How OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went from calling Mark Zuckerberg's hiring "Exceptional" to slamming it as "Distasteful"

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is now blasting Meta's aggressive talent poaching and $100 million signing bonuses, a dramatic reversal from 2016 when he praised Mark Zuckerberg's hiring approach as "exceptional" during a YCombinator interview.The irony runs deep: Altman, who was then the President of YCombinator, told Zuckerberg that "Facebook has done exceptionally well is hiring" and called it "the thing you have to get good at" as a founder. Today, he's warning OpenAI employees that Meta is "acting in a way that feels somewhat distasteful" as the company raids his AI talent.In a fiery internal Slack message, Altman dismissed Meta's recruitment success, claiming they "didn't get their top people and had to go quite far down their list." He declared that "missionaries will beat mercenaries" while hinting at compensation adjustments across OpenAI's research organization.The battle intensified after Meta successfully recruited at least seven OpenAI researchers for its new superintelligence team, with packages reportedly reaching $300 million over four years. Altman revealed on his brother's podcast that Zuckerberg has been "making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team," including "$100 million signing bonuses, more than that compensation per year."Back in 2016, Zuckerberg had explained his talent-over-experience philosophy to Altman, saying he invested in "people who we think are just really talented, even if they haven't done that thing before." The Facebook CEO emphasized creating internal growth opportunities, noting that of the company's 12 product groups, all leaders except one "did not join the company running a product group or reporting to me."Zuckerberg credited this approach with keeping "the best people engaged" and attracting top talent who saw advancement opportunities. Altman was clearly impressed, positioning hiring as the critical founder skill.Now Altman questions Meta's innovation DNA entirely: "There's many things I respect about Meta as a company, but I don't think they're a company that's great at innovation." He argues his employees see OpenAI as having a "much better shot actually, delivering on superintelligence and also may eventually be the more valuable company."The OpenAI chief attacked Meta's compensation-first strategy, claiming "the degree to which they are focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don't think that's going to set up a great culture." He emphasized that OpenAI "actually care about building AGI in a good way," while "other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal."