4 ms·

There's limited or no evidence of this in other domains where astonishing pay packages are used to assemble the best teams in the world (e.g., sports).

by nilkn 1y ago

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
Sports have a much, much tighter feedback loop on performance than anything in software, and certainly tighter than R&D. Same with a lot of the financial roles with comp distributions like this.
- nilkn 1y ago
  Either Meta makes rapid progress on frontier-level AI in the next year or it doesn't -- there's definitely a feedback loop that's measured in tangible units of time. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that when Zuck personally hires you at this level of compensation, there will be performance expectations and you won't stick around for long if you don't deliver. Even in top-tier sports, many underperformers manage to stick around for a couple years or even a half-decade at seven or eight figure compensation before being shown the door.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    In reality all frontier models will likely progress at nearly the same pace making it difficult to disaggregate this team's performance compared to others. More importantly, it'll be nearly impossible to disaggregate any one contributor's performance from the others, making it basically impossible to enforce accountability without many many repetitions to eliminate noise. > Even in top-tier sports, many underperformers stick around for a couple years or a half-decade at seven or eight figure compensation before being shown the door. This can happen in the explicit hopes that their performance improves, not because it's unclear whether they are performing, and not generally over lapses in contract.
    - nilkn 1y ago
      There are plenty of established performance management mechanisms to determine individual contributions, so while I wouldn't say that's a complete nonissue, it's not a major problem. The output of the team is more important to the business anyway (as is the case in sports, too). And if the team produces results on par with the best results being attained anywhere else on the planet, Zuck would likely consider that a success, not a failure. After all, what's motivating him here is that his current team is not producing that level of results. And if he has a small but nonzero chance of pushing ahead of anyone else in the world, that's not an unreasonable thing to make a bet on. I'd also point out that this sort of situation is common in the executive world, just not in the engineering world. Pretty much every top-tier executive at top-tier companies is making seven or eight figures as table stakes. There's no evidence I'm aware of that this reduces executive or executive team performance. Really, the evidence is the opposite -- companies continue paying more and more to assemble the best executive teams because they find it's actually worth it.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        > There are plenty of established performance management mechanisms to determine individual contributions "Established" != valid, and literally everyone knows that. The executives you reference are never ICs and are definitionally accountable to the measured performance of their business line. These are not superstar hires the way that AI researchers (or athletes) are. The body in the chair is totally interchangeable so long as the spreadsheet says the right number, and you expect the spreadsheet performance to be only marginally controlled by the particular body in the chair. That's not the case with most of these hires.
        nilkn 1y ago
        I'd say execs getting hired for substantial seven- and eight-figure packages, with performance-based bonuses / equity grants and severance deals, absolutely do have a lot more in common with superstars than with most other professionals. And, just like superstars, they're hired based off public reputation more than anything else (just the sphere of what's "public" is different). It's false that execs are never ICs. Anyone who's worked in the upper-echelon of corporate America knows that. Not every exec is simply responsible 1:1 for a business line. Many are in transformation or functional roles with very complex responsibilities across many interacting areas. Even when an exec is responsible for a business line in a 1:1 way, they are often only responsible for one aspect of it (e.g., leading one function); sometimes that is true all the way up to the C-suite, with the company having literally only a single exception (e.g., Apple). In those cases, exec performance is not 1:1 tied to the business they are 1:1 attached to. High-performing execs in those roles are routinely "saved" and banked for other roles rather than being laid off / fired in the event their BU doesn't work out. Low-performing execs in those roles are of course very quickly fired / re-orged out. If execs really were so replaceable and it's just a matter of putting the right number in a spreadsheet, companies wouldn't be paying so much money for them. Your claims do not pass even the most basic sanity check. By all means, work your way up to the level we're talking about here and then report back on what you've learned about it. Re: performance management and "everyone knowing that", you're right of course -- that's why it's not an interesting point at all. :) I disagree that established techniques are not valid -- they work well and have worked for decades with essentially no major structural issues, scaling up to companies with 200k+ employees.
- roguecoder 1y ago
  I disagree. If you want similarly-tight feedback loops on performance, pair programming/TDD provides it. And even if you hate real-time collaboration or are working in different time zones, delightful code reviews on small slices get pretty close.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Are these people just “programming?”
dbspin 1y ago
There's vast social honour and commensurate status attached to activities like bing a sports / movie star. Status that can easily be lost, and cannot be purchased for almost any amount of money. Arguably that status is a greater motivator than the financial reward - ie.: see the South Korean idol system. It's certainly not going to be diminished as a motivator by financial reward. There's no equivalent for AI researchers. At best the very best may win the acclaim of their peers and a Nobel prize. It's not a remotely equivalent level of celebrity / access to all the treasures the world can provide.
- nilkn 1y ago
  Top AI researchers are about the closest thing to celebrity status that has ever been attainable for engineering / CS folks outside of winning a Nobel Prize. Of course, the dopamine cycle and public recognition and adoration are nowhere near the same level as professional sports, but someone being personally courted by the world's richest CEOs handing out $100M+ packages is still decidedly not experiencing anything close to a normal life. Some of these folks still had their hiring announced on the front pages of the NYT and WSJ -- something normally reserved for top CEOs or, yes, sports stars and other legitimate celebrities.
sebastos 1y ago
Take-one-for-the-team salaries trump there too. Tom Brady and the Patriots dynasty say hi.

