OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: Working at Goldman Sachs "sounds unbelievably terrible now"
Many of the world's biggest CEOs spent a portion of their early career working in finance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is an exception, but he almost wasn't; speaking at the Internapalooza conference yesterday, Altman said that he turned down a chance to work at Goldman Sachs and has no regrets about doing so.
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Altman applied to Goldman because, "at the time, that was the cool thing. That was what everybody wanted to do." He said he was "peer pressured and tricked" into accepting an internship offer, but he ultimately changed his mind before signing a contract and chose to work on his startup, Loopt, which was accepted by incubator Y Combinator. Altman said that the thought of him working at Goldman Sachs "sounds unbelievably terrible now."
Altman didn't say what exactly he didn't like about the thought of working in a bank, but other topics discussed during that talk provide some options. Altman said that "people put too much effort into trying to get taken seriously;" banking careers are hierarchical by nature and involve paying your dues until you get a seat at the table. Instead, Altman said that "you can get a long way in [your] life and career just by doing stuff," especially when AI makes it easier to build a startup than ever. At OpenAI, Altman said that people in their early 20s are given responsibility for major projects and that the company is a big believer in "identifying and betting on young, unproven talent."
The biggest banking jobs also tend to be concentrated in New York. Altman suggested that it's instead better for young people to work in the San Francisco Bay Area, which he said has been the best place in the last 15 years to "put yourself in a high collision environment and meet a lot of people."
The message seems to be resonating with bankers who have been leaving for big roles in AI labs over the past year. Anthropic's product team contains alumni of Morgan Stanley, Macquarie and JPMorgan. OpenAI itself has been hiring both junior bankers and MDs. OpenAI is aiming to grow its headcount to 8,000 by the end of the year, which would make it the same size as banks like Jefferies. Altman implied that the lab has to act a bit more corporate than it used to; maintaining startup instincts at a company of OpenAI's size could "blow up entire organizations and big plans and people's lives and careers." However, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman still personally check an email inbox in which OpenAI staff complain about bureaucratic bottlenecks. Altman said abandoning those startup instincts entirely can turn a firm into "this sclerotic, horrible, lumbering big company." Perhaps this is how he views the banks.
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