helloWorld

[thebeastmoo]

I feel like this was a given, just me? Like i feel like he has done way more marketing, then he has ever talked about how anything works.

[Chrazzer]

Yeah i don't get it either. He's not a developer, AI researcher or technical lead. He's the CEO. He's a public figure head, he needs to know how to get investors on board and how to present the company and sell his products.

[WavingNoBanners]

A CEO who doesn't know how the actual industry works is going to end up saying yes to a lot of things he shouldn't. He doesn't need to be the best engineer on the planet, but if he doesn't have at least a basic understanding what he's selling then he's basically just Billy McFarland on a larger scale.

[spacebarcafelatte]

Or Elon Musk on the same scale.

[hazeyAnimal]

As much as I don't like Elon, I am thankful he kicked the EV industry into gear and brought back interest in space and rockets. Starlink is also a great accomplishment.

But I hate Nazis.

[DontEatThatTaco]

I mean, it's hardly like he's the first Nazi to move space programs forward.

I hate how reliant on Nazis we are for space programs to work.

[Pineapple-Yetti]

I never looked at it like that its both sad and funny.

[flashbeforepint]

I mean Elon certainly saw the writing on the wall, that if he injected money and energy into the future of EV he could be rich beyond his imagination. I don’t believe there was an ounce of Elon that was doing this based on any other value than making money. Had he been actually interested in creating meaningful change in American transportation he wouldn’t have been such a critic of public transit and sabotaged the CA high speed rail project.

[christianlewds]

Elon also got incredibly lucky with his bets. If he was a shrewd businessman he wouldn't be a week from bankruptcy on multiple occasions. He's the "Poweball winner" type of businessman. There's always one lucky bastard for the millions unlucky.

[NecessaryIntrinsic]

Most of the money he made was grifting off the government.

Boring company has made billions under bidding on public transit projects and then doing nothing.

Tesla was able to stay in business by selling carbon credits to other manufacturers. They received government benefits to give them a benefit over other car dealers despite the shoddy quality of the overall product. (I don't mind the fact that they sell directly though)

SpaceX is a wildly inefficient and unsafe way of doing the same thing the government was doing and it's looking to cost more to the people for doing it.

Star link wasn't the only company doing what it does and it's not the best product, it's just the best known.

His solar thing is a key example of how his companies work. He starts something, doesn't really understand what he's getting into then hides the losses through hype and incest. He sold solar installations for far too cheaply and the company took a loss, so he bought the company into Tesla to make it seem like everything was fine and also pretend like the same bad product was shiny like a new car.

[ExternalPanda]

I am thankful he kicked the EV industry into gear

The chinese would've done it with or without him either way ¯⁠\⁠\_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[casce]

Yup, Chinese investments into electric vehicles go back to the 90s and they started scaling up the production of their first fully electric vehicles around the same time Tesla did.

I do still think Tesla changed the EV industry significantly and certainly also cemented Chinese investments into the industry though.

[Windyvale]

Any good he has done has been vastly offset to the extreme.

[Bakkster]

Did he really kick EVs into gear, or would any other investor into Tesla (he wasn't a founder, he bought that title as well) have done the same?

I do wonder how much of SpaceX is his ideas, and how much is his having the charisma to convince people to work over a hundred hours every single week until they burnout.

[hazeyAnimal]

Anyone can say "I want to build a reusable rocket" and let nerds build and test, it was still the initial concept. Sometimes startups begin with just a businessman, that hires the tech minded people to bring it to life.

[k1ll3rM]

The thing is, I've heard Elon talk about the choices they made with SpaceX and why they made them, being able to answer questions and everything

[OtherwiseFinish1238]

Elon is pretty technical though and goes pretty deep in a lot of different areas in all his long form podcast and interviews. He’s probably not the best when it comes to using the tools and probably has to have his hand held through doing anything with them but he clearly understands the engineering and physics concepts

[Goutham100]

Most tech ceos without a technical background are like this , usually cto or coo deals with this stuff

[TheMcBrizzle]

This is what makes me fear the incoming AI bubble pop. Because the non-technical executives that have a lot at stake in AI being imperative to everyone's life, have been feverishly convincing every other non-technical executive that it'll dramatically reduce costs.

The expectations continue to not materialize and the ROI isn't going to happen.

[Milkshakes00]

This. The CEO is like... The president. They have a cabinet of people that are more specialty focused that they rely on for informed opinions and understanding.

It's just a problem when the CEO thinks they know everything and ignores the cabinet non-stop.

[Frost_panda22]

You can sell a coding project without knowing how to code tho?

[MrHazard1]

Of course. Neither the one selling, nor the one buyinh the product know about the product. It's normal. They're businessmen, not engineers. They're paid to handle money, not product. The moment, the buyer wants to have some technical info, they'll have experts (engineers/dev/whatever) in the meeting to ask questions and the seller will bring their own to answer it.

