[PheonixPharts]

> compensation packages that truly gifted AI researchers can make now

I guess it depends on your definition of "truly gifted" but, working in this space, I've found that there is very little correlation between comp and quality of AI research. There's absolutely some brilliant people working for big names and making serious money, there's also plenty of really talented people working for smaller startups doing incredible work but getting paid less, academics making very little, and even the occasional "hobbyist" making nothing and churning out great work while hiding behind an anime girl avatar.

OpenAI clearly has some talented people, but there's also a bunch of the typical "TC optimization" crowd in there these days. The fact that so many were willing to resign with sama if necessary appears largely because they were more concerned with losing their nice compensation packages than any of their obsession with doing top tier research.

[kccqzy]

Two people I knew recently left Google to join OpenAI. They were solid L5 engineers on the verge of being promoted to L6, and their TC is now $900k. And they are not even doing AI research, just general backend infra. You don't need to be gifted, just good. And of course I can't really fault them for joining a company for the purpose of optimizing TC.

[raydev]

> their TC is now $900k

As a community we should stop throwing numbers around like this when more than half of this number is speculative. You shouldn't be able to count it as "total compensation" unless you are compensated.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Google itself is now filled with TC optimizing folks, just one level lower than the ones at Open AI.

[almostgotcaught]

> their TC is now $900k.

Everyone knows that openai TC is heavily weighted by ~~RSUs~~ options that themselves are heavily weighted by hopes and dreams.

[iknownthing]

Seems like you need to have been working at a place like Google too

[whimsicalism]

the thing about mentioning compensation numbers on HN is you will get tons of pissy/ressentiment-y replies

[a-dub]

"...even the occasional "hobbyist" making nothing and churning out great work while hiding behind an anime girl avatar."

the people i often have the most respect for.

[torginus]

Half the advancements around Stable Diffusion (Controlnet etc.) came from internet randoms wanting better anime waifus

[whimsicalism]

advancements around parameter efficient fine tuning came from internet randoms because big cos don’t care about PEFT

[auggierose]

TC optimization being tail call optimization?

[klyrs]

You don't get to that level by thinking about code...

[lbotos]

Could be sarcasm, but I'll engage in good faith: Total Compensation

[samatman]

Nope, that's a misnomer, it's tail-call elimination. You can't call it an optimization if it's essential for proper functioning of the program.

(they mean total compensation)

[cozzyd]

Curie temperature

[015a]

Definitely true of even normal software engineering; my experience has been the opposite of expectations, that TC-creep has infected the industry to an irreparable degree and the most talented people I've ever worked around or with are in boring, medium-sized enterprises in the midwest US or australia, you'll probably never hear of them, and every big tech company would absolutely love to hire them but just can't figure out the interview process to weed them apart from the TC grifters.

TC is actually totally uncorrelated with the quality of talent you can hire, beyond some low number that pretty much any funded startup could pay. Businesses hate to hear this, because money is easy to turn the dial up on; but most have no idea how to turn the dial up on what really matters to high talent individuals. Fortunately, I doubt Ilya will have any problem with that.

[fromMars]

I find this hard to believe having worked in multiple enterprises and in the FAANG world.

In my anecdotal experience, I can only think of one or two examples of someone from the enterprise world who I would consider outstanding.

The overall quality of engineers is much higher at the FAANG companies.

[whimsicalism]

perfect sort of thing to say to get lots of upvotes, but absolutely false in my experience at both enterprise and bigtech