The global race to hire the best AI talent is intensifying with each passing day. Now, a former OpenAI vice president has raised an alarm on the skyrocketing salaries and the pressure it is placing on traditional hiring models. As reported by Business Insider, in a recent podcast appearance, former OpenAI vice president Peter Dang said that escalating the battle to hire the top AI talent is now creating ripple effects which the HR departments can no longer ignore. “HR departments will have to address [it] at some point,” Deng said, pointing to the growing gap between AI researchers and other key contributors.
The growing divide
As reported by Business Insider, Dang also emphasised that while a small number of top AI researchers are receiving huge pay packages and fast-moving offers, other employees who make important contributions to the company and to a particular product are now feeling less valued. This situation can lead to dissatisfaction and high turnover. “There are some people who are not researchers who feel like they’re contributing a bunch to the product or the company or bringing a ton of value, but the discrepancy in salaries and RSUs and all that is becoming wider and wider,”, said Dang.
AI Researchers: The new star athletes of tech
Dang also added that AI researchers are now being treated as some star athletes. They are being seen as LeBron Jameses of Silicon Valley. Companies like OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, xAI, and Perplexity have entered into an arms race. The companies are offering multimillion dollar compensations to lure talent from rival firms. Databricks VP of AI Naveen Rao even likened the recruitment frenzy to “looking for LeBron James.”As per the report, in one of hiring process tech giant Google shelled out $2.7 billion to acquire Character.ai, reportedly to bring back cofounder Noam Shazeer.
Culture vs. compensation
Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also talked about negative impact of aggressive poaching practices and the highly inflated pay packages. In a conversation with his brother, Altman criticised the strategy of “upfront guaranteed comp” as potentially corrosive to company culture.“The strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like really the degree to which they’re focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture,” said Altman.”
Winners and losers
Despite all these challenges, Dang also believes that this intense competition is driving innovation and is also benefiting the investors and startup founders. “I trust the market,” Deng said. “It’s very clear that this research talent is so important to get right for each of these big labs.”