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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 ar
by kccqzy 2y ago
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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoGoogle itself is now filled with TC optimizing folks, just one level lower than the ones at Open AI.
- iknownthing 2y agoSeems like you need to have been working at a place like Google too
- almostgotcaught 2y ago> 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.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoEverything OpenAI does is about weights.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y agobro does their ceo even lift?
- doktorhladnjak 2y agoWhen I looked into it and talked to some hiring managers, the big names were offering cash comp similar to total comp for big tech, with stock (sometimes complicated arrangements that were not options or RSUs) on top of that. I’m talking $400k cash for a senior engineer with equity on top.
- almostgotcaught 2y ago> big names Big names where? Inside of openai? What does that even mean? The only place you can get 400k cash base for senior is quantfi
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y agoAmazon pays 400k cash lol. Many companies do
- almostgotcaught 2y agoUp until 2 years ago you were extremely wrong and you're still wrong: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/amazon-is-raising-base-salary-cap-to-350-000-from-160-000 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/amazon-is... It's amazing to me how many people are willing to just say the first thing that comes to their head while knowing they can be fact-checked in a heartbeat.
- whimsicalism 2y ago> The only place you can get 400k cash base for senior is quantfi confident yet wrong not only can you get that much at AI companies, netflix will also pay that much all cash - and that’s fully public info
- almostgotcaught 2y ago> not only can you get that much at AI companies Please show not tell > netflix will also pay that much all cash Okay that's true
- vlovich123 2y agoNetflix is just cash, no stock. That’s different from 400k stock + cash.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
- almost_usual 2y agoYou mean PPUs or smoke and mirrors compensation. RSUs are actually worth something.
- whimsicalism 2y agowhy are PPUs “smoke and mirrors” and RSUs “worth something”? i suspect people commenting this don’t have a clue how PPU compensation actually works
- almost_usual 2y ago> Note at offer time candidates do not know how many PPUs they will be receiving or how many exist in total. This is important because it’s not clear to candidates if they are receiving 1% or 0.001% of profits for instance. Even when giving options, some startups are often unclear or simply do not share the total number of outstanding shares. That said, this is generally considered bad practice and unfavorable for employees. Additionally, tender offers are not guaranteed to happen and the cadence may also not be known. > PPUs also are restricted by a 2-year lock, meaning that if there’s a liquidation event, a new hire can’t sell their units within their first 2 years. Another key difference is that the growth is currently capped at 10x. Similar to their overall company structure, the PPUs are capped at a growth of 10 times the original value. So in the offer example above, the candidate received $2M worth of PPUs, which means that their capped amount they could sell them for would be $20M > The most recent liquidation event we’re aware of happened during a tender offer earlier this year. It was during this event that some early employees were able to sell their profit participation units. It’s difficult to know how often these events happen and who is allowed to sell, though, as it’s on company discretion. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html Edit: I’m realizing we had the exact same conversation a month ago. It sounds like you have more insider information.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- raydev 2y ago> 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.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y agoYou have no idea what youre talking about
- nojvek 2y agoWord on town is OpenAI folks heavily selling shares in secondaries in 100s of millions. The number is as real as someone else is willing to pay for them. Plenty of VCs willing to pay for it.
- michaelt 2y agoWord in town is [1] openai "plans" to let employees sell "some" equity through a "tender process" which ex-employees are excluded from; and also that openai can "claw back" vested equity, and has used the threat of doing so in the past to pressure people into signing sketchy legal documents. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/11/openai-insider-stock-sales-are-raising-concern-among-ex-employees-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/11/openai-insider-stock-sales-a...
- comp_throw7 2y agoI would definitely discount OpenAI equity compared to even other private AI labs (i.e. Anthropic) given the shenanigans, but they have in fact held 3 tender offers and former employees were not, as far as we know, excluded (though they may have been limited to selling $2m worth of equity, rather than $10m).
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Word on town is OpenAI folks heavily selling shares in secondaries in 100s of millions OpenAI heavily restricts the selling of its "shares," which tends to come with management picking the winners and losers among its ESOs. Heavily, heavily discount an asset you cannot liquidate without someone's position, particularly if that person is your employer.
- whimsicalism 2y agothe thing about mentioning compensation numbers on HN is you will get tons of pissy/ressentiment-y replies
- kccqzy 2y agoI don't care about these. I care about the readers who might not have done job searching recently and might not know their worth in the market.
- varelse 2y ago[dead]