x.com/krishnanrohit/status/2041198971830612030
1 correction found
99% of the OpenAI team quit after he was fired
OpenAI employees did not actually quit en masse after Sam Altman was fired. The widely cited employee letter said they *may choose to resign* unless the board resigned and reinstated him, and Altman later said OpenAI "didn't lose a single employee."
Full reasoning
This appears to confuse a threatened/contingent resignation with an actual mass resignation.
The employee letter signed during the November 2023 crisis did not say employees had already quit. It said the undersigned "may choose to resign" and would do so unless the board resigned and reinstated Sam Altman. In other words, it was leverage in a governance fight, not evidence that 99% of the company had already left.
OpenAI's own post announcing Altman's return also directly contradicts the claim that the team had quit: Altman wrote, "we didn’t lose a single employee."
So while many employees did publicly pressure the board to bring Altman back, that is different from saying they quit after he was fired. The post turns a threatened resignation campaign into an actual one, which is factually wrong.
2 sources
- To the Board of Directors at OpenAI
The letter states: "We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI ... We will take this step imminently, unless all current board members resign ... and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman."
- Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board | OpenAI
In Sam Altman's message to staff after his return, he wrote: "Now that we’re through all of this, we didn’t lose a single employee."