I am not trying to advance wild hypotheticals, but something about his behavior does not quite feel right to me. Someone who has enough money for multiple lifetimes, working like he's possessed, to launch a product minimally different than those at dozens of other companies, and leaving his wife with all the childcare, then leaving after 14 months and insisting he was not burnt out but without a clear next step, not even, "I want to enjoy raising my child".

His experience at OpenAI feels overly positive and saccharine, with a few shockingly naive comments that others have noted. I think there is obvious incentive. One reason for this is, he may be in burnout, but does not want to admit it. Another is, he is looking to the future: to keep options open for funding and connections if (when) he chooses to found again. He might be lonely and just want others in his life. Or to feel like he's working on something that "matters" in some way that his other company didn't.

I don't know at all what he's actually thinking. But the idea that he is resistant to incentives just because he has had a successful exit seems untrue. I know people who are as rich as he is, and they are not much different than me.

Calvin just worked like this when I was at Segment. He picked what he worked on and worked really intensely at it. People most often burn out because of the lack of agency, not hours worked.

Also, keep in mind that people aren't the same. What seems hard to you might be easy to others, vice versa.

> People most often burn out because of the lack of agency, not hours worked.

Why did Michael Jordan retire 3 times? Sure, you could probably write a book about it, but you would want to get to know the guy first.

first time in 93 because of burnout from three peat, and allegedly a gambling problem. second because of the lockout and krause pushing phil out. third because too old

Not sure if it's genuine insight or just a well-written bit of thoughtful PR.

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but the more I read about OpenAI, the more I like Meta. And I deleted Facebook years ago.

i know calvin, and he's one of the most authentic people i've worked with in tech. this could not be more off the mark

This reflection seems very unlikely to be authentic because it is full of superlatives and not a single bad thing (or at least not great) is mentioned. Real organizations made of real humans simply are not like this.

The fact that several commenters know the author personally goes some way to explain why the entire comment section seems to have missed the utterly unbalanced nature of the article.

People come out to defend their bosses a lot on this site, convincing themselves they know the powerful people best, that they’re “friends”. How can someone be so confident that a founder is authentic, when a large part of their job is to make you believe so (regardless of whether they are), and the employee’s own self image push them to believe it too?

Some teams are bad, some teams are good.

I've always heard horror stories about Amazon, but when I speak to most people at, or from Amazon, they have great things to say. Some people are just optimists, too.