Whenever technically more capable folks diss the growth of a non technical person into bigger roles, I'm obligated to post this Steve Jobs video being asked about Java.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o&t=6

I don't think he is hired for coding, he is hired for the product. It is not that he is going to join a product team and code, he probably will lead and influence the product, where other software engineers can help to fulfill.

I mean some might say that's like joining a sinking ship. Of course one man's trash is another man's treasure. To each their own.

Hiring in tech has been broken for many many years at this point. There's so much noise and only more noise coming now with AI. To be completely honest it's entire random from my end when hiring. We can't review every application that comes in. It's just impossible. We do weed out some of the spam of course and do get to real people that actually fit the requirements, but there's so many other talented people who would easily fit the role that simple get buried under applications. It's depressing from all sides here. No one should think that they aren't any good or did something wrong or didn't network enough... because the unfortunate truth is that getting a job in tech is a lottery. Something many don't want to admit.

Vibe coding is just a tool - same with programming languages and compilers.

The product being useful and well received by user and market is still the ultimate test. Whether something is vibe coded or not does not matter.

Would you like to have it removed? https://github.com/oswarld/openshears

As I understand Peter had already early retired because of a successful startup exit and presumably has more money than he knows what to do with. Does that help make you feel less jealous on him getting a job at oai?

It's the old story: evil, irresponsible behaviour has a higher chance of success, than being good and responsible. AIs recent history is a good example. Google had the lead, but lost it (temporary) to OpenAI, because Google was responsible and were not willing to open pandoras box. Apple seems to have something similar to OpenClaw for a while now, but withholds from releasing it, because it's too unsecure. History is full of people burning the world for their own greed, and getting rewarded for it; and they then call it "taking risks" and "thinking outside the box"... I think the underlying reason might be in too many people thinking there is some level of competence behind the irresponsible behaviour and it's alls just controlled harm or something like that.

> We don't know how much of the github stars are bought. We don't know how many twitter followings/tweets are bought.

Why this insinuation? The project went massively viral and was even covered in my local newspaper. I don't see any reason to doubt those numbers.

If all the above is true, why didn't Sam & Co just replicate his product and offer their own improved version - - with security incorporated within ?

I think it is unfortunate that this is happening. After all the mishaps and wrongdoings I don't want see anyone joining openai

I wouldn't necessarily expect him to be hired as their lead developer, but I think he would be a good product manager. He's clearly created something people want and see potential for.

> It's telling me that I should rather focus on getting viral/lucky to get a shot at "success"

Kids and young people have known this forever at this point. Sadly.

Maybe think of this as a hiring of a marketer and tech influencer. And someone with the chops to create a viral product.

> It's telling me that I should rather focus on getting viral/lucky to get a shot at "success".

I'm pretty sure that's meant to be the general lesson of the last 20 years or so in Silicon Valley, but it's just survivorship bias in action.

You don't hear a whole lot about the quietly successful engineers who work a 9-till-5 and then go home to see their wife and kids. But you do constantly hear about the folks who made it big YOLO'ing their career and finances on the latest a startup/memecoin/vibecoded app...

No need to be jealous. If you'd have watched some of the interviews of this guy then you'd know that he's not vibe coding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_95AKKmqGvE

Semantics and grammar joke aside.. there are not many workers remembered in history. Only the so-called absolute greatest, meanest, etc are remembered. Nobody remembers the people who worked on the pyramid, but everyone knows some Farao.

In this case they hired someone who has 'mastered' the use of their own tool(s). Like if Home Depot hired a guy who has almost perfect knowledge of each and every tool in their own portfolio.

I'm not really sure if i want to be that guy.

Ugh. Have we all forgotten that jealousy is the absolute opposite of a good virtue. Why does this get upvoted? Hacker News in a truly despicable state these days when this is what bubbles to the top. It saddens me to see that all the good people here have left or stopped participating. When we hear how rotten social media is, this also includes HN.

