The market is flooded with junior engineers who have recently graduated from coding boot camps, and who might be good at building the specific types of software they have been shown. However, there is, as I understand it, still a dearth of senior engineers who can do the sort of work that OpenAI engineers are doing: building a novel product, with novel, cutting edge algorithms, at massive scale.

If lots of people could easily replicate OpenAI’s product, it seems strange that has nobody released a competitor to gpt4. Why is Microsoft - a company with one of the largest pools of software engineers in the world - clambering to hire all the engineers at OpenAI?

It’s because those people aren’t replaceable. There is probably a global pool of maybe ten thousand people who can do the work that OpenAI is doing. And OpenAI has assembled a high performance team of ~800 of them. Those people are currently worth their weight in gold.

Microsoft isn't clambering to hire them, they're clambering for the IP. The OpenAI employees will get significantly less if they go over to Microsoft.

So what you're saying is that companies are struggling to find qualified senior and staff level engineers to fill their open roles? Doesn't sound like a flooded market to me.

> The board is calling their bluff right now

The board is not doing much of anything. They picked a CEO then she went to team sam. Then they picked another CEO and now he's threatening them with resignation. Not to mention the 3 other people they tried to bring into the role who refused.

Maybe go and spend some time to bone up on who exactly works for OpenAI, what their track record is (education, publications and so on) and then tell me where you are going to find another 700 people that talented who will want to work for a company this damaged.

Sam and Greg returning. Board folded.

https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727228431396704557

Their hand picked CEO called them on their BS and they could not produce