Sam Altman's Return to OpenAI: A Testament to Employee Power in the Tech World

It has been some days after the sudden ouster and return of Sam Altman as the leader of the world's current tech darling OpenAI. But even as the episode gets written into recent history, there are plenty of mysteries surrounding exactly what happened. Who are the folks who wanted Altman out so decisively, even though they, as the public, know that Altman is the face of the company and an influential voice on AI even beyond immediate company operations? And what exactly did they want to achieve through the ouster? Greater commercialization may be a culprit, but for casual observers, this is mere speculation.

But there is one thing that came out of the whole fiasco that even the most casual observer may find a good lesson to learn. And the lesson is decidedly non-tech: Altman's return had much to do with a campaign by the rank and file of OpenAI, in collaboration with and highly publicized by international media outlets. Without the majority of regular employees publicly calling for Altman's return, the board of the firm probably would have had a much easier chance to keep their original decision to get rid of him. In short, employee loyalty to Altman saved Altman.

It does not take a professional in AI to understand the implications of this result. In any firm where employees' brains underwrite company value, the concerted voices of the employees are hard to ignore for even the most profit-oriented investors. This is especially true in the world of AI, where the brains being employed are extremely talented and difficult to replace. Whereas it is easy to find alternative sources of investment to fund AI ventures, it is much easier to find people who are capable of executing. That labor scarcity gives OpenAI's employees unprecedented bargaining power.

It is easy to be pessimistic for a "regular" guy, not nearly as smart and well-versed in cutting-edge technology as the average OpenAI employee, to see the development at the firm. The conclusion may as well be that employee revolts only work when the employees are irreplaceable. The vast majority of employees, working in jobs that others can train themselves to do relatively quickly, do not have the same luxury. They can join unions, go on the picket lines, and fight for wage hikes and other perks, only to be fired and replaced by someone more docile and less demanding.

Yet OpenAI employees' success in bringing back their popular CEO does have a universal message. Building a community of workers working toward a single goal, whether it be a better product or keeping the same leadership, can go a long way in defeating the nefarious designs of investors seeking a quick buck. Money can only go so far in picking off one employee at a time in a firm where the majority of employees are bound together through some sort of informal institution that communicates and enacts collective desire based on solid trust and relationship-building.

That sort of community-building within a firm is difficult to build up in a geographically, culturally, and digitally dispersed one, as I see in my current company. People who have, and only will, meet in short Zoom meetings will have little personal rapport they can leverage to communicate a common goal, even if the goal is ultimately beneficial for the majority. Without physical face time, no one would even think of banding together to create that informal institution of employee collective action for the times that they are called upon to resist external pressures.

Thought this way, it is truly ironic that a company that seeks to replace human workers with faceless algorithms demonstrated the ability to, well, be human in actioning and decision-making. Whereas traditional non-remote working firms like manufacturing and retail succumb to the lack of organizational power to unify thousands through dying unions, OpenAI showed another way. Whereas executives and investors find physical workers pliable to demands of ridiculously hard work and low pay, digital workers showed that they need not be so.

In the end, OpenAI is special because of its intellectual employees, but not special enough to be considered a complete outlier in the corporate world. In any firm, leaders and employees who prioritize employee relations over the demands of the job, clients, investors, and the products themselves will find it all the more possible to guide the organization through crises without throwing some members under the bus in the process. Whether Altman is back because of ethical or commercial demand, it is a story that shows how employees can still win against big money.