4 ms·

> He had left for a six-figure salary at Apple. > “He was offered such a huge amount of money that he simply stopped everything and left,” said Maja Pantic, pr

> He had left for a six-figure salary at Apple. > “He was offered such a huge amount of money that he simply stopped everything and left,” said Maja Pantic, professor of affective and behavioural computing at Imperial. “It’s five times the salary I can offer. It’s unbelievable. We cannot compete.” Glassdoor suggests that a salary for a machine learning or natural language processing engineer at Apple averages about $125k. It's not like "6 figures" means $999,999. ...And this was five times the salary that the professor could offer, implying the grad student was valued at $25,000 a year. Here are Imperial's salary guidelines [1]. Given that the student was one year prior to their PhD, it appears they were capped at £35,850, which is closer to $47k, so maybe Apple paid $250k, but $47k is still not as much as the person is obviously worth. And then she advocates pay caps. The reason that private industry is willing to pay these people so much is not some nefarious desire to monopolize the skills and outputs. It's because their work is able to generate value in excess of that salary. Universities need to offer professors and grad students a job with a value - salaries, benefits, and investment in their future - that makes it worthwhile for them to work there. They've been able to mistreat altruistically minded students who don't know what they're worth, and allow shortfalls in their education so they lack the skills to function effectively in the workplace, but while that may work in some sectors AI scientists are currently so valuable that it's not using. Let's fix the universities, not place blame on the companies who are hiring the scientists out of those universities. [1] http://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/hr/public/salaries/job-families/AR---London-SP-Rates---2017-18.pdf http://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administrat...

Mtinie 9y ago
A “six figure” salary indicates 100,000 to 999,999 of whatever currency. It does not automatically represent the very top-end of the range. 999,999+ would be “seven figure”, the university in this case can only off low- to mid- five figure salaries.
tomwphillips 9y ago
Those rates are for employees of the college. PhD students aren't employees. PhD students in the UK typically receive a stipend from their research council. For 2017/18 it's £14,553 [1]. You don't pay national insurance or income tax on a stipend. I lived in London on such a stipend for four years. It's tough. [1]: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/skills/training/ http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/skills/training/
peoplewindow 9y ago
And then she advocates pay caps. Yep. What a surprise. An article in the Guardian attacking tech companies and arguing they need to be regulated to stop them harming society by, er, paying great wages to skilled individuals. She also throws in "getting them to pay their taxes" as if these companies don't pay taxes. What a poor piece of journalism. The entire story can be summed up as "industry pays better wages than academia for skills in demand". Is that really news or is it agenda pushing?
tMcGrath 9y ago
As commenters elsewhere have pointed out, this really only caps salary at around £60k - this is actually pretty low for an experienced ML engineer. I've heard Prof Pantic advocate for salary caps for PhD students leaving academia before and just can't understand it. It could mean that _all_ jobs must be capped - this seems like an overreaction to market dynamics in one corner of computer science. If not, is she advocating for salary caps for PhD students exclusively? This would be almost trivially easy to game and also downright exploitative. In addition, we're told almost constantly how few academic jobs there are, and how we'll all have to leave academia. As soon as this starts to actually work well, suddenly it becomes a problem. I've tried to construct a strong/charitable version of this argument before and failed - does anyone have one?
goialoq 9y ago
Glassdoor ignores equity in its averages, which is substantial portion of pay.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  I suppose equity, and the risk and complexity of it, are rather difficult to condense into a number on Glassdoor. I would place an expected value on equity at a lot of the places which are using AI at a small fraction of list price. On that note, are there financial institutions and tools that let you essentially take out a reverse insurance policy against your equity? They get the equity which may be worth a mint in 10 years, or maybe nothing, you get $XX/month cash?
dlwdlw 9y ago
Most pure knowledge based cutting edge exploration isn't highly paid though. High pay mostly goes to man vs man status based contributors rather than man vs nature based ones. A/B testing and ways to improve ad conversion or stickiness revolve around getting people to do things. This is different than say new math proofs that discover something. When there is overlap and nature reveals a secret to use in society, there is high leverage and often high pay. It is not the norm though. Some may argue that it shouldn't be because it biases the purity or whatnot. I think though zeroing in on a goal like money loses the curious branching paths that discoveries are made of. Exploration and implementation may be fundamentally oppossed. Children are fundamentally money and time sinks because they are pure learning discovery. Soldiers fundamentally can not afford to be curious. Etc...

Mtinie 9y ago

A “six figure” salary indicates 100,000 to 999,999 of whatever currency. It does not automatically represent the very top-end of the range. 999,999+ would be “seven figure”, the university in this case can only off low- to mid- five figure salaries.

tomwphillips 9y ago

Those rates are for employees of the college. PhD students aren't employees. PhD students in the UK typically receive a stipend from their research council. For 2017/18 it's £14,553 [1]. You don't pay national insurance or income tax on a stipend. I lived in London on such a stipend for four years. It's tough. [1]: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/skills/training/ http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/skills/training/

peoplewindow 9y ago

And then she advocates pay caps. Yep. What a surprise. An article in the Guardian attacking tech companies and arguing they need to be regulated to stop them harming society by, er, paying great wages to skilled individuals. She also throws in "getting them to pay their taxes" as if these companies don't pay taxes. What a poor piece of journalism. The entire story can be summed up as "industry pays better wages than academia for skills in demand". Is that really news or is it agenda pushing?

tMcGrath 9y ago

As commenters elsewhere have pointed out, this really only caps salary at around £60k - this is actually pretty low for an experienced ML engineer. I've heard Prof Pantic advocate for salary caps for PhD students leaving academia before and just can't understand it. It could mean that _all_ jobs must be capped - this seems like an overreaction to market dynamics in one corner of computer science. If not, is she advocating for salary caps for PhD students exclusively? This would be almost trivially easy to game and also downright exploitative. In addition, we're told almost constantly how few academic jobs there are, and how we'll all have to leave academia. As soon as this starts to actually work well, suddenly it becomes a problem. I've tried to construct a strong/charitable version of this argument before and failed - does anyone have one?

goialoq 9y ago

Glassdoor ignores equity in its averages, which is substantial portion of pay.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
I suppose equity, and the risk and complexity of it, are rather difficult to condense into a number on Glassdoor. I would place an expected value on equity at a lot of the places which are using AI at a small fraction of list price. On that note, are there financial institutions and tools that let you essentially take out a reverse insurance policy against your equity? They get the equity which may be worth a mint in 10 years, or maybe nothing, you get $XX/month cash?

dlwdlw 9y ago

Most pure knowledge based cutting edge exploration isn't highly paid though. High pay mostly goes to man vs man status based contributors rather than man vs nature based ones. A/B testing and ways to improve ad conversion or stickiness revolve around getting people to do things. This is different than say new math proofs that discover something. When there is overlap and nature reveals a secret to use in society, there is high leverage and often high pay. It is not the norm though. Some may argue that it shouldn't be because it biases the purity or whatnot. I think though zeroing in on a goal like money loses the curious branching paths that discoveries are made of. Exploration and implementation may be fundamentally oppossed. Children are fundamentally money and time sinks because they are pure learning discovery. Soldiers fundamentally can not afford to be curious. Etc...