<story><title>Sam Altman&apos;s knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-openai-protected-by-silicon-valley-friends-f3efcf68</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bmitc</author><text>Why are these people so sycophantic, especially to such an inexperienced person?</text></item><item><author>hutzlibu</author><text>Also this other bit was news to me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” &amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>gwern</author><text>Many points of interest here, including the answer to an earlier HN discussion: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38384090&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38384090&lt;/a&gt; Why were the YC posts about Altman stepping down as YC president &amp;amp; becoming chairman so confusingly edited, and Altman seems to have either never been chairman or have quickly left? Well, because his post lacked candor about him becoming YC chairman:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AndrewKemendo</author><text>The dirty truth is that the ideal Silicon Valley CEO is whomever can be a perfect sockpuppet for investors and still understand technical velocity.&lt;p&gt;The more ability you have to be kind of waterproof so to speak - like a duck - because of a mixture of positioning, ruthlessness, access, intelligence, perseverance, etc the better you are. Most importantly you have to regularly show allegiance to specifically investors over all other considerations, and boom you’re perfectly crafted.&lt;p&gt;Altman has brilliantly positioned himself as that perfect fulcrum between venture and technical skills such that he is (in his own mind and to a tiny subset of incredibly powerful people in SV) indispensable to the silicon valley crowd who doesn’t really know how to navigate the intersection between venture and technical skills.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sam Altman&apos;s knack for dodging bullets with a little help from bigshot friends</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-openai-protected-by-silicon-valley-friends-f3efcf68</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bmitc</author><text>Why are these people so sycophantic, especially to such an inexperienced person?</text></item><item><author>hutzlibu</author><text>Also this other bit was news to me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” &amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>gwern</author><text>Many points of interest here, including the answer to an earlier HN discussion: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38384090&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38384090&lt;/a&gt; Why were the YC posts about Altman stepping down as YC president &amp;amp; becoming chairman so confusingly edited, and Altman seems to have either never been chairman or have quickly left? Well, because his post lacked candor about him becoming YC chairman:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>queuebert</author><text>He&amp;#x27;s surrounded by VCs with confirmation bias.</text></comment>