"Code Red" if implemented correctly should provide a single priority for the company. Engineers will be moved to the most important project(s).

There should already be a single priority for a company...

Why is the bar so low for the billionaire magnate fuck ups? Might as well implement workplace democracy and be done with it, it can't be any worse for the company and at least the workers understand what needs to be done.

You think a company the size of OAI should have a single priority? That makes no sense, that’s putting all their eggs on one basket.

All their services depend on their models. Their main priority should be that. If they're too thin, it gets affected.

What can openai do that, even if their models lag behind, will let them keep their competitive advantage?

There are many reasons:

1. ChatGPT has a better UX than competitors.

2. Some people have become very tied to the memory ChatGPT has of them.

3. Inertia is powerful. They just have to stay close enough to competitors to retain people, even if they aren’t “winning” at a given point in time.

4. The harness for their models is also incredibly important. A big reason I continue to use Claude Code is that the tooling is so much better than Codex. Similarly, nothing comes close to ChatGPT when it comes to search (maybe other deep research offerings might, but they’re much slower).

These are all pretty powerful ways that ChatGPT gets new users and retains them beyond just having the best models.

> What can openai do that, even if their models lag behind, will let them keep their competitive advantage?

Regulatory capture. It's worth noting that an enormous amount of time and energy has already been allocated in this exact direction.

Hah, it feels like Microsoft is currently in "Code Red" to implement AI features.

This code red also has the convenient benefit of giving an excuse to stop work on more monetization features... Which, when implemented, would have the downside of tethering OpenAI's valuation to reality.

Good point too. Though it makes me wonder if "We declared Code Red" is really enough to justify eye-watering valuations.

Isnt CoPilot the de facto OpenAI monetization?

And Microsoft gets the models for free (?)

They have some monetization, but as long as they don't expand into other sectors, they can plausibly claim that, say, their ad business will be bringing in 10 trillion/year in revenue, or whatever other imagined number.

Your proper steps are also missing out on firing the higher level executives. But then new ones would be hired, a re-org will occur, and another Code Red will occur in a few months

Prepare three envelopes

"Software engineer complains bearing the burden of everything and concludes everything would be fixed by firing everybody except themselves."

> fire mid-management and PMs to prevent the same thing from happening again

Firing PMs and mid-management would not prevent any of code reds you may have read about from Google or OAI lately. This is a very naive perspective of how decision making is done at the scale of those two companies. I'm sorry you had bad experiences working with people in those positions and I wish you have the opportunity to collab with great ones in the future.

Yeah the reflexive anti-PM anti-management stance posted above is typical here and of devs in general.

In theory, some engineers think they are perfectly capable of doing all the PMs work and all their own.

If they’ve never worked with a truly good PM, that’s a shame, they’d likely get more work done in a more timely fashion. I’ve worked with around 10 different PMs, the best kept stuff on track and aided with collaboration, reqs management, soft skills, handling tough customers, etc. they free up devs to do more dev work and less other work.

>I've never seen an organization take the actual proper steps (fire mid-management and PMs) to prevent the same thing from happening again.

One time, in my entire career have I seen this done, and it is as successful as you imagine it to be. Lots of weird problems coming out from having done it, but those are being treated as "Wow we are so glad we know about this problem" rather than "I hope those idiots come back to keep pulling the wool over my eyes".

The one successful example I can think of is Bill Gates writing a memo to re-orient Microsoft to put the Internet at the center of everything they were doing.

Fully agree. I've been through a number of code red panics in my career.

But somehow, even in startups with short remaining runway, "code red" rarely means anything.

You still have to attend all the overhead meetings, run through approval circles, deal with HR etc etc.

People sure are quick to say, "I hope you get to work with better management". Man, me too, but I find that dismissive of a legitimate concern: There is A LOT of incompetent management, especially in enterprise. The sad truth is that it is often the blind leading the sighted. When I was growing up I thought that the manager was someone with experience doing the job of those they managed, but across jobs I've had, this is the case about 20% of the time.