Such is life in the attention economy.

dont be jealous. working for some evil corporate is soulsucking for most humans. Only few thrive in such environments. most will try to get quick $$ and exit before they feel completely dead inside.

not sure why i find a lot of these types of comments lately, just a sign of the times i guess? criticism sure, but to reduce all of his work as if it were a paragraph prompt or something, that's something else.

i hate when the people start bringing up the "luck" factor as if you are the only smart one here to realize that it also plays a huge factor?

you want to make lots of money? change your mindset, stop making excuses and roll the dice. it won't guarantee success, but i also guarantee nobody who did so would ever lament how unfair it was that they worked so hard and someone else succeeded through "luck" so they might as well not try.

Do good or at least useful work in public and you'd be surprised at what can happen.

It’s not the code. It’s the vision and the can-do attitude. And perhaps a bit of the (earned) name.

I'm more jealous of his muscles and butt

nah. focus on building cool things people want.

> It's telling me that I should rather focus on getting viral/lucky to get a shot at "success".

Well duh. I thought that was well understood.

The other option is having well-to-do parents a la Musk or Gates.

Have you tried that?

> It's telling me that I should rather focus on getting viral/lucky to get a shot at "success".

It doesn't? You'd need to know the odds for the tell. Like how many incompetent grifters are there, how many of them become hugely successful?

> Would you hire someone who never read any if the code that they've developed?

I mean, if I'm a company specifically in the business of selling to companies the idea that they can produce code without reading any of it? Yeah, obviously I'd hire them.

> We also have someone who vibecoded without reading any of the code. This is self admitted by this person.

This is isn’t right. He says very clearly in the recent Lex Fridman podcast that he looks at critical code (ex: database code). He said he doesn’t look at things like Tailwind code.

Don't forget he also had Sam Altman's phone number. Do you any of you have his number? Also before he did all this he was semi retired for 5 years because of a successful exit. So for anyone thinking they can replicate this ask...

1. Are you already rich? Do you have cash in the bank to vibecode a project fulltime for many months just for fun?

2. Do you have Sam Altman's (or similar) number?

Maybe it still is supposed to sound fancy to say you didn't read any of the code. The guy definitely could very deeply understand, read and edit the code, he developed the industrial standard liberal for PDF editing (used by Dropbox etc).

Just saying what you want might be the future for development of some kinds of software, but this use case sure seems like a very bad idea.

I very much appreciate the vision he put into practice, but feel sorry for the project being acquihired kind of.

He didn't create or release something as finished.

He built something and shared it.

People took liberties with it.

It's not about getting viral/lucky... it's about enjoying experimenting and learning.

Money follows your unique impact and imprint in these kinds of cases.

The lesson here is to make something people want. All else is forgiven is the product is something people really want - the product market fit most of us never achieve.

This is such a strange take to be the top comment of “hacker” news. Why are we shaming someone who “hacked” something together and made it open source?

It's also from a guy who rebranded three times (Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw) in a row and this is technically his fourth rebrand.

Props for admitting jealousy and for being honest! I often feel the same way when fixing bugs in others code.

What sense it made to do something like Instagram? There were already N social networks where you could share photos. No technical excellence was needed. It was just momentum, being in the right incubator, and so forth... I understand what you are saying, but it has been always like that.

it's a tough pill to swallow for developers, but nobody cares about your ability to write code. people care about you shipping something people want.

i can easily hire 100 sweatshop coders to finetune your code once i have a product that works but the inverse will never happen

One day Atlas may shrug, but not today, atlast..

HN Really hates understanding business. All these comments, yet no one has gotten the answer right.

OpenAI bought marketing and now someone else cannot buy openclaw and lock out Openai revenue from a project that is gaining momentum.

There are a many of these business moves that seem like nonsense.

1. Bought for marketing.

2. Adversarial hire. ie hire highly skilled people before your competitors can even if you don't have anything for them do to. Yet...

3. Acqu-hire. Buy a company when you really just want some of the staff.

4. Buy Customers. You don't care about the product and intend to migrate their customers to your system.

5. Buy competition before its a threat.

[dead]