Anthropic is reported to run a culture in which employees openly raise differences of opinion and debate even remarks by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (다리오 아모데이) on the internal messenger Slack.

Business Insider reported on April 6 that Amol Abassare (아몰 아바사레), Anthropic’s head of growth, appeared on the podcast “Lenny’s” and said he encourages employees to “argue with Dario.”

Abassare explained that Anthropic gives every employee a personal Slack space called a “notebook” and keeps it open to other members as well. Employees, including the CEO, use the channel like an “X (formerly Twitter) feed” to share what they are thinking about and what they are working on. He added that entering various channels, including notebook channels in the research organisation, allows people to learn whatever they want.

There has also been a case in which such openness led to a public rebuttal of leadership. Abassare said that after an all-hands meeting, an employee who disagreed with remarks by Amodei immediately posted in Amodei’s notebook channel to the effect that “it was not good for you to say it in this-and-that way.” The post led to a debate, and the company instead encourages an attitude of “don’t agree with leadership and challenge it publicly.” Abassare added that this approach ultimately raises the level of trust.

A trend is also continuing among technology companies seeking to reduce hierarchy and speed up issue-raising and communication, like Anthropic. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings are mentioned as figures who have stressed employees’ active speaking up and raising differing views in decision-making. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, was also cited as an example of the trend after he said in a 2018 letter to employees that “communication should travel via the shortest path needed to get the job done, not through the chain of command.”

In the end, what Anthropic emphasises is not simply a “free atmosphere,” but an approach closer to making information-sharing and raising differing views a core mechanism of organisational operations. It is seen as an attempt to raise both the speed of learning and the quality of decision-making through a structure that allows people to publicly question management judgments as well.

Some also say that for such a culture to translate into real competitiveness, how responsibly raised issues are reviewed and reflected matters more than openness itself. That means organisations with less hierarchy need standards for debate and execution capability as much as freedom of speech.