The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature.
OpenAI's recent challenges have proven the authors, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, correct again. OpenAI is a company creating groundbreaking technology that is reshaping the technical landscape but was almost completely undone by sociological problems in a matter of days.
While the story is evolving, at time of writing Sam Altman is to return as OpenAI CEO, many accounts have pointed to the misalignment of incentives as the key problem. OpenAI's corporate structure is atypical, a non profit entity "unencumbered by profit incentives" finds itself in control of one of the most successful startups of the last decade. If the board's incentive is not to make a profit it's likely to have some issue with how the most successful startup of the past decade is being run. As the Atlantic reported:
Altman’s dismissal by OpenAI’s board on Friday was the culmination of a power struggle between the company’s two ideological extremes—one group born from Silicon Valley techno optimism, energized by rapid commercialization; the other steeped in fears that AI represents an existential risk to humanity and must be controlled with extreme caution. For years, the two sides managed to coexist, with some bumps along the way.
I have no idea where this OpenAI story ends up but one lesson I’m sure of: ignore sociological problems at your peril, whether you're on a 5 person team or leading the next unicorn startup.
PS: My favorite analysis of the OpenAI chaos is by Ben Thompson of Stratechery (written before Sam Altman's return as CEO––I'm confident he'll post followups soon).