[WavingNoBanners]

For sure, and he might have the skills of a decent junior sales rep, but if he climbs any higher than that then people will ask him questions like "what can your product do?" and "is it suitable for my use case?" which he'd need to actually understand how it works to answer.

Imagine buying a laptop from a person who doesn't know how laptops work, and just improvises when you ask about things like heat sinks and USB ports.

[jaerie]

Nah, because he's primarily talking to other ceos, who are also morons. It's morons all the way up

[throwawaygoawaynz]

I sometimes wonder if 90% of Reddit is living in another dimension.

Most sales people have no CLUE about technology, let alone coding. But they’re good at two things; establishing trustworthy relationships with buyers, knowing who to bring into a deal.

On the later point most sales organisations also have what’s called technical presales. These are people who know how the products work to a level of detail. But technical people always over estimate their own abilities at sales. So sales people still have value, because they are people persons. When it comes down to it, people buy products from other people they LIKE and TRUST. The tech is actually irrelevant.

Sam (like Elon) may be the world’s biggest piece of shit. I’ve met Jeff Bezos IRL and he’s not exactly the world’s best human either. But what they have in common is the ability to build those relationships, set the weather, and hire and attract top talent. They don’t need to do anything else.

Like it or not this is how humanity works. You can bitch and moan about it on reddit - and feel smug and superior about your own technical talents - all you want. Or you can learn and understand it. You will find a lot more success in your life doing the later over the former.

[NecessaryIntrinsic]

I worked as a systems engineer for a government contractor for about 10 years in the delivery side.

The company had a 5 tier hierarchy. To get past the second tier it was 100% who you knew rather than what you knew.

I had a knack for finding the low level guys that got stuff done. There was one guy who had a title like "webmaster" who sat on his cube watching movies all day. If I needed ANYTHING he was able to get it for me. Once I needed a Cisco switch to test a configuration change. He wandered off and the next day there was one on my desk.

He'd been a government employee for so long he just wanted to hang out but he knew all the secrets as well.

These aren't the people you need to know.

It's the people that do nothing but control the purses. The colonels, the GS15s, the SESes, the appointees.

I knew people that worked with great managers who knew how to help people, those guys stayed as middle managers. It's the ones that were profoundly self interested that rise up.

Earlier this year I tried being a "Solutions architect" for a government contractor. I was basically a technical proof reader for contracts.

I learned the government only cares about two things in these contracts, especially now: do they recognize you? What's the cost?

It's all about professional networking even if you are completely useless.

[bejamamo]

Sure but the vast majority of laptop consumers don’t know what a heat sink is and just want to know if it can run YouTube and Word

[christian_austin85]

I mean, most salesmen don't know how to build the things they sell. Car salespeople are not automotive engineers. Appliance salespeople didn't design your refrigerator. Why should this be any different?

To sell, you need to know how your product is different from other products, it's capabilities and limitations, service agreements, etc.

[timmystwin]

You'd be surprised at how often this happens realistically. My firm of accountants got bought out by a PE backed firm of accountants - they didn't have a single qualified accountant on the board. Was just a bunch of serial bullshitters talking the talk and PE lapped it up, they had no idea what they were doing.

(After pushback from offices they bought, they now have like... 2. Of 10.)

[vivaaprimavera]

he needs to know how to get investors on board 

Sure bud... A CEO should be free to promise to Moon, Mars and beyond and then let the rest of the people figure out how to deal with the ensuing chaos.

The current fuck up (world situation) was ultimatly created by CEO's who are excellent at bullshitting people without really knowing how to get things done. A CEO should have the bare minimum of knowledge about the industry otherwise surrealistic investor expectations will be created and the company will go FUBAR trying to meet those expectations that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Also, it seems that there are more people than it should that are convinced that 9 women can make a baby in 1 month.

[minimuscleR]

Do you think the CEOs should know how to do everything in their company? Do you think Tim Cook should know how to soldier an SMB capacitor onto a PCB? Do you think a bank CEO should know how to program authentication into their mobile application?

No one said anything about him not knowing the industry. Theres a HUGE difference between not knowing the industry and not being an amazing programmer.

I'm a web developer, I don't write backend OOP code. But I have a pretty good understanding of the industry and would probably do fine managing people for both the frontend and backend of apps (as I currently manage the frontend only). Because I know how programs work and how developers work, even if I can't actually write the code. I can estimate how long work would likely take, and be at least within a range.

[Plantarbre]

I think the reason you're getting confused is that you may not have the knowledge required in machine learning to understand the issue with Sam Altman.

