Hayden Field

Like, there are people that individually drove GPT-5.

GPT-4, people that individually drove a ton of Grok stuff, like Grok Imagine.

And everyone at the company knows who those people are.

It's not like any employee at OpenAI or XAI or Anthropic or Google is going to be just worth this much money in terms of pay.

from a CEO's perspective, I guess.

But there are a handful of people that have outsized influence and that are really good at marshalling all the other people on their team at the company.

They're really good at ideating and solving these intense problems.

That's why some of these people's moves make headlines.

I would say almost every time.

There are a lot of people that won't say that in so many words, but they will imply it.

Like the anthropic researcher that left last week that went viral online for his resignation letter.

Yeah, he went to go be a poet, so it's not like he was going to another AI company in that case.

But he did say...

that throughout his time at Anthropic, he repeatedly saw how hard it is to let his values govern his actions, both within himself and within the organization, because he said they constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.

So I think most people that depart these companies, I mean, some of them will just say, thanks so much, off to my next chapter.

But a lot of them will say, hey,

hey, my next chapter is going to be about X, Y, and Z because this is what I care a lot about.

Whether they're leaving for a nonprofit, maybe they're starting their own AI lab or their own foundation or organization that's more of a watchdog.

Maybe they're leaving for another AI lab that they specifically want to work under this person because they admire X, Y, and Z about them.

Sometimes they say outright that the other company didn't align.