Recently OpenAI made an announcement about new changes to their products: new models, lower pricing, better performance, more desperately needed features.

Maybe it was just a particular timing, but it did hit me hard the quality and the clarity of the communication. It was product management at its finest.

It is sometimes difficult to understand or appreciate the amount of effort required to control the of entropy that exists within a team, let alone multiple teams. It is not because it is hard, but because it so simple, yet somehow it escapes most people’s.

It is always easier to over-complexify things. Complexity creates obscurity, and obscurity creates confusion, and most of the people flourish in confusion. Lots of jobs are being created are dependent on confusion. A positive feedback loop is created, and the system is self-sustaining. Lots of talents are being wasted in this process.

I can’t count how many times we have been through this: There should be one person orchestrating the project, instead of multiple people with unclear responsibilities and overlapping roles. The teams must be aligned vertically and horizontally: alignment between the single team members, and between different teams. The communication must be clear and concise: not tens of pages of fluff (keep that for the person in charge only, not for everyone to interpret on their own), but a single page of clear and concise communication. Managers must have the mandate and the clear allocation of resources, and they must be held accountable for the results.

It is strange but, nothing of what OpenAI mentioned was new. We all knew what needed to be done, and most of it could have been done without OpenAI (except the model improvements perhaps), yet, no one did it. Not even OpenAI competitors.

I realize that this maybe an emotional rant, and probably reality is a bit different than what I am describing, but I don’t think I missed reality by a lot.