OpenAI has a special internal inbox: friction@. It's a designated address for everything that slows work down — technical glitches, process annoyances, even parking assignments and office gear. Management sorts through the messages, and if an issue is important enough, CEO Sam Altman or president Greg Brockman jumps in directly.
The inbox has been around for a while, but it became an official institution after Fidji Simo joined the company. OpenAI now assigns people to monitor it and publishes monthly progress updates in the company-wide Slack. The system has already led to a pilot for parking spot assignments and changes to how API credits are handed out.
Opinions inside OpenAI are mixed. One former employee describes the appeal simply: anyone can bypass the org chart and take "big-company nonsense" straight to Sam. But another former team lead says once Sam or Greg backs a friction item, the responsible team basically has to stop what they're doing and handle it — creating a new kind of emergency response.
The amusing part is that OpenAI barely uses email at all. Former engineer Calvin French-Owen once said nearly everything runs through Slack, and that he received around 10 emails a year. OpenAI plans to expand from roughly 4,500 employees to 8,000 by the end of the year. This special inbox is an attempt to preserve the speed of skipping straight to the top as the company balloons.