There's limited or no evidence of this in other domains where astonishing pay packages are used to assemble the best teams in the world (e.g., sports).

by nilkn 1y ago

There's limited or no evidence of this in other domains where astonishing pay packages are used to assemble the best teams in the world (e.g., sports).

sorcerer-mar 1y ago

Sports have a much, much tighter feedback loop on performance than anything in software, and certainly tighter than R&D. Same with a lot of the financial roles with comp distributions like this.

nilkn 1y ago
Either Meta makes rapid progress on frontier-level AI in the next year or it doesn't -- there's definitely a feedback loop that's measured in tangible units of time. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that when Zuck personally hires you at this level of compensation, there will be performance expectations and you won't stick around for long if you don't deliver. Even in top-tier sports, many underperformers manage to stick around for a couple years or even a half-decade at seven or eight figure compensation before being shown the door.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  In reality all frontier models will likely progress at nearly the same pace making it difficult to disaggregate this team's performance compared to others. More importantly, it'll be nearly impossible to disaggregate any one contributor's performance from the others, making it basically impossible to enforce accountability without many many repetitions to eliminate noise. > Even in top-tier sports, many underperformers stick around for a couple years or a half-decade at seven or eight figure compensation before being shown the door. This can happen in the explicit hopes that their performance improves, not because it's unclear whether they are performing, and not generally over lapses in contract.
  - nilkn 1y ago
    There are plenty of established performance management mechanisms to determine individual contributions, so while I wouldn't say that's a complete nonissue, it's not a major problem. The output of the team is more important to the business anyway (as is the case in sports, too). And if the team produces results on par with the best results being attained anywhere else on the planet, Zuck would likely consider that a success, not a failure. After all, what's motivating him here is that his current team is not producing that level of results. And if he has a small but nonzero chance of pushing ahead of anyone else in the world, that's not an unreasonable thing to make a bet on. I'd also point out that this sort of situation is common in the executive world, just not in the engineering world. Pretty much every top-tier executive at top-tier companies is making seven or eight figures as table stakes. There's no evidence I'm aware of that this reduces executive or executive team performance. Really, the evidence is the opposite -- companies continue paying more and more to assemble the best executive teams because they find it's actually worth it.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      > There are plenty of established performance management mechanisms to determine individual contributions "Established" != valid, and literally everyone knows that. The executives you reference are never ICs and are definitionally accountable to the measured performance of their business line. These are not superstar hires the way that AI researchers (or athletes) are. The body in the chair is totally interchangeable so long as the spreadsheet says the right number, and you expect the spreadsheet performance to be only marginally controlled by the particular body in the chair. That's not the case with most of these hires.
      - nilkn 1y ago
        I'd say execs getting hired for substantial seven- and eight-figure packages, with performance-based bonuses / equity grants and severance deals, absolutely do have a lot more in common with superstars than with most other professionals. And, just like superstars, they're hired based off public reputation more than anything else (just the sphere of what's "public" is different). It's false that execs are never ICs. Anyone who's worked in the upper-echelon of corporate America knows that. Not every exec is simply responsible 1:1 for a business line. Many are in transformation or functional roles with very complex responsibilities across many interacting areas. Even when an exec is responsible for a business line in a 1:1 way, they are often only responsible for one aspect of it (e.g., leading one function); sometimes that is true all the way up to the C-suite, with the company having literally only a single exception (e.g., Apple). In those cases, exec performance is not 1:1 tied to the business they are 1:1 attached to. High-performing execs in those roles are routinely "saved" and banked for other roles rather than being laid off / fired in the event their BU doesn't work out. Low-performing execs in those roles are of course very quickly fired / re-orged out. If execs really were so replaceable and it's just a matter of putting the right number in a spreadsheet, companies wouldn't be paying so much money for them. Your claims do not pass even the most basic sanity check. By all means, work your way up to the level we're talking about here and then report back on what you've learned about it. Re: performance management and "everyone knowing that", you're right of course -- that's why it's not an interesting point at all. :) I disagree that established techniques are not valid -- they work well and have worked for decades with essentially no major structural issues, scaling up to companies with 200k+ employees.
roguecoder 1y ago
I disagree. If you want similarly-tight feedback loops on performance, pair programming/TDD provides it. And even if you hate real-time collaboration or are working in different time zones, delightful code reviews on small slices get pretty close.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Are these people just “programming?”

dbspin 1y ago

There's vast social honour and commensurate status attached to activities like bing a sports / movie star. Status that can easily be lost, and cannot be purchased for almost any amount of money. Arguably that status is a greater motivator than the financial reward - ie.: see the South Korean idol system. It's certainly not going to be diminished as a motivator by financial reward. There's no equivalent for AI researchers. At best the very best may win the acclaim of their peers and a Nobel prize. It's not a remotely equivalent level of celebrity / access to all the treasures the world can provide.

nilkn 1y ago
Top AI researchers are about the closest thing to celebrity status that has ever been attainable for engineering / CS folks outside of winning a Nobel Prize. Of course, the dopamine cycle and public recognition and adoration are nowhere near the same level as professional sports, but someone being personally courted by the world's richest CEOs handing out $100M+ packages is still decidedly not experiencing anything close to a normal life. Some of these folks still had their hiring announced on the front pages of the NYT and WSJ -- something normally reserved for top CEOs or, yes, sports stars and other legitimate celebrities.

sebastos 1y ago

Take-one-for-the-team salaries trump there too. Tom Brady and the Patriots dynasty say hi.