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In short: An ex-OpenAI employee has revealed a few details about the company which went from near obscurity in a short time to kicking off the generative AI Revolution. ChatGPT is not only secretive and high-pressure, as you might expect, but also obsessed with social media platform X, and does not use email. Calvin French-Owen was a technical staffer at OpenAI from May 2024 to June 2025. He spoke about his time with the firm in a recently published article. Blog postthat aims to reveal how the culture of the firm feels.
French, who founded his company before joining OpenAI and left, begins by stating that he felt deeply conflicted over his decision to leave. He writes that it is important to understand how quickly OpenAI grew: from 1,000 employees when he first joined to over 3,300 people a year after – and that he was among the top 30% of tenure.
Growth that fast breaks everything: communication, reporting and shipping, management, and organization. OpenAI’s growth is incredibly chaotic yet it continues at an alarming pace.
The company’s entire operation is run on Slack. This is one of the most shocking revelations. “There is no email,” French Owen writes that he only received ten emails during his time at the company. OpenAI’s work is intense. French-Owen claims that the team’s sprint in which they built AI agent Codex within seven weeks was his hardest work in a decade. Burnout is a common occurrence, and many people work 12-hour, 5-day or even 14 hour, 6-day weeks.
people will
1) do a lot more than they could before; ability and expectation will both go up
2) still care very much about other people and what they do.People will
1) Do a lot more work than they could before; their ability and expectations will both increase
]2) Still care about other people and what the do
]3) Still be…Sam Altman (@sama), July 16, 2025 The organization is also very serious, highly secretive, and frighteningly ambitious.
It’s surprising that OpenAI pays a great deal of attention to Twitter (now X). “If you tweet something related to OpenAI that goes viral, chances are good someone will read about it and consider it,” French-Owen wrote. “A friend of mine joked, ‘This company runs on twitter vibes’.”
The public’s demand and viral trends seem to have a major influence on the future products of OpenAI. It’s ironic that X, its social media platform, is chosen, given the animosity of CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who have been involved with several legal spats. French-Owen is grateful for his OpenAI experience, despite the intense workload and short time he was there. “In reflecting on the year, I think it was one of the best moves I’ve ever made. It’s hard to imagine learning more anywhere else.”
