Rejecting an xAI Interview

As you may have noticed, like everyone else in SF, I've been pondering AI. There will probably be at least 10 more years of world-changing developments ahead of us. Like with the internet, things may take decades to unfold. It's still early days.

I'd like to think I'm a tiny part of the "innovators" cohort above. In late 2019, I was the customer operations manager for OpenAI's labeling contract with Scale. They were building the early GPT models, and I was a young and foolish non-contributor who ended up resigning in early 2020. At the time, I didn't understand the massive implications of solving "is sentence A or sentence B better?"

I hadn't seriously attempted a return to the field until November last year, after life turbulence prompted some career reflections. I interviewed with Ambience, a company I thought was exceedingly promising, having known and followed the founders since college. When we got to the take-home project stage, however, I discovered I wasn't yet ready to move forward.

I continued passively applying to various jobs, including Anthropic and xAI, just to see if anything interesting might materialize. I was met with radio silence, until months later when xAI began hiring for a special role. The recruiter said he was hiring a new squad, searched their database of resumes, and found mine.

I had just moved to SF and was not yet stable. After signing a new lease without income, this job opportunity seemed fortuitous. In the back of my mind, though, I knew Elon wanted doers over thinkers and I had already made a principled decision to embrace my individualism with a different career direction.

In my moment of weakness, I deceived myself and the recruiter to advance to the take-home stage. Immediately upon opening the project description, however, I decided to fire off another email. I focused my afternoon on other pending tasks instead of tackling their 4-hour intensive programming challenge.

I hope this is the last interview I ever do. By dropping out of that pipeline, I reinforced my commitment to work with language and money as my primary tool stack, rather than code. The very next day—after a solid sleep—I set up my apartment, refocused on this blog, and felt certain I was on the right path.

Just to be clear, I think 99.9% of people would be well-served taking any job at one of these leading AI labs. I asked a friend at Anthropic earlier this year if I could literally scrub the toilets. He didn't take me up on that one.

We'll see how the end of this year plays out going into 2026. I might regret all these choices to remain independent someday, but hopefully not!

Funnily enough, I also rejected Elon ten years ago. The decision to build Lean On Me instead changed my life and set me on my entrepreneurial path. I dug up these old threads just for fun.

Back then, I thought I had to reject the internship completely in order to extend the deadline. Pressure to move fast is typical Elon culture. It was uncomfortable at the time, but rhymes with this more recent xAI Grok position. The recruiter's request to have a call that same day came in at 3:51pm.

This time around, I replied at 4:19pm, ready to close the deal and change my life immediately. As I told him that night on the phone, I've learned to appreciate fast. I respect Elon enormously and sincerely do hope to collaborate with him someday.

I've left millions on the table, as well as various senior titles and leadership opportunities. Even though I've had over 20 jobs in the past, the projects I've created myself over the years have taught me the most.

My whimsical fun-employed life has been so much more interesting, fulfilling, humbling, and rewarding to me than any job ever has or will be.