A Google techie has reacted to an OpenAI employee quitting his job over burnout and declining mental health, saying that “operating at the frontier is no joke”. Raj Dabre, a Senior Research Scientist at Google Research Australia, was responding to a post by Hieu Pham, who recently announced that he had made the “difficult decision” to leave OpenAI. Pham had earlier worked at xAI.
In his post, Pham described his time at both companies as a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” and said he had met “the best people.”
“At these companies, I have helped creating extremely intelligent entities that will meaningfully improve our lives. The work makes me proud. But the intensive work came with a price. I cannot believe I would say this one day, but I am burnt out,” he wrote.
He added that the mental health deterioration he once “scoffed at” is “real, miserable, scary, and dangerous.”
Pham said he would step away from “frontier AI labs” and return to Vietnam with his family to recover and “search for a cure” for his conditions. “I hope I will heal,” he wrote.
Reacting to the post, Dabre said, “Sure, we get paid a lot but it takes an insane toll when you are under enormous pressure to perform. At one point one wonders if it’s all worth it. Glad this is being said out loud.”
Social media reactions
Dabre’s comments sparked further discussion online about burnout in high-performance tech environments.
Reacting to the post, one user commented, “People who are leading development or any other major part of the entity are the first ones to get burnt out. Companies should focus on their mental health so that they don’t lose their most valuable assets.”
“Take the breaks, but also work on the problems that really matter. Health shouldne the core of the drivers, whenever it’s possible. There are so many people that depend on these breakthroughs,” commented another.
“I totally get it, and I used to think that operating in such pressure is no fun. But atleast for now, I get this excitement, which is, very similar to trackside teams at F1,” wrote a third user.
However, a user criticised the sympathy, saying people should focus instead on the jobs AI could replace. “Stop feeling sorry for someone who can retire after < 10 years at the frontier and instead focus on your efforts to the livelihoods they are going to replace with an LLM. especially someone who has openly mocked WLB in the past,” the user wrote.
In response, Dabre said, “People have the right to learn and self reflect. Don’t dehumanize people just because they have it good.”