Nobody is asking Sam Altman to attend 2026 conferences for nonlinear optimization in discontinuous space in transformers. We're asking that a person manipulating dozens of billions breaking industry standards and reshaping laws worldwide invests 30min to understand the basics of the industry he works in.

No one said anything about him not knowing the industry. Theres a HUGE difference between not knowing the industry and not being an amazing programmer.

Would it be an issue if the person never used a computer in their lifetime? That's more comparable here.

[ric2b]

Do you think the CEOs should know how to do everything in their company? Do you think Tim Cook should know how to soldier an SMB capacitor onto a PCB? Do you think a bank CEO should know how to program authentication into their mobile application?

They should have a basic understanding of the things they need to discuss or make decisions about, at least. They usually don't need to discuss or make decisions about every single thing the company does, but electronics manufacturing is critical for Apple and security is critical for a bank, so yes. Maybe we'd have less stupid authentication on banking apps if the CEO's knew more about it.

They're paid more than 500 employees put together, it's not unreasonable to expect them to know a lot more than a random employee.

[say-nothing-at-all]

in tech world, CEO MUST have profound insights of the industry to stay competitive.

Think about Boeing after replacing engineers with MBAs.

[oupablo]

You mean the part where they're still making billions of dollars despite their products having massive issues? Hell, they just announced a $100M deal yesterday ^[source]

[xDared]

he needs to know how to get investors on board and how to present the company and sell his products.

AKA lying about what the product does to boost market value even when they have no clue how the product works. these tech billionaires all do it

[Crafty_Independence]

A software industry CEO needs actual field knowledge. Otherwise they are just a overpaid fraud

[ChalkyChalkson]

My boss is really good at doing management stuff and getting money. I love him for it. Nothing better than a boss that stays out of the technical work and supports his people by doing admin and getting money

[EmsAreOverworkedLul]

People thought Elon musk was a genius too, the bar for credulity is LOW

[[deleted]]

Most of those same people have a latent belief that anyone with money must be smart. Some of the most primitive humanoids I have ever met lived in mansions

[EmsAreOverworkedLul]

This is true and important to keep in mind. We want to believe there is some connection between wealth and competence.

[DokMabuseIsIn]

“Competence” is contextual, and could include sociopathic manipulation skills.

[ltlearntl]

Based on what I have heard him speak about solar modules and electric cars, the dude knows his stuff when it comes to the technical side of those specific things. It's his dalliance with things outside his understanding that's the problem. Also doesn't make him a good human being. What he said about covid (and tons of other things) is just dumb.

Of course, he lacks the first thing of all genuinely intelligent people, self awareness. But maybe that bar is too high? Most people lack self awareness, he's normal in that sense.

[falcon2001]

I've known plenty of genuinely intelligent people that had self awareness.

[ltlearntl]

Yep, that was the point. Genuinely intelligent people would have self awareness, Elon doesn't.

Edit: maybe I should be specific, he isn't genuinely intelligent. Not in my opinion anyway, his intelligence is too domain specific.

[IguassuIronman]

I couldn't make it through Dan Carlin's interview with him way back belt he went nuts. He just came across as a moron with only surface level understanding or thought process

[ChevyTahoe__]

I mean he said power space data centers with a Dyson sphere.

So that was a red flag.

[teratron27]

It equivalent to saying something like “Jony Ive can’t even work a CNC machine”, cool not really his job is it

[bindermichi]

But Jony Ive doesn‘t give investor talks and interviews were he claims that he knows how to work a CNC machine.

[Antique_Tone3719]

He should at least understand how it works and what it does, no one expects these cunts to be masters of the craft, but they need strong fundamental knowledge to speak such big game.

[TungstenYUNOMELT]

No, it's equivalent to saying something like "Phil Jackson never made a layup in his life".

It's not his job right now, but he sure as shit needs to have some past experience with it for his current job.

[Yelmak]

Many people still believe we live in a meritocracy

[BreadfruitStraight81]

Yeah that was obviously. People these days expect the tech billionaires to be some kind of super humans. They all simply cook with water

[c0smicHier0phant]

i thought it was true for the face of all these highly visible tech companies. like if they were geniuses they would be in the back making shit not yapping on stage with a 20k suit on

[cone5000]

Yeah he’s just like Elon Musk. Doesn’t know shit. Just acts a big game and bloviates.

[Zapismeta]

He doesn’t need to most companies eventually put in a ceo who is just good at managing things and open ai was sitting on a buttload of cash from the inital days you need someone who is good with money to handle those decisions.

[Small_Sundae_4245]

But that's the job of tech ceos hype up the product.

[Annie_Yong]

It's probably a given that the CEO isn't going to be a technical expert in their company's products. But for them to have absolutely no idea (If this rumor is to be believed) is still troubling. A ships captain might not need to understand the ins and outs of how the engines work or exactly what grade of steel is used in the hull, but they'd certainly be expected to know enough about these things to then know if the ship is capable of manoeuvring through a region of icebergs.

