Thorough and interim seem mutually exclusive to me. The whole point of an interim CEO is to have someone in the seat while you then be thorough. Given that, being CEO buddies seems as diligent as you could possibly be.
If Sam did something bad enough to warrant being removed as soon as they learned it, chucking someone you know personally and trust in the position while you then be thorough would seem the least bad course of action.
If Sam did not do something bad enough to warrant being removed as soon as they learned it, then firing him without any succession plan in place was a bad move and is "firing badly", but the hiring situation seems to me as exactly the same as in the "Sam did something really bad" line. Claiming both bad hiring and bad firing for the one decision seems like double counting to me, and will lead to circular reasoning. They hired badly ergo we can assume they fired badly, therefore they hired badly.
obviously the situation is stupid, but what could really be dug up in diligence? The pool of people who could run this company all have highly public track records and reputations, they are well known to the hiring team and certainly to the hiring teams network. Again, I have to imagine they had someone in place to take the role that dropped out, maybe Murati or Ilya first? Once internal candidates fell through, especially if the leadership team departs, you need someone capable of running a cutting edge tech company which basically means, you need to poach another CEO, who is likely highly capable, with tons of options who is willing to get dropped into the least winnable situation with absolutely no team. This isn't a mid-level product manager role that the company needs to fill, implying that it is remotely similar is not true AND implying that this is a regular thing that boards do over a weekend is also obviously not true. This is an insane situation and has very limited parallels, this whole thing will be our generations version of Barbarians at the Gates KKR.
