I'm really confused by this comment section, is no one is considering the people they'll have to work with, the industry, the leadership, the customers, the nature of the work itself, the skillset you'll be exercising... literally anything other than TC when selecting a job?
I don't get why this is a point of contention, unless people think Meta is offering $100M to a React dev...
If they're writing up an offer with a $100M sign on bonus, it's going to a person who is making comparable compensation staying at OpenAI, and likely significantly more should OpenAI "win" at AI.
They're also people who have now been considered to be capable of influencing who will win at AI at an individual level by two major players in the space.
At that point even if you are money motivated, being on the winning team when winning the race has unfathomable upside is extremely lucrative. So it's still not worth taking an offer that results in you being on a less competitive team.
(in fact it might backfire, since you do probably get some jaded folks who don't believe in the upside at the end of the race anymore, but will gladly let someone convert their nebulous OpenAI "PPUs" into cash and Meta stock while the coast)
> even if you are money motivated, being on the winning team when winning the race has unfathomable upside
.. what sort of valuation are you expecting that's got an expected NPV of over $100m, or is this more a "you get to be in the bunker while the apocalypse happens around you" kind of benefit?
$100M doesn't just get pulled out of thin air, it's a reflection of their current compensation: it's reasonable that their current TC is probably around 8 figures, with good portion that will 10x on even the most miserable timelines where OpenAI manages to reach the promised land of superintelligence...
Also at that level of IC, you have to realize there's an immense value to having been a pivotal part of the team that accomplished a milestone as earth shattering as that would be.
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For a sneak peak of what that's worth, look at Noam Shazeer: funded a AI chatbot app, fought his users on what they actually wanted, and let the product languish... then Google bought the flailing husk for $2.7 Billion just so they could have him back.
tl;dr: once you're bought into the idea that someone will win this race, there's no way that the loser in the race is going to pay better than staying on the winning team does.