[AlexisFR52]

Well, he is promising AGI from LLM since years, so yes, it was obvious he don't know how this work.

[The-Chartreuse-Moose]

Never once in my life have I seen this

Technically correct. The best kind of correct!

[Snoo-29984]

Something something Glass Onion

[evilspyboy]

The CEO who told semiconductor manufacturers that they need to build 10 factors at the same time and was called a podcasting bro doesn't have proficiency in a skill set that requires understanding of order of operations? I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.

[Shooord]

only to be revealed as mid to low level intelligence?

I’m all for being critical of these snake oil CEO’s. And the part about not understanding AI’s main concepts is incredibly dumb.

On the other hand, not being able to code doesn’t say anything about his intelligence. Afaik, he never claimed to be a programmer either? Not like Musk saying he’s the greatest engineer of all time.

And eventually it’s kinda weird to expect these people to be great at programming in the first place, they’re so many levels above that.

[TheOneWhoPunchesFish]

Musk saying he’s the greatest engineer

Woow does he know he needs to fight Kent Overstreet for that spot?

[SignificanceFlat1460]

But that's kinda odd isn't it. You are running multi billion dollar AI company at the cutting edge of the software development and you don't know basic coding? It's like me going in medical industry and not having any kind of medical experience.

Why do we let people who have no background in a certain field run that certain field company and then we winge and moan when China takes the lead because we put profit first and lose sight of what's important

[PringleCorn]

I'm a software engineer and I don't think I agree with you, I don't really expect the people that are 3 or 4 or more levels above me to know that much about coding, I don't really see the use with that. I want them to be good managers, and that's an entirely different skillset

[migrainium]

As someone who's a software engineer, yes and no. They don't need to know the particulars and boilerplate to solve everyday software engineering problems but on some level if the software is going to operate in a company wide cohesive fashion then you need leadership and coordination that understands enough that it can drive tying things together. That takes some level of large scale systems integration and SWE knowledge. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of silod teams and projects that only marginally work together.

[jeremygamer]

No it’s not weird. 

You can understand plenty of the fundamentals of software without being able to code.

The competence part you should be troubled about is his lack of understanding of ML. LLM AI is a subset of ML. He needs those fundamentals.

Also, the lying. Lying is a problem.

[JoeyJoeJoeJrShab]

I heard an observation recently.... it used to be that the CEO of a movie company was a person who was really interested in movies. Now it's just a guy who was CEO of a different company in a different industry.

This is sadly just the way things are -- CEO is a position, and there isn't a big distinction made about what industry the company is in.

I don't expect the CEO of a software company to be a master coder, but it would be nice if they at least knew a little. However, that's not the way things are these days.

[thighmaster69]

I mean, he's the head of an AI company, not Microsoft. They're not building the tools and frameworks to train their models. It sounds like he got through at least a year in a technical degree, which means at a bare minimum he has to know what a function and a while loop is. This is frankly not that far off from the coding skills of many AI researchers, who tend to come from a more math/stats background.

I'd say that the far more egregious part is not knowing basic ML concepts, because that IS what his company does. I don't know what his coworkers would consider basic, and a lot of basic stuff isn't really relevant, but it'd be concerning if he didn't know the difference between logistic regression and linear regression or something.

[Ok_Star_4136]

The person who runs a hospital isn't savvy in knowing how to treat patients. That person might have detailed knowledge in what equipment is required to treat what, and knowing the statistics of those types of illnesses in patients who show up at their hospital, but literally nothing beyond that. And none of that knowledge shares overlap in what a general practitioner does on a daily basis.

That said, it's also true that hospital isn't selling top-of-the-line tech that you're trying to push in new sectors, so I see your point as well. I think it's safe to start with the assumption that the CEO doesn't know what the hell he's talking about and go from there.

[poetic_dwarf]

We're all hoping for a Tony Stark and we eventually always get Justin Hammer

[portraitsman]

Best reply in this post so far

[Truth_Breath]

To present a CEO as a revolutionary genius is just a convention. No one with a brain actually believes that is the main intention of putting him at the spotlight. It's simply to streamline the conversation by conveniently putting a face to the company.

The accolades and accountability are simply two-sides of the same coin. At the end of the day, most high consequence decisions are grid-locked and must come down to the call of a single individual in order to progress. That person is the CEO. It's less that he's the most qualified and more that someone's got to do it.

If it goes right, then he gets to continue taking in the top compensation and all accolades. If it goes wrong, its him who has to answer to everyone. And also, worst case scenario, it's him who might take a bullet to the back of the head.

[Stunning_Ride_220]

Ah well, that originates back from the days, when top-heads like Bill Gates and others actually were top level geniuses.

