3 ms·
Ask HN: How will the $900K median OpenAI salary work if employed at Microsoft?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460082
Could be a tough one for human resources at Microsoft to navigate.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- minimaxir 3y agoStock equivalent in RSUs with a 4-year vesting schedule, as is typical of acquihires.
- breadwinner 3y agoThey won't be directly employed at Microsoft. Instead they will be employed by a subsidiary owned by Microsoft.
- andrewstuart 3y agoSo do you think MS might actually create a new "studio/division", like Xbox is really an entirely separate company?
- chatmasta 3y agoProbably more like GitHub or LinkedIn, both of which Satya referenced in his Tweet about having experience with this kind of structure.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chunky1994 3y agoIt's 300k cash, rest in "profit participation". MSFT has enough RSUs to make that happen without it being a problem
- VirusNewbie 3y agoMicrosoft is known for paying well below Meta and Google, and OpenAI was paying almost twice as much as the aforementioned tech giants. So I assume it would be weird to have to make every OpenAI employee a VP or Fellow or something.
- siva7 3y agoThey aren’t employed by Microsoft but by a company owned by Microsoft which is free to set their own rules
- woeirua 3y agoThey can easily just make them a subsidiary that operates under its own rules for now.
- afjeafaj848 3y agoWhy would that be a problem? Is there some rule that everyone at the same company with the same level has to make the same amount?
- MaxHoppersGhost 3y agoYes, actually. Large companies have policies about this.
- takinola 3y agoPolicies are overridden all the time. Plus, lots of people at Microsoft are paid similarly so it's not as outlandish as it may seem.
- thiago_fm 3y agoMicrosoft can hire everyone from OpenAI at $1M an year and make no visible difference to its bottom line
- MaxHoppersGhost 3y agoThis is such an engineer answer. The OP means how does that work given strict compensations policies and pay bands that huge companies like MSFT have and strictly enforce.
- i_have_an_idea 3y ago"strict compensations policies" and "pay bands" are imaginary hurdles and constraints that corporations put up to control personnel costs. They can and will totally ignore them, when it benefits them directly. They will also easily find a way to explain why that was okay in case A, but won't be in case B.
- nullfield 3y agoThis is called “HR”… And it’s why HR is a piece of useless shit.
- throwaway019254 3y agoIf they jump ship to Microsoft, they will just get the salary in the form of RSUs. That's not a problem. There are many engineers who make more than $1M at Microsoft. The salary bands are not really strict, or they just get "staff" in their title.