OpenAI hires PMs for agency and ambiguity tolerance

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 48:05

   starts like that. How many product managers do you have at OpenAI? I don't know if you share that number, but if you do. Not that many, actually. I don't know, 25? Maybe it's a little more than that. But my personal belief is that you want to be pretty PM light as an organization just in general. i say this with love because i am a pm but too many pms causes problems you know we'll like fill the world with decks and ideas versus execution so i think that the the i think it's a good thing when you have a pm that has uh that is working with maybe slightly too many engineers because it means that they're not going to get in and micromanage you're going to leave a lot of of influence and responsibility with the engineers to make decisions. It means you want to have really product-focused engineers, which we're fortunate to have. We have an amazingly product

2. 48:58

   focused high agency engineering team. But when you have something like that, you have a team that feels super empowered. You have a PM that's trying to really understand the problems and kind of gently guide the team a little bit, but has too much going on to get too far into the details and you end up being able to move really fast so that's kind of the philosophy we take uh we want we want product the eng leads and and product the engineers all the way through um we want not too many pms but really awesome high quality ones um and so far that seems to be working pretty well i imagine being a pm at open ai is like a dream come true for a lot of people uh at the same time i imagine it's not a fit for a lot of people there's researchers involved very product-minded engineers what do you what do you look for in the pms that you hire there

3. 49:49

   for folks that are like maybe i shouldn't go work there i shouldn't even think about that i think i've said this a few times but like high agency is something that we really look for people that are not gonna come in and kind of wait for everyone else to allow them to do something they're just gonna see a problem and go do it um that's it's just a core part of how we work i think people that that are happy with ambiguity because there is a massive amount of ambiguity here is not the kind of place and we have we have trouble sometimes with um with more junior pms because of this because it's just not the place where someone is going to come in and say okay you know here's here's the landscape here is your area i want you to go do this thing and that's that's what you want as a as an early career pm we just i mean no one here has time

4. 50:38

   and the problems are too ill-formed and we're figuring them all out as we go. And so high agency, very comfortable with ambiguity, ready to come in and help execute and move really quickly. That's kind of our recipe. And I think also happy leading through influence because, I mean, it's usual as a PM, people don't report to you. Your team doesn't report to you, etc. But you also have the complexity of a research function, which is even more sort of self-directed. And it's really important to build a good rapport with the research team. And so, you know, I think the EQ side of things is also super important for us.

5. 51:24

   I know in most companies, a PM comes in and they're just like, why do we need you? And as a PM, you have to earn trust and help people see the value. And I feel like at OpenAI, it's probably a very extreme version of that where they're like, why do we need this person? We have researchers, engineers. What are you going to do here? Yeah, I think people appreciate it done right. But you bring people along.

6. 51:43

   I think one of the most important things a PM can do well is be decisive. So there's a real fine line. you don't want to be making it i mean it's kind of like i i don't love the pm is the ceo of the product uh illusion all the time but but just like sam and his role would be making mistakes if he made every single decision in every meeting that he was in and he would also be making mistakes if he made no decisions in any meetings that he was in right it's a it's the it's understanding when to defer to your team and like let let people innovate and when there is like a decision to be made that people either don't feel comfortable with or don't feel empowered to make or a decision that, you know, has too many different like disparate pros and cons that are spread out across a big group and someone needs to be decisive and make a call. It's a really important trait of a CEO. It's

7. 52:41

   something Sam does well. And it's also a really important trait of a PM kind of at a more microscopic level. And so because there's so much ambiguity, it's not obvious what the answer is in a lot of cases. And so having a PM, they can come in and like, and by the way, this doesn't need to be a PM. I'm perfectly happy if it's anybody else. But I kind of looked at the PM to say, if there's ambiguity and no one's making a call, you better make sure that we get a call made and