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Are you looking at the careers of successful people, trying to retrace each step they took to get to where they are? It\u2019s a futile endeavor, says OpenAI\u2019s chief economist Aaron \u201cRonnie\u201d Chatterji<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chatterji, who is also a distinguished professor at Duke University, said in a recent interview on the Summation<\/em> podcast<\/a> that job-seekers often study success in the hopes of making it their own. Conventional wisdom advises them to look at other people\u2019s resumes and try to replicate their wins. This is \u201crelatively bad advice,\u201d Chatterji said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople often say something like \u2018success leaves clues,\u2019 meaning you should follow the paths of other successful people,\u201d Chatterji said.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, a successful person\u2019s public resume often omits times of uncertainty, failure and hardship. It is the polished version of their history, not the most truthful. Economic moments shaped the choices they took; their success depended on the environment they lived in, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe path that they took whenever they took it was very context dependent,\u201d Chatterji said. \u201cVery rare to find someone self-aware enough to say, you know, the way I did it won\u2019t work for you anymore. It won\u2019t work for anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n When Chatterji spoke, he avoided singling anyone out, but the pattern is hard to miss. Many of Silicon Valley\u2019s most recognizable leaders emerged alongside life-changing technological shifts, situating their success within broader trends.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, Mark Zuckerberg grew Facebook just as widespread Internet access pushed social networking into the mainstream. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos built Amazon as ecommerce began to take off, and Sam Altman has steered OpenAI through the AI surge.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe should use our heroes, our career heroes, our occupational heroes for inspiration but not step-by-step advice,\u201d Chatterji said.<\/p>\n As AI grows more popular, it requires workers to evaluate their skills. Chatterji said that coding, math, formal reasoning and AI skills will be vital in an AI-driven economy. He said that as AI absorbs a growing share of routine work, skills like sound judgment, adaptability and resilience will only grow in importance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other leaders emphasize skills like critical thinking. For example, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last year that AI taking over tasks \u201cdoesn\u2019t mean that people won\u2019t have other jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLearn EQ [emotional quotient or emotional intelligence], learn how to be good in a meeting, how to communicate, how to write,\u201d Dimon told Fox News\u2019 Sunday Morning Futures<\/em><\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019ll have plenty of jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Meta\u2019s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, said last year that AI\u2019s coding abilities were a game changer for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to understate the degree to which I\u2019ve been radicalized by AI coding,\u201d Wang said on the TBPN<\/em><\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n He said that teenagers should spend \u201call\u201d of their time vibe-coding, or using AI to generate blocks of code from simple English prompts. He added that teenagers who spend \u201c10,000 hours\u201d getting familiar with AI coding tools have \u201ca huge advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Are you looking at the careers of successful people, trying to retrace each step they took to get to where they are? It\u2019s a futile endeavor, says OpenAI\u2019s chief economist Aaron \u201cRonnie\u201d Chatterji<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chatterji, who is also a distinguished professor at Duke University, said in a recent interview on the Summation<\/em> podcast<\/a> that job-seekers often study success in the hopes of making it their own. Conventional wisdom advises them to look at other people\u2019s resumes and try to replicate their wins. This is \u201crelatively bad advice,\u201d Chatterji said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople often say something like \u2018success leaves clues,\u2019 meaning you should follow the paths of other successful people,\u201d Chatterji said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nSilicon Valley success stories\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Skills to emphasize<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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