The premise of this is that advice to hire "Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs" is bad because that turns into "hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground".
So, if I get this right, hiring is done by the founder, who is not capable of choosing good people in a sea of fakers, and because of founders incompetency the advice is bad?
I do agree that every founder/CEO should have a tool for gauging how their company is behaving out of their bubble, but I see this new mode as a dangerous proposition which will invite all sorts of paranoid founders/managers to take micromanaging/abuse to a whole new level.
Maybe a better question founders(VCs) should be asking themselves is why are there so many "professional fakers" in top/middle level positions, instead of figuring out how to augment their behavior?
Also, I'm 99% sure that Steve Job once said (paraphrasing): "We don't hire talented people to tell them what to do, we hire them to tell us what to do". Which to me sounds like "Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs".
So there is a discrepancy here as Steve Job is also used as an example of a "Founder Mode" CEO.
Not saying there is a contradiction, just a piece missing somewhere in the essays logic.
Letting your employees tell you what you need to do is not the same as giving them room to do what they want.
In the former, you are immediately aware of what they're doing and why, because they're telling you! You can ask questions if their reasoning doesn't sound convincing, intervene early if there's disagreement as to what should be done, and decide whose project takes priority. Steve Jobs was a very active CEO in this regard. Bullshitters will not survive long in such an organization.
The latter, on the other hand, is often taken to imply that you should not intervene unless absolutely necessary -- which often means, until it's too late.
henry ford was also pretty far from this warren buffett mode of letting the upper management of the company do what they want. very deeply involved in every level of the company, much like steve jobs
WRT https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41417363 the story I heard about Ford management vs GM management was that Ford had a "system" which involved looking around at the heights of various stacks of reports in his office and intervening where he felt things were out of whack.
Upon reflection, if each sheet of each report, on average, dealt with about the same dollar value of things as the other sheets in its stack, then his system, far from being madness, would've just been an early, analogue and low-pass-filtered, lo-tech "business intelligence" dashboard.
Staying in the details is different from micromanagement. It’s the difference between understanding (and deeply caring) about what’s happening vs. telling ICs how to solve a problem. You can’t be a good leader, mentor, or decision maker if you’re not invested in the details.
are we talking about steve jobs here? iphone in the fishtank steve jobs? roundrects are everywhere steve jobs? because that sounds pretty close to telling ics how to solve a problem
I think because you can't give C-level/(senior) manager candidates whiteboard interviews. The answers are all "it depends" and also depend on how the person explains it. Not to mention tech founders are usually technical people who are not used to bullshitters.
Your concern is valid, but since the company is their "baby", they care more than those for-hire professionals who can go to greener pastures.
> Your concern is valid, but since the company is their "baby", they care more than those for-hire professionals who can go to greener pastures.
This is the main aspect I think, that everyone keeps missing. The “professional fakers” work first and foremost for themselves. They make great decisions, for them. But not necessarily for the company.
In my third world country, when they do something unethical they say "everything is in accordance with the law", here it's "this is on me", both are very cynical.
From the time they went private, it was apparent that this company is unethical to say the least. Given what it is building, this can be very dangerous, but I think they are more proficient in creating hype, than actually coming up with something meaningful.
That's kind of the point, we all do. What is harder to understand are the low stakes whims of academics bickering over their fiefdoms.
This move is bringing the incentives back to a normal and understood paradigm. And as a user of AI, will likely lead to better, quicker, and less hamstringed products and should be in our benefit.
What’s ironic is how backwards people here have the narrative. Not sure you’re fully aware of what happened at OpenAI.
The “Open” types, ironically, wanted to keep LLMs hidden away from the public (something something religious AGI hysteria). These are the people who think they know better than you, and that we should centralize control with them for our own safety (see also, communism).
The evil profit motive you’re complaining about, is what democratized this tech and brought it to the masses in a form that is useful to them.
The “cash grab show” is the only incentive that has been proven to make people do useful things for the masses. Otherwise, it’s just way too tempting to hide in ivory towers and spend your days fantasizing about philosophical nonsense.
"Open"AI indeed was, and is, ironic, but in reality, MS acquisition of Altman and co is not going to change anything for anybody besides a bunch of California socialites. Not sure what sort of democratisation you are referring to, but I can bet my firstborn that whatever product MS develops will be just as open as GPT4.
So, if I get this right, hiring is done by the founder, who is not capable of choosing good people in a sea of fakers, and because of founders incompetency the advice is bad?
I do agree that every founder/CEO should have a tool for gauging how their company is behaving out of their bubble, but I see this new mode as a dangerous proposition which will invite all sorts of paranoid founders/managers to take micromanaging/abuse to a whole new level.
Maybe a better question founders(VCs) should be asking themselves is why are there so many "professional fakers" in top/middle level positions, instead of figuring out how to augment their behavior?