{"id":5215,"date":"2026-08-12T21:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5215"},"modified":"2026-08-12T21:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:12:22","slug":"sam-altman-thinks-working-at-goldman-sachs-sounds-unbelievably-terrible-now-and-admits-he-was-peer-pressured-into-accepting-an-internship-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5215","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman thinks working at Goldman Sachs \u2018sounds unbelievably terrible now\u2019 and admits he was \u2018peer pressured\u2019 into accepting an internship there\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Before he dropped out of college and later went on to\u00a0found OpenAI, Altman said he was \u201cpeer pressured and tricked\u201d into accepting an internship\u00a0at Goldman Sachs during his sophomore year.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5213\">BofA to plow $250 billion into critical infrastructure projects<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the time, that was the cool thing. That was what everybody wanted to do,\u201d Altman told the audience at the Internapalooza Conference last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI got peer pressured and kind of tricked into it,\u201d Altman said. \u201cI dutifully applied and got in and felt really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Altman ended up turning down the offer. \u201cAnd then I didn\u2019t do it,\u201d he said, and instead, he\u00a0 worked on his startup Loopt before joining Y Combinator\u2019s first batch and eventually became YC\u2019s president. He then went on to\u00a0 start frontier AI company OpenAI, which just wrapped a $7 billion share sale as it eyes a potential trillion-dollar IPO as soon as the second half of 2026. Goldman is one of OpenAI\u2019s underwriters for its IPO.<\/p>\n<p>Altman began discussing the idea of creating one\u2019s business as opposed to working up the corporate ladder \u201cjust doing stuff.\u201d Now in the age of AI, in part thanks to his own startup, it\u2019s that much easier for someone to turn down a prestigious banking internship (Goldman\u2019s intern class acceptance rate is now below 1%.)<\/p>\n<p>Working at an establishment like Goldman, Altman said, meaning being around \u201cpeople [who] put too much effort into trying to get taken seriously.\u201d Because banking careers are inherently hierarchical, there\u2019s no room to create. Startups, on the other hand, offer that freedom.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI think this is much more true now than ever before,\u201d he said. \u201cYou 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\u2019t need anyone to take you seriously to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5211\">How much car insurance coverage do you really need?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can get a long way in life and career just by doing stuff,\u201d Altman said, adding that OpenAI gives  young adults plenty of responsibility for major projects as the company believes in \u201cidentifying and betting on young, unproven talent.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Years after Altman turned down the offer, his company is now recruiting Wall Street talent. Both junior investment bankers and senior banking veterans\u2014including former Morgan Stanley managing director Alisha Lehr just last month\u2014are among OpenAI\u2019s latest recruits. It has enlisted more than 100 former investment bankers from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to train AI models to build financial models and automate work traditionally handled by junior bankers, and there could be plenty more seats to fill. OpenAI reportedly plans to grow its workforce to 8,000 by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>OpenAI itself increasingly expects finance people to be AI-native. CFO Sarah Friar said in June that she probably wouldn\u2019t hire a finance employee today who didn\u2019t know how to use a tool like Codex, comparing it to knowing Excel.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI would never hire a finance person who didn\u2019t know how to use Excel, and I probably wouldn\u2019t hire a finance person today that doesn\u2019t know how to use a tool like Codex,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>As some bankers leave for jobs at AI labs, finance is also turning into a battleground for enterprise AI business more broadly. Anthropic launched roughly 10 pre-built AI agents for financial workflows, including pitchbooks, earnings analysis, credit memos and underwriting, with Claude is already in production at JPMorgan, Goldman and Citi.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5209\">Blackstone strikes $1.8 billion deal for Air Canada division<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two decades after his application to the bank, OpenAI is recruiting Wall Street veterans and teaching AI to do the work of junior bankers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-openai"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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