A firing helped in personal branding? Shocking right? But that’s what happened with Sam Altman. The man behind ChatGpt. After the news of Sam Altaman getting fired by the board of OpenAi came, a lot many people already claimed Sam Altman to be the new Steve Jobs.
The words of those people somehow turned out to be prophetic. While it took Apple 12 years to understand the importance of Steve Jobs it took OpenAi a week to understand the value of Sam. And that made Sam Altman one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley right now.
Who Is Sam Altman?
For all those who are still not well aware of this person, let us give you an introduction. Sam Altaman is the CEO of OpenAi who is the main brain behind ChatGpt.
Before coming to OpenAi, he worked in Y Combinator. He is also an investor. Recently, he was fired by the board of OpenAi, and then they hired him back again due to several reasons.
What’s The Drama?
Now, let’s dive deep into the drama of Sam getting fired and again getting reinstated as the CEO of the OpenAi board within a short span of time.
On November 17th, 2023, the board of OpenAi decided to fire Sam Altman from his position of CEO of OpenAi. The board said through a blog that they’re firing him because Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications”. The news created a big shock around the world as no one saw this coming.
But the actual drama starts from there. Brockman also resigned from his position as president of OpenAi after this incident. Then all of a sudden on November 20, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft announced that Sam was going to join the AI research team of Microsoft.
Which was a big threat to OpenAi. Microsoft already owns 49% of OpenAi and if they get Altman after that it will surely be a damaging thing for OpenAi.
On the very next day, the board of OpenAi declared that they were going to bring Sam back to his position of CEO and Brockman as the President.
But not only the threat of Microsoft winning the AI war, there was another big reason behind this hiring back decision of OpenAi and that was the pressure from the employees.
At first, around 505 employees of OpenAi initially signed a letter threatening the board that they were going to leave this company and join Microsoft if they didn’t bring Sam back. The number later increased to 700 out of 770 employees leading to the board members feeling the heat of their decision.
How Did It Help The Personal Brand Of Sam?
This total drama of Sam getting fired and again getting reinstated as the CEO of OpenAi has seriously helped the brand of Sam Altman. This whole episode made him one of the most influential players for the AI future.
Let’s understand how this episode helped in building the brand of Sam Altman,
At first, this whole process made it very clear that Sam is a genius whom everyone wants to get on their team. He has been a tech genius and has previously shown his skills in many ways. That was the main reason why he was hired by OpenAi at first.
Later the launch of ChatGpt made it very clear that he is surely a great tech guy with prodigious knowledge about AI. But when one of the biggest companies in the world gives him such respect and makes him the head of their AI research team days after he has been fired, it just adds a stamp to his merit.
Satya Nadella knows how to identify a talent and that’s surely one of the reasons behind the gigantic success of Microsoft in today’s date. So his decision to hire Sam made the world understand his value.
Secondly, his leadership skills surely attracted many. On social media, we often hear people saying how bad their boss is and how badly they want to get rid of him.
But for Sam, everyone was ready to give up their job to work with him. 90% of the employees were reluctant to work under anyone else except Sam. So when employees show such a level of loyalty and compassion towards their boss then it becomes clear that he knows the definition of “management” better than many.
Conclusion
There is a very popular proverb that says “Every setback is a setup for a comeback”. The firing was a similar setback for Sam.
The firing did no damage to Sam Altman but rather made him a more prominent figure with the world understanding his tech knowledge and leadership skills.
While OpenAi has miles to go, Sam Altman has surely created a personal brand that’s bigger and more influential than many other Silicon Valley heads.