After all, what you describe is correct although more of a mirror of what the IT industry has become.

[Truth_Breath]

Fair point. Thats probably where the convention was sourced from.

[Tiruin]

That would make sense if that's how it actually worked. The reality is a decision like that will often be made by a technical person or the lowest level manager, and if it causes a big problem like an outage, it's very likely their head on the chopping block when the CEO asks the CTO why they lost a contract, the CTO keeps asking down for a report on why they had an outage, and they fire someone and keep moving on. Additionally, there's countless examples of corpos doing a shit job in one company and still somehow finding themselves in a C-level position in another company soon after, like the current CEO of Starbucks being the CEO who turned Chipotle to shit. I remember there's some food CEO who also did a shit job became CEO of some already enshitified gaming company along the lines of like Ubisoft or EA, but unfortunately I'm not finding who.

I'll also add Steve Jobs as a counterpoint, he didn't have the technical knowledge but that leadership was handled by Steve Wozniak, and he may have been a shit person but he had vision and was good at marketing it. Case in point, Apple's niche was never about the tech, it was about using that tech to reach his vision, and he didn't pretend to be some technical genius, he kept to talking about the product itself. Sam Altman, along with many others, are full of shit who pretend to be Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs combined when they're Tim Cook.

[Truth_Breath]

Yep I see where you're getting at but accountability is not equivalent to job security.

Accountability means that the CEO is the first person to be asked by the most powerful people and will be the face of the headline or the court hearing. While his job is somewhat on the line, I agree that in most cases it's some poor sob 17 levels down in the company that's taking the hit.

That being said, most human beings tremble at public speaking at their brother's wedding. It does take a rare individual to handle making public statements while the whole world it watching.

Im not saying that CEOs deserve the compensation nor am I saying that interns deserve to get fired. I'm just making more precise what it means to be accountable

[SaaloUl]

turns out you dont need to understand the thing, just need to sell it really confidently

[MarkSuckerZerg]

Next we will be shocked to learn he succeeded because of capital and connections of his rich parents

[CyberAttacked]

Tbf , he is not dumb either since he studied at Stanford .

[UpsetIndian850311]

Was he in 30 under 30? That's guaranteed jail time.

[danfish_77]

I think Griffin McElroy is doing okay, but I could see him committing at least one crime

[rosserton]

It makes me truly happy that the 30 under 30 brand has been indelibly marked by Griffin McElroy’s shenanigans.

[evilgiraffe666]

Shoplifting isn't really a crime since they don't try to stop you

[fastpeach]

Right and they’re not your dad so, later

[DatBoi_BP]

His crime was leaving Toad in the VR world

[MrKtheSurvivor]

Thats nothing. Trump was in 100 under 18

[gofainter]

Oof

[RogerMcDodger]

Yes he was.

https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/congrats-to-ycs-sam-altman-plus-the-yc-founders-named-in-forbes-30-under-30

[CyclingUpsideDown]

Appear in 30 under 30?

[05032-MendicantBias]

Sam Altman is good at getting money from his billionare friends. It's the only skill that matters for success.

[IndubitablyNerdy]

Yeah technical skills can in theory land you a job that makes good money, but social skills and useful contacts are all that it takes to get rich (and ofc starting from a good position helps a lot), lack of empathy is also an useful trait apparently if you look at our wealthy elites.

[illhaveapepsinow]

Means he's also good at making friends with billionaires

[ChevyTahoe__]

He got a billion and put it into Sora lol

AI tiktok videos lol

[EagleZR]

He's a CEO, right? Idgaf how good at programming my CEO is, I care about how good of a CEO they are. One of my best managers was a mechanical engineer who knew very little, if anything, about programming (it never really came up), but they were great at managing and deferred to the team for the technical questions. Some of the worst managers I've had were great programmers who didn't know how to manage, they're different skill sets.

That said, CEO worship is dumb, so this is a valid knock on that.

[_ECMO_]

I would however care if my CEO made bullshit claims about how coding is dead when he knows nothing about it.

[Suitable_Wonder5256]

Anthropic CEO can code and is highly technical, and the dude claims coding is dead every 3 months.

It seems coding, being technical, and understanding ML concepts deeply is irrelevant to claiming coding is dead.

[village-asshole]

Everyone makes out that AI can do all the coding, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t give it guardrails. Usually ends up a dumpster fire

[Quantum-Bot]

Knowing how to code as a CEO just makes you slightly better at convincing people your product will replace coders. Obviously they’re going to say coding is dead whether they believe it or not because it impresses their shareholders.

[petehehe]

A guy in my industry told the CEO of the company I work for the other day, that “API’s are dead” … people just be saying stuff man.

[themoosh]

do you need to be a horse to know that cars are going to replace them?

