Ed Zitron has suggested that Altman is good at wooing VC capital and developing a cult of personality, but not particularly good at showing returns or even at staying focused on a task. I can easily believe that if you’re not the sort to fall in line with the corporate religion he’d promoted, that you’d find yourself being ostracized and subjected to abuse.

My suspicion/understanding of what went down is that the board wanted him out for funneling money to undisclosed side projects and failing to deliver on more central priorities, and then his personality cult revolted. Things may be turning against him internally, though, especially if successive iterations of their core product don’t live up to Altman’s techno-messianic predictions of its capabilities and/or financials sag to the point that having a job there ceases to guarantee entry into the Bay Area’s financial upper crust.