Over the past few months, OpenAI has seemingly been under a microscope, especially due to its recent tussles with Microsoft (its largest investor) over its for-profit evolution plans. The ChatGPT maker is on a tight deadline and under immense pressure from investors to make the transition or risk losing wads of cash in funding, which could open it up to hostile takeovers and outsider interference.
However, the AI firm still needs Microsoft to sign off on the evolution plans, but the software giant is taking its sweet time to negotiate a favourable deal that protects its best interests.
While Microsoft is potentially ready to walk away from the high-stakes negotiations and ride out the rest of the multi-billion-dollar partnership through 2030, OpenAI is reportedly gearing up to take the tech giant to court over anticompetitive business behaviour.
But perhaps more concerning, a separate report suggested that OpenAI could prematurely declare AGI to sever its ties with Microsoft, but this could likely end up being a nasty back-and-forth legal battle.
In the interim, OpenAI has also lost a handful of its staffers to rival firms like Meta, which is reportedly offering eye-watering signing bonuses and compensation. The ChatGPT maker recently compelled its staffers to go on a mandatory week-long vacation as it recalibrated their salaries and tried to identify creative ways to reward its top talent.
While details on OpenAI’s next move following recent disruptions remain slim, Calvin French-Owen, A former OpenAI engineer who worked on the company’s most promising products, recently shared an intriguing account of what it’s like to work at the $300 billion AI firm, following his resignation.. He joined the ChatGPT maker in May 2024 and resigned 3 weeks ago.
Spoiler: No trade secrets were revealed
French-Owen reveals that his decision to depart from OpenAI wasn’t fuelled by any drama, but rather he was conflicted about the major transition from founding his own company to working in an AI firm alongside 3,000 people. He says that he desperately needed a fresh/new start.
The engineer reveals that the company has rapidly grown over the past one year. From 1,000 employees when he was joining the company to 3,000 employees a year later. Perhaps more interestingly, French-Owen says that almost everyone in the company’s top management is doing a totally different job than the were 2-3 years ago.
Of course, everything breaks when you scale that quickly: how to communicate as a company, the reporting structures, how to ship product, how to manage and organize people, the hiring processes, etc. Teams vary significantly in culture: some are sprinting flat-out all the time, others are babysitting biga runs, some are moving along at a much more consistent pace. There’s no single OpenAI experience, and research, applied, and GTM operate on very different time horizons
Former OpenAI engineer, Calvin French-Owen
Emails are a phenomena to OpenAI, everything runs on Slack
Interestingly, French-Owen revealed that OpenAI heavily relies on Slack. But unlike most corporations, OpenAI barely uses emails for communication. The engineer says that he only received 10 emails since joining the company:
“An unusual part of OpenAI is that everything, and I mean everything, runs on Slack. There is no email. I maybe received ~10 emails in my entire time there. If you aren’t organized, you will find this incredibly distracting. If you curate your channels and notifications, you can make it pretty workable.”
The engineer further revealed that OpenAI seemingly runs its operations on whim. When he first joined the company, he quickly learned that there wasn’t a roadmap. “Good ideas can come from anywhere, and it’s often not really clear which ideas will prove most fruitful ahead of time,” he added. “Rather than a grand ‘master plan’, progress is iterative and uncovered as new research bears fruit.”
OpenAI is seemingly metic-focused, and promoted employees who were came up with great ideas and were actually good at executing them. It’s less-concerned about other metrics like presenting at all-hands or political maneuvering, which are seemingly a big deal at other rival companies.
OpenAI changes direction on a dime and is a very secretive place
The engineer revealed that OpenAI would often change its trajectory, further indicating that “it’s much better to do the right thing as you get new information, vs decide to stay the course just because you had a plan.” The ChatGPT maker reportedly makes decisions quickly and sticks to its guns with the new direction.
He also indicated that the company is under tight scrutiny, and that the media regularly breaks news that hadn’t even been announced internally. This made it difficult for him to disclose any details about what he was working on while at the company.
Interestingly, some of OpenAI’s Slack Workspaces required permissions to access intricate details about the company, while those featuring revenue and burn numbers remained “closely guarded.”
French-Owen further revealed that the company pays close attention to X (formerly Twitter), and claimed that if you post something on the platform and it goes viral, there’s a good chance the message will reach home. Someone even joked that OpenAI runs on Twitter vibes.
The engineer also details how OpenAI worked on Codex (its AI coding agent) and managed to develop and launch it from start to finish in just 7 weeks. However, he admits that the company was well-equipped with a team that included 8 engineers, 4 researchers, 2 designers, 2 GTM, and a PM to make the launch successful.
French-Owen indicated that safety remains a primary focus for OpenAI, further revealing that there’s a large number of people in a dedicated group, whose key goal is to develop safety systems.