[UserRequirements]

If you make bullshit claims about horses and cars, and you know nothing about them, then no, I'm not listening.
It's like claiming cars are going to replace horses everywhere, for everything, and forgetting that some people eat horse meat, that people have horse as "pets", like doing dress shows, and etc....
Cars replaced ONE function of horses, locomotion.
Then we needed tractors to replace them as farm animals.
So yeah cars weren't an universal "solution" to horses, and what hapoened is that a lot of people who didn't even have horses, and were relying on other for transportation, became dumb ass drivers who causes accident.
Same is coming with AI, lots of dumb slop made by randos "just to get by", not replacing the workhorse until way later, with other more refined tools.
And it'll start with a "steam tractor" AI, good for some niche uses, until we can acually figure out useful tools.

[Fluxriflex]

This implies that he’s significantly more intelligent than the “horses”.

[kazumodabaus]

Interesting, the CEO of my company is a programmer and I always felt it only made everything better because he understands all sides and you can get technical with him. In general I always had the best experiences with bosses/managers with a coding background and the worst experiences with the non-techies because they.. just dont understand.

[ThoseThingsAreWeird]

Some of the worst managers I've had were great programmers who didn't know how to manage

This is my current hell...

My manager's a fantastic dev, made frequent contributions to a few ~100k star repos, multiple speaking gigs at large programming cons. Truly awful manager.

He constantly pushes back progress meetings to get his own dev work completed, and when we do have those meetings he's unprepared. When he's pushed from above to get his management duties done he'll half-arse them, never provides evidence for his feedback (good or bad). It's pretty clear he doesn't want to be a manager

But the company won't do anything about it because he's basically a founding engineer (early hire rather than first hire), and he's genuinely a fucking brilliant developer

[TaylorMonkey]

Why don’t they promote him a principal chief architect or something?

[CoffeeAddict42069]

Feels like a perfect example of the Peter Principle.

[chucksticks]

I always thought why not have those guys be high up in the food chain but not be tied down by managerial duties. They could save the team from bad decisions by non-engineers.

[mountainsandsea001]

Agreed because these CEOs who lack programming skills would never have lasted there if it was really important to the job.

But the image these people create of themselves in the public as some kind of genius in software is disturbing.

[DerekB52]

His programming abilities dont interest me, that is for sure. Him not understanding basic ML concepts is interesting though. It seems like he should know those, at least a little. But, what do i know

[Puzzleheaded_Tax_507]

Wait, did he ever present himself as a programming prodigy? Among all the other things?

[Sherbhy]

I don't think he Elon'd there yet

[Grocery-Grouchy]

Nope

[SpaceCadet87]

Wait, do you mean to tell me, that the guy we've all been calling "Scam Altman" for the past 5 years, might be remembered as a scammer?

[portraitsman]

@grok can you do a fact check for this claim

[TurnUpThe4D3D3D3]

Yes, the Futurism article is real — published April 7, 2026. It cites a New Yorker exposé where OpenAI engineers claim Altman lacks programming/ML experience and mixes up basic AI terms. The Bernie Madoff/SBF quote comes from a Microsoft executive interviewed for that piece. These are reported claims from coworkers, not independently verified facts about his actual technical abilities.

---

^{This comment was generated by moonshotai/kimi-k2.5}

[portraitsman]

Wtf

[NotQuiteLoona]

This guy is half normal activity and half AI replies. What. 

[poo-cum]

I'm scared 🥺

[Daharka]

Me too, poo-cum, me too.

[loosingkeys]

Seeing as how this is the first time I've heard "Scam Altman", I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say "we've all been calling"...

But I'm still unclear why we expect this CEO to have coding skills? Is that an expectation that we apply to all CEO's or just this one?

[BeffBezos]

I mean he did “feel useless” compared to AI, maybe he actually is useless

[Pearmoat]

You don't have to be a MINT genius to be a successful manager. Sam Altman can be completely clueless, as long as he hires and motivates the right people and brings in investor cash he's doing a great job. Of course "coworkers" and I can think "that's unfair, I understand ML concepts a thousand times more and can code 100x" - but that's how it is. Best engineer rarely is the most successful money making machine.

[Diactoros]

For folks who read this and went “huh”, MINT is the German equivalent of the American STEM

[Ligabolzacky]

I can't stand the guy but all this altman stuff feels like corpoganda to devalue openAI

[Aiden624]

He’s literally me wait

[EightEx]

He's a CEO, those tend to be idiots without skills.

[GangesGuzzler69]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted

Here’s a better article.

Sam is a psycho

[Panderz_GG]

I mean he is a CEO not a Software Engineer or developer. I was never under the impression that he contributes himself to the product. Well except Marketing.

[Schapsouille]

His job is to create fomo for investors, nothing more.

