Good morning.
If you’ve ever worked at a company with more than say, a couple dozen employees, you’ve probably been frustrated by some of the bureaucratic bottlenecks. It’s part of the reason many people in tech like to work at startups (well, that and the potential IPO jackpot).
At OpenAI, employees have a magic word to eliminate logjams and cut through the red tape that develops as the company gets larger. It’s called “friction,” and it even has the power to summon CEO Sam Altman.
Here’s how it works, as Emily Forlini reports:
The process starts when someone emails friction@openai.com to report an internal bottleneck. The issues range from a technical system that isn’t working, a process that’s not having the intended result, or office-related frustrations, such as there not being enough IT vending machines.
