Head of OpenAI’s Codex explains the kind of email that gets his attention — and his advice to young engineers

Alexander Embiricos, the lead of product development at OpenAI’s Codex, said the company gets a lot of messages from engineers interested in applying for a job — but there’s one kind that stands out.

Embiricos shared some advice for young engineers in a recent episode of “The Twenty Minute VC” podcast with Harry Stebbings.

“Basically, there’s actually never been a better time to be an engineer because you have incredible tooling available to you to get an incredible amount done,” Embiricos said, adding that he thinks engineers should be “very optimistic.”

As far as landing a job goes, he said, because it’s never been easier to build things, it’s more important now for engineers to build things that demonstrate agency and taste. He said he would urge engineers to “build things that are high quality and then share those things.”

“We get a lot of inbound from folks both applying for jobs through the careers page or also on social. This is just me, but when someone writes to me with some interesting thoughts and a link to an interesting project, that gets my attention much more than a normal résumé does,” Embiricos said.

He also acknowledged that the AI talent war is “incredibly fierce right now” and that even at OpenAI, which has a strong brand that allows it to attract a lot of talent, the company puts “a ton of effort into closing candidates that we’re really excited about.”

“Even we feel it,” he said. “You don’t just get whoever you want free.”

Software engineering has been one of the first professions disrupted by AI — especially entry-level engineers — with some predicting major cuts to engineers at Big Tech companies as vibe coding is embraced.

Even as AI leaders make dire predictions for software engineers, AI companies, like OpenAI’s rival Anthropic, are still hiring, Business Insider’s Ali Barr wrote.