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Reflections on OpenAI

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I wanted to share my reflections because there's a lot of smoke and noise around what OpenAI is doing, but not a lot of first-hand accounts of what the culture of working there actually feels like. Nabeel Qureshi has an amazing post called Reflections on Palantir, where he ruminates on what made Palantir special. I wanted to do the same for OpenAI while it's fresh in my mind. You won't find any trade secrets here, more just reflections on this current iteration of one of the most fascinating organizations in history at an extremely interesting time. To put it up-front: there wasn't any personal drama in my decision to leave–in fact I was deeply conflicted about it. It's hard to go from being a founder of your own thing to an employee at a 3,000-person organization. Right now I'm craving a fresh start. It's entirely possible that the quality of the work will draw me back. It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI, and LLMs are easily the technological innovation of the

Reflections on OpenAI Calvin French-Owen / Writing Calvin French-Owen About Writing Bookshelf Reflections on OpenAI JUL 15, 2025 I left OpenAI three weeks ago. I had joined the company back in May 2024. I wanted to share my reflections because there's a lot of smoke and noise around what OpenAI is doing, but not a lot of first-hand accounts of what the culture of working there actually feels like . Nabeel Qureshi has an amazing post called Reflections on Palantir , where he ruminates on what made Palantir special. I wanted to do the same for OpenAI while it's fresh in my mind. You won't find a

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