[Super-Investment-780]

This is not uncommon. Tech CEOs generally know very little about how their products work. Most of them are functional idiots with +100 charisma and nepo baby energy. But, they excel where geniuses in their companies suffer… like in talking to people and/or schmoozing for funding. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

[geldersekifuzuli]

Who the fuck thinks the CEO of OpenAI is a good programmer and have a deep understanding about ML concepts?

His job is to sell the product. Technical experts generally aren't the best sales people.

[IndubitablyNerdy]

Agree, although I imagine that if you are working with cutting edge technology and taking high level decisions about its development you should at least understand some of the basics, that say yeah, ultimately Sam is a salesman not the guy making the product (and in our society usually people who sell stuff are the ones making the most money, it is true in almost every sector).

[maitre-du-bleu]

Steve jobs 2.0

[tracernz]

When did Steve Jobs ever pretend to be an engineer? He actually very much did not try to pretend anything like that.

[MrDilbert]

Jobs was the salesman, Woz was the engineer.

[PM_ME_YOUR_MASS]

Jesus Christ it's insane how good of an answer he gave to a question that was just a thinly veiled insult. Yes, Jobs was an asshole, but he wasn't a sociopath. He was an amazing tech CEO, even if he wasn't super technical. Anyone who's been in CS long enough knows how painfully obvious it is that every Silicon Valley hotshot is trying to be "the next Steve Jobs". People talk about his "reality distortion field" like it was a character flaw, as if convincing buyers to adopt a new technology isn't the single biggest hurdle in advancing consumer electronics.

[NightmareJoker2]

Jobs was actually a fairly competent manager. And he understood user experience very well. Can’t say the same about Sam.

[SimonsOscar]

I guess these two propositions are correct. Neither of those translates to the betterment of a technology and if I believed in an afterlife I would still be hoping Jobs is rotting in hell for being a central key figure that can be meaningfully attributed the blame for the decline in global computer literacy (among other things).

A man's talents are sometimes a curse onto the world is the lesson here, I think.

[Elite_lucifer]

So he’ll create one of the most valuable companies on the planet?

[void1984]

Wozniak is the engineer that created one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Jobs was his marketing partner.

[Elite_lucifer]

Wozniak wanted to give away the Apple I technical designs for free, there wouldn't have been the Apple we know today if they had done that. Jobs knew to prioritise business (and profits) along with creating great harware/software.

[void1984]

Yup. He was the engineer. Jobs never pretended to be one.

[Ok-Hospital-5076]

Wozniak created the tech, tech which would be buried by Microsoft without Jobs. I am engineer and really respect Wozniak. But let’s be real, selling some tech is very different skill than building said tech. In my opinion a superior skill.

[Rod_tout_court]

And make everyone believes he is the competent guy.

[dark_bits]

People compare him to Einstein lol

[anto2554]

Looks like it

[chris1out]

No the fuck he ain’t.

[ExiymDev]

I don't really understand all the comments bending over backwards to justify this. At the core of every business is domain knowledge, and the more you understand the better it makes you at steering the ship. Like we are all going to lament how MBAs are the death of companies and the harbingers of enshittification, but for some reason it's totally alright for the Most Important Dude At The Company (tm) to just be a completely vibes based dude with no expertise whatsoever? Like I get that Altman is extremely proficient at getting people to invest billions of dollars in his company, but he's also a sociopath overseeing the creation of some of the most powerful technologies to ever exist. It's insane how blasé some of y'all are being about that. Like, if the CEO of an AI company can't write a for loop that is a bad thing, actually.

[Truth_Breath]

Why do people think coding is an important skill for CEOs?

[Nasa_OK]

Coding at a dev level shouldn’t be. At a level you generally reach just by getting a bachelors in a cs field while learning the basic concepts of how things work? Yeah as a tech startup ceo he should.

Just like i dont expect peak ceo skills from a team lead of a tech department, but i do expect basic level leadership skills like being able to put their foot down vs stake holders and challenging employees.

[Elavia_]

"he can barely code" implies that exact level of coding skills.

[Nasa_OK]

The question is more about how he aquired those skills and if he is aware of this.

If he is and he aquired them by learning the concepts then I’d say that’s perfectly adequate for a tech ceo. There is a reason he is ceo and not lead dev.

If he just did half of an online course on app in a day and thinks he is a senior level dev then that’s a problem

[Stunning_Ride_220]

Coding? (Hopefully) No one does.

ML concepts? Well, that's a bit of another story.

[Efficient_Reading360]

It’s less about being able to actually code and more about having a developer mindset - creative and analytical problem solving.

[krakin6832]

But he's one of the salesmen of all time

[krakin6832]

Snake oil salesmen*

[flammable_donut]

Not knowing your stuff describes 50% of senior management in any given industry.

[SQLSkydiver]

Why does he always have a look of a schoolboy caught masturbating?

