Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said he is glad he turned down an internship offer from Goldman Sachs during college, adding that while rejecting such an opportunity was difficult at the time, it should be much easier for students today because artificial intelligence has lowered the barriers to starting a company. Speaking at the Internapalooza Conference in July this year, Sam Altman recalled that during his sophomore year in college, working at Goldman Sachs was considered one of the most desirable career paths.“I got peer pressured and kind of tricked into it,” Altman said. “I dutifully applied and got in and felt really cool.” However, he later decided not to accept the internship. “And then I didn’t do it,” he said.Instead, Sam Altman chose to work on his startup Loopt before joining Y Combinator’s first startup batch. He later became president of Y Combinator and went on to co-found OpenAI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: Working at Goldman Sachs sounds unbelievably terrible now
Looking back, Sam Altman said his view of investment banking has changed significantly. Altman said working at Goldman Sachs now “sounds unbelievably terrible,” adding that many corporate careers are highly hierarchical and leave little room to create new things.According to Altman, startups offer much greater freedom for people who want to build products instead of climbing the corporate ladder.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: AI makes it easier for students to say ‘No’
During the interview, Sam Altman said rejecting a prestigious internship was much harder when he was a student because there were fewer ways to build a company independently. “I think this is much more true now than ever before,” he said. “You can make a whole startup, kind of by yourself in a room with a lot of AI tokens but not much else, and you don’t need anyone to take you seriously to do that.”He added that young people can now make meaningful progress simply by building products. “You can get a long way in life and career just by doing stuff,” Altman said.
