He is the rising man in Silicon Valley. At 39 years old, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is at the head of a company that has established itself as a sure bet in the field of AI thanks to ChatGPT. Like any prominent person, he is regularly asked for career advice.
Trust yourself
Asked about this in the podcast by Bill Gates, Unconfused Me, the latter revealed some secrets. The entrepreneur suggests telling his colleagues and managers directly what he thinks, even if it is often difficult:
Being clear about what you want to do and asking people what you want is a surprisingly long process. Many people get caught up in not spending their time as they would like. Probably the advice I give most often is to try to fix it one way or another.
In fact, we very often anticipate a rejection of our requests, and even if this is sometimes the case, human beings tend to underestimate the willingness of others to help them, explains CNBC which refers to old psychological studies.
This is not the first time that the leader has addressed this problem. In a blog post titled “how to succeed”he advised in 2019:
When people put aside their doubts and go after what they want directly, they have a tremendous capacity to make things happen. Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and rejection will often be painful. But when it works, it works surprisingly well.
When Steve Jobs advocated audacity
It is interesting to note that Sam Altman’s position is surprisingly close to that of Steve Jobs. We remember that the co-founder of Apple explained in 1994:
One thing I have always found to be very true is that most people don’t have these experiences because they never ask for them. I’ve never found anyone who didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.
He added: “You have to be willing to screw up and burn out whether it’s talking to people on the phone, starting a business or something else. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get far”.
To find out more, do not hesitate to reread our article here.
