Companies intensify the battle for AI talent as the rest of the office feels the pinch
Sliding into the LinkedIn DMs like… “Wanna make a million bucks?” Big Tech’s AI talent race has hit warp speed. Tesla said it’s raising pay for AI engineers to ward off poaching from the likes of OpenAI. Elon Musk said it’s “the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen,” referring to the multimillion-dollar pay packages being doled out for AI-focused roles (see: “AI officers”).
On- and off-boarding: Google this week hired OpenAI’s former head of developer relations. Last month Microsoft nabbed the cofounder of Google’s AI division, DeepMind. Three AI leaders recently left Meta.
Not just Big Tech: Banks, streamers, retailers, pharma cos, and insurance firms have nabbed anyone with ChatGPT as a reference. The public sector’s AI’ing too: as of last month, all US federal agencies were required to hire a chief AI officer.
Machine unlearning: Some universities have noted enrollment drops in AI doctoral programs as workers get scooped at the undergrad level.
Small pond, big lures… Generating AI departments ain’t cheap. That’s because there could be as few as several hundred workers with actual experience training AI and solving complex issues like “hallucinations.” $5M+ pay packages are being dangled to top talent. The frenzy is so great that Meta has reportedly extended offers without interviews, and execs like Mark Zuckerberg and Google cofounder Sergey Brin are said to have personally reached out to some AI researchers.
Tech’s tale of two cities… As AI experts count their cash, other tech workers are being squeezed by cost cutting. 57K tech workers have been laid off this year, in some cases to make room for AI investments. That’s caused morale to drop, and tech co rankings have plunged on Glassdoor’s “best places to work” list.