Potential poaching | OpenAI co-founder moves to competitor firm - what can we learn?

The recent news that one of OpenAI’s co-founders, John Schulman, left the company to join its main rival, Anthropic, sheds light on the age-old controversy of whether it’s alright, or just plain salty, to leave your company for a direct competitor.

Schulman is one of numerous founders of OpenAI, and its famous Generative AI bot ChatGPT, to have left the company, in a string of departures.

Of course, some context matters in this debate. Because leaving for a competitor, although controversial on the surface, is made worse if an employee is disgruntled or unhappy at your firm.

If an employee is leaving your company and going to a competitor out of spite, it’s necessary to take a good look inwards to try to figure out the causes for their departure.