Corporate Fuckery

[Nintex]

"It was sort of a bluff that ultimately worked."

“The letter itself was drafted by a group of longtime staffers who have the most clout and money at stake with years of industry standing and equity built up, as well as higher pay. They began calling other staffers late on Sunday night, urging them to sign, the employee explained.”

Despite nearly everyone on staff signing up to follow Altman out the door, "No one wanted to go to Microsoft." This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies.

"The bureaucracy of something as big as Microsoft is soul crushing."

"Even though we have a partnership with Microsoft, internally, we have no respect for their talent bar," the current OpenAI employee told BI. "It rubbed people the wrong way to entertain being managed by them."

Beyond the culture clash between the two companies, there was another important factor at play for OpenAI employees: money. Lots of it was set to disappear before their eyes if OpenAI were to suddenly collapse under a mass exodus of staff.

"Sam Altman is not the best CEO, but millions and millions of dollars and equity are at stake," the current OpenAI employee said.

Microsoft agreed to hire all OpenAI employees at their same level of compensation, but this was only a verbal agreement in the heat of the moment.

A scheduled tender offer, which was about to let employees sell their existing vested equity to outside investors, would have been canceled. All that equity would have been worth "nothing," this employee said.

The former OpenAI employee estimated that, of the hundreds of people who signed the letter saying they would leave, "probably 70% of the folks on that list were like, 'Hey, can we, you know, have this tender go through?'"

Some Microsoft employees, meanwhile, were furious that the company promised to match salaries for hundreds of OpenAI employees.”