Source: Fortune.com
Summary
OpenAI has an internal email address, friction@openai.com, where employees can report bottlenecks and inefficiencies. The leadership team, including CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, review and prioritize these emails, often getting involved to resolve issues. The process aims to cut through bureaucracy and keep the company moving at “AI speed.” A former employee praised the system as effective, but another former team leader found it disruptive and inefficient.
Our Reading
The numbers tell one story. OpenAI’s employee base is growing to over 8,000 by the end of the year, with offices across the U.S. and globally. To keep up, the company has implemented a “friction” system to quickly address internal issues. CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman personally review and prioritize these emails. The process has been in place since the fall of 2025, when Fidji Simo joined as CEO of Applications. She put more process around the friction@ address and tasked Irina Kofman with monitoring the inbox. The company-wide Slack updates on resolved issues signal to employees that leadership cares about their concerns.
The friction system is not without its critics, however. One former team leader found it created more inefficiency than it solved. With the intense work culture and long hours, the friction emails can create unwelcome fire drills. In the end, the expediency of shaving off every possible drag on speed trumps all. As one former employee put it, “If Sam and Greg think something is worthy, if it’s defensible, then essentially a ‘friction’ gets started, and the party who is responsible for the block is then more or less just told to shut up and do it.”
Author: Evan Null
