As heavily funded as the top AI startups are, how is it that they cannot fill every single role with the best expertise available?

Is tech hiring so badly broken? Or do they have such broken processes / misaligned incentives that even people who could be doing a better job in these companies are unable to?

Also, was something lost in the transition from the traditional 'sysadmin' role to 'platform engineer' in the 'cloud native' environment?

OpenAI's business model would align infra as a cost center rather than infra as a profit center (e.g. Google / AWS). Perhaps there's something there. I'd say also the OpenAI as a grad school that just happens to have a business aspect is also part of this. Bringing a tonne of good process on top of the build fast break things startup stuff would have cramped research speed significantly.

It's likely that OpenAI has gotten as good as it is because it ignored the traditional sysadmin stuff and went scrappy.

I worked there, but this is just my opinion and guesses, not facts.

Yes, tech hiring is that broken. Especially places paying a pretty penny or those with “great expectations”, will see a glut of smooth talkers who can do anything but build, and want nothing but wealth.