Former employee talks about OpenAI's corporate culture: almost no email, mostly Slack, ultra-bottom-up meritocracy
Reflections on OpenAI
https://calv.info/openai-reflections
Owen noticed that while there were a lot of rumors about the services and software developed by OpenAI, there was little information about the company's internal culture. So, while his memories of working at OpenAI were still fresh, he wanted to share his experiences and compiled his insights about the company's internal culture in a blog.
Owen was a co-founder of customer data platform company Segment for nearly 10 years. He left the company when Segment was acquired and has been working as an employee of OpenAI since May 2024.
Regarding his decision to leave OpenAI, he wrote, 'To be honest, I didn't have any personal conflicts with my decision to leave,' explaining that he had no regrets. He further explained the reason for his departure, saying, 'It's hard for someone who has started their own business to become an employee of a 3,000-person organization.'
However, 'It's entirely possible that the quality of the work will attract me again. It's hard to imagine creating something as impactful as artificial general intelligence (AGI), which will undoubtedly be the most transformative technology of the last decade. I'm very fortunate to be able to see some of that development firsthand,' he said, showing his understanding of the appeal of working at OpenAI.
The first thing to know about OpenAI is that it is experiencing 'explosive growth.' When Owen joined OpenAI in May 2024, the company had just over 1,000 employees. However, a year later, the number of employees exceeded 3,000, and almost all leaders had to do different jobs than they had two or three years ago, Owen points out. This caused the company's communication methods, reporting structures, product shipping methods, talent management, organization, and hiring processes to all collapse, Owen points out.
Owen also claims that 'what's unusual about OpenAI is that everything really runs on Slack.' Email is not used at all, and Owen says he received at most 10 emails during his tenure (just over a year). Regarding the fact that all communication is completed on Slack, Owen said, 'If you're not organized, it can be very distracting, but if you organize your channels and notifications, it's pretty comfortable.'
In addition, Owen wrote that the decision-making method is 'incredibly bottom-up' in the research field. When Owen first joined OpenAI, he asked about the next quarterly roadmap and was told that there was no such thing. At the time of writing, OpenAI also has a quarterly roadmap. Regarding the lack of a quarterly roadmap at OpenAI, Owen wrote, 'Good ideas can come from anywhere, but it is often not clear in advance which ideas will be the most fruitful. Rather than a grand 'master plan' coming to fruition, the success or failure of things gradually becomes clear as new research comes to fruition,' showing his understanding of OpenAI's method of focusing on ideas that have produced results.
Owen also points out that OpenAI has a strong meritocratic culture because bottom-up decision-making is preferred. OpenAI's leaders are people who have been promoted based on their ability to come up with great ideas and execute them. Normally, even capable leaders are not good at presentations or political maneuvering, but OpenAI does not place as much importance on these factors as other companies, so good ideas are more highly valued. Owen also points out that one of OpenAI's characteristics is its 'tendency to emphasize action,' such as quickly forming a team to immediately realize its excellent ideas.
In addition, OpenAI sometimes changes direction instantly. Regarding this, Owen said, 'When you get new information, taking the right action immediately is a much better choice than maintaining the status quo. It's amazing that a big company like OpenAI still has this mentality. Google is no longer like that. On the other hand, OpenAI makes decisions quickly, and once we decide on a direction, we go all out.'
On the other hand, Owen, who has worked in B2B companies, said the level of scrutiny was shocking to him. The media often reports unannounced news from OpenAI, which has made it a very secretive place, and 'I couldn't even talk about what I was working on,' Owen recalled.
OpenAI has set a goal of building AGI, but there are many challenges to overcome before it can achieve that goal. On the other hand, it is also trying to develop products that can be used by hundreds of millions of users for various purposes, ChatGPT being a prime example. In addition, OpenAI faces competition from companies such as Meta, Google, and Anthropic. Although OpenAI has been slandered in the press, Owen said, 'The people I met at OpenAI were all trying to do the right thing.'
He continued, 'OpenAI was a group of scientists and engineers exploring cutting-edge science. That group happened to create the most talked-about consumer app in history. And we had ambitions to sell to governments and corporations. Goals and perspectives vary greatly depending on how long you've been there and what department you're in. The longer you've been there, the more you've come to see things through the lens of a 'lab' or a 'non-profit organization for social good.'' He pointed out that OpenAI shouldn't be viewed as a monolith.
Owen also cited 'giving back the benefits of AI to society' as the thing he appreciates most about OpenAI. OpenAI's cutting-edge AI models are not limited to enterprise-grade services that require annual contracts. Anyone in the world can access ChatGPT and use it without creating an account. In addition, he pointed out that the company is developing services so that any AI can be used by any user, such as almost all AI models being immediately incorporated into the API so that startups can use it. OpenAI's structure may have changed significantly in just one year, but in terms of 'giving back the benefits of AI to society,' OpenAI has made a great contribution, and Owen points out that 'this idea is still at the core of the company's DNA.'
Owen called OpenAI 'the most frighteningly ambitious organization I've ever seen. You'd think having one world-class consumer app would be enough, but OpenAI wants to compete in dozens of areas: APIs, deep learning, hardware, coding agents, image generation, and several areas yet to be announced. OpenAI is fertile ground for taking ideas and putting them into action.'
Owen said that when it comes to recruiting, 'we're not like other companies, where we give out freebies generously.' However, they regularly hold events called 'drops' to sell inventory items, and the first drop that Owen experienced was so popular that the dedicated store built on Shopify crashed due to excessive access.
OpenAI seems to place great importance on X (formerly Twitter), and Owen's colleague once joked that 'the company runs on Twitter vibes.'
In addition, OpenAI's internal team is very fluid, and when he complained to his boss that he needed the help of several engineers, a talented engineer rushed to support his team the next day. Regarding leadership, he said, 'This may be natural for a company like OpenAI, but all the executives seemed very focused. The leaders communicated regularly on Slack and were never absent.'
in Note, Posted by logu_ii