What It’s Really Like Working at OpenAI
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s really like working at OpenAI, a new first-hand account offers a rare peek behind the curtain. Calvin French-Owen, a former engineer at the company, recently published a detailed blog post recounting his one-year stint building tools like Codex—a powerful coding assistant designed to compete with tools like Cursor and Claude Code. In his candid reflection, French-Owen sheds light on both the inspiring and chaotic realities of working inside one of the world’s fastest-growing AI companies. From rapid growth pains to a uniquely startup-like culture, his experience reveals what prospective hires, AI enthusiasts, and the tech-curious want to know: what’s it like working at OpenAI during its most transformative phase?
Image Credits:Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images
Inside OpenAI’s Rapid Growth and Startup Culture
OpenAI has become a tech giant almost overnight. According to French-Owen, the team ballooned from 1,000 to 3,000 employees during the single year he worked there. That kind of hypergrowth is rare, even in Silicon Valley. Unsurprisingly, it brought massive scaling challenges. Communication breakdowns, unclear reporting structures, and duplicated development efforts were common themes. “Everything breaks when you scale that quickly,” he wrote, highlighting issues in team organization, hiring pipelines, and product development. Despite this, French-Owen likened the experience to working at a startup—fast-paced, experimental, and filled with opportunities to build and ship without endless layers of management. Employees had the freedom to innovate quickly, but that also meant inefficiencies, like multiple teams building similar libraries with little cross-team coordination.
Codex, Competition, and Creative Autonomy
French-Owen was part of the team working on Codex, OpenAI’s advanced coding agent. Codex is meant to assist programmers by turning natural language prompts into functional code, similar to ChatGPT for developers. It directly competes with rivals like Anthropic’s Claude Code and newer tools like Cursor. His team sprinted to ship early versions, often working long, sleepless hours. Despite the grind, he noted a unique energy at OpenAI—teams were motivated, and people were encouraged to pursue bold ideas. This creative autonomy stands in contrast to traditional Big Tech environments, where innovation often gets bogged down in bureaucracy. However, that same autonomy sometimes created internal friction and redundant efforts. It’s a delicate balance: empowering engineers while maintaining organizational efficiency.
Why He Left OpenAI (And What It Says About the Culture)
You might assume someone would leave OpenAI due to burnout or internal politics, but French-Owen says otherwise. He left not because of any company drama but to return to what he loves most—building his own startup. As the former co-founder of Segment, acquired by Twilio for $3.2 billion, entrepreneurship is in his DNA. Still, his blog paints a nuanced picture of working at OpenAI: a place filled with brilliant minds, exciting challenges, and a culture in flux. While some aspects, like rapid scaling and chaotic structures, mirror typical growing pains in tech, others—like open collaboration and speed of execution—show why OpenAI continues to attract top talent. For those considering a role there or simply curious about the inner workings of one of AI’s biggest players, French-Owen’s story is both insightful and surprisingly relatable.
What Working at OpenAI Reveals About the Future of AI Work
French-Owen’s reflections offer more than just behind-the-scenes gossip—they highlight the evolving nature of tech work in the AI era. Working at OpenAI is not just about building models or products; it’s about navigating the messy, fast-paced environment of a company trying to stay ahead of the curve. It’s equal parts chaos and opportunity, filled with moments of brilliance and frustration. For engineers, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in the future of work in AI, his story underscores a key truth: the companies shaping tomorrow’s technology aren’t perfect, but they are incredibly human. And in that humanity—flaws and all—we find what makes them worth watching.
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