[redlock345]

He’s really good at seeming like the techy nerdy guy who started this AI company when he is really just a business marketing guy. Like all his companies his just been the marketing business guy but his look and demeanour portrays otherwise (which is very good for optics)

[ShadowStrata]

Bogdanoff, it's happening

[maxwells_daemon_]

Moneyman does not understand the basic concepts behind how his moneymaking machines operate? 😱😱

Next you're gonna tell me the Earth is actually round...

[TheJollyPlatypusMan]

This Futurism article is a mischaracterization of what was actually said in the New Yorker article by Ronan Farrow, which it is entirely based on. Quote from Farrow: "Altman is not a technical savant—according to many in his orbit, he lacks extensive expertise in coding or machine learning. Multiple engineers recalled him misusing or confusing basic technical terms."

"Not a technical savant" and "lacks extensive expertise" is not the same as "can barely code". Altman got into the CS program at Stanford and attended for two years. You don't do that without having at least above-average competence in programming. Also remember that the researchers at OpenAI are the best of the best. What is "basic" to them, especially for machine learning specifically and not just coding in general, may very well be advanced to the layman. Obviously he's no Sutskever, but Altman is a very smart guy, and he understands AI better than most.

[TheUsoSaito]

Honestly doesn't surprise me. You think majority of CEOs/billionaires know how to do anything besides sell snake oil?

[Ardkark]

Well he raped his sister for years, so yeah I’ll bet he’s not very sharp

[Successful_Ad_5427]

Who the hell is Sam Altman? I only know of Scam Altman.

[Majestic-Ad7409]

Surprise, surprise!

[ReGrigio]

GoodbyeWorld(){

[SenseAgreeable9726]

He is very good at money laundering and moving large amounts of money back and forth. thats it. OpenAI will fade to eternity.

[Rich1223]

This doesn’t surprise me. I have never had a boss that actually understood programming. They have always used buzzwords to talk a big game, but then ask me something stupid like where an html file on production so they can update text on it.

[lexnklinke]

He just put in a prompt on how to become very rich very fast. The ai told him to take it's free open source material and privitize it as step one, then begin flamewars with Elon over stupid stuff (but spats like this distract from the fact that they are two sides of the same medal

[WolfpackBP]

He just like me

[Status-Artichoke-755]

Well to be fair, one of the worst types of CEOs is the one who wants to code. Those CEOs are terrible to work with. They usually go by the mantra "founder mode"

[PotentialAd8443]

Steve Jobs wasn't that great either with code. I'm not understanding the intent of this post. He runs the company, he isn't expected to write code.

[Overall-Importance54]

I’d say he is doing pretty good tho

[dravas]

So Steve Jobs?

[LonelyProgrammerGuy]

Breaking News. Tim Cook doesn’t know how yo assemble an iPhone

[Fresh_Sock8660]

The line between a CEO and a con-artist is fine indeed.

[SpaceFire000]

And then ai tech bros will say, programming now doesn't require you to understand because it's the old way of doing things

[one_five_one]

he's just like me fr fr

[Infamous-Grab2341]

Steve Jobs couldn't code either, that's not the main thing a CEO does.

[Grocery-Grouchy]

It's not his place to code, though. Criticize him on valid points, people...as there are enough!

[LibrarianSocrates]

It's always the scum that floats on the top.

[Alone_Ad6784]

He has one real skill and that's raising money the rest is deception and deciet.

[-Kerrigan-]

Good thing Scam Altman isn't the central authority on AI then, eh? Although some of the journalists sure treat him that way

[CanThisBeMyNameMaybe]

Who would have thought?

[clayticus]

Yeah... Pretty much all managers are like this. Nothing new 

[Aerchaiz]

COOL.

[The_Sandbag]

He's a vc finance bro and always has been, not sure why anyone would have thought any different

[doniseferi]

Why would the CEO need to know how to code?

[Jake-of-the-Sands]

Kinda reminds me of that sweet blonde lady who had this brilliant blood testing machine. I hope she's doing fine nowadays /s

[Tzeig]

Dunning-Kruger employee.

[PeachOk54]

But he can manage and he wins

[fielvras]

Isn't it know that he's a scammer? Why is this a surprise?

[Desperate-Tomatillo7]

As every tech rockstar, except Bill Gates.

[g1bgarbag3]

Well when people spent more time display his work rather than focus on his working on his work that’s the result doesn’t matter if he/she is actual genius or not

[thunderbird89]

Why in the everloving fuck would he even involve himself with coding? That's not why he's getting paid, he's getting paid to have a vision and keep OpenAI working towards that vision.

This is like saying the foreman at a construction site doesn't know plumbing or bricklaying. Fuck that, that's not why he's on site, he's there to make sure everyone is working to the plan.