Want a job with one of the AI majors? Thomas Ricouard and his Codex Monitor app is a textbook demo of how to make it happen:

As you know (you DEFINITELY KNOW by now) pretty much all knowledge work has evolved thanks to the new technical tools that have sprung up over the past 3-4 years.

Accept it: if you work in tech, or you work with a computer AT ALL, you are now confronted with two choices:

  1. figure out these new tools and how to make best use of them to do your job

2a) be obsoleted by someone who can, or if unlucky 2b) be obsoleted anyway

Okay great. WTF does this have to do with Thomas and finding a job?

Well.

As you can see, Thomas just got himself a dream job at OpenAI on the Codex team. But he didn’t just apply like 100,000 other candidates and pray that his resume would reach the top of Thibault or Romain or whomever’s stack.

Instead, he started building something great. Before the Codex App existed for MacOS, there was Thomas’ Codex Monitor. Candidly, it’s awesome. Very polished experience, beautiful app. It’s clear he went all-out just iterating and building and iterating some more:

Codex Monitor App Screenshot

He shared every step of his journey on X. But I’ll note: he didn’t give away any alpha. What he did was demonstrate:

-> his prowess with using OpenAI Codex for developing software
-> his growth mindset in conquering all challenges
-> his ability to attract and communicate with laypeople (like me!)
-> his passion for 24/7 tinkering, building, and the love of it all

This is what shot up his visibility on X, the visibility of his software which is used by thousands of people, and…

His visibility to the folks at OpenAI.

These kinds of people – relentless operators, builders, explorers, who are highly capable to elite with all these new tools – that’s who the next breed of companies are going to need.

Similar to how OpenAI brought on the openclaw founder. Companies operating at the edge aren’t in need of resumes spouting off educational accomplishments or how you grew yesterday’s company 27% last year.

They need the crazy people. The sleepless hackers. The same nutsos that boarded the boats hundreds of years ago to sail for riches or death. There was no other option.

So, what does this mean for you?

Toss the idea of the resume straight out the window. Your LinkedIn profile serves the purpose and no human is ever going to read it anyway. Specify the entire thing for LLMs and applicant tracking systems.

Then, when that 10-minute job is complete, get to work on building something awesome. Get your portfolio together, put it on a website, on github, show off what you’re building.

You’ll attract the right folks who share your interests. Work with them, tinker, make new friends. Stay in the skunkworks with every second you can spare.

Your next job, maybe your next career!, will find you.