder

People like to gatekeep coding as if it was some sort of mythical skills that only extremely smart people could do. Tons of people can code. Coding is not some sort of mythical skill. Millions of people can code. For some reason, this narrative is almost always applying on people who are politically incompatible with the left like Elon and Sam.

zulux

The hard part for some of us: Can we learn anything from this to help our own careers?

squirrellous

This is probably the least important bad thing you could say about Altman. Also why is a low effort commentary piece of the NYT article on the HN front page?

fhe

even if this were true, PG (who can code, and can tell if someone else can) didn't think it was an issue when handing over YC to Altman.

adamnemecek

Neither did Steve Jobs and no one cared.

gpjt

Wait, that's it? Seven paragraphs, all short? Two quotes, one from some anonymous MS exec? Is the site sending some minimal version of the article to me because I'm using Brave, or is this the lowest-content article I've seen in weeks (and I'm on Twitter)?

WheelsAtLarge

This doesn’t really surprise me. Most company leaders don’t have a detailed view of day to day work, they couldn’t step in and do every employee’s job. What they are good at is creating a clear story and direction that brings people together around a shared goal. That’s what Sam has done, especially in how he’s sold that vision to investors and raised billions. You could say the same about leaders like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. It’s not necessarily a perfect system, but it’s often how companies grow and attract funding. No, they are not the perfect humans. It's just how business works.