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Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

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531–540 of 734 posts

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#531
post #517

I've seen paying people too much completely erode the core of teams. It's really hard to convince yourself to work 60 hour weeks when you have generational FU$ and a family you love.

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).

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#532
post #531
post #517

I've seen paying people too much completely erode the core of teams. It's really hard to convince yourself to work 60 hour weeks when you have generational FU$ and a family you love.

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).

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.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#533

Dumb question. If they’re willing to pay so much for AI talent. Why won’t companies hire experienced software engineers willing to learn AI on the job? Seems like there should be a big market for that.

there kind of is, but also note we are talking about the exceptional talent here. I don’t think Meta is mass poaching the pure engineer types at OpenAI either

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#535
post #531
post #517

I've seen paying people too much completely erode the core of teams. It's really hard to convince yourself to work 60 hour weeks when you have generational FU$ and a family you love.

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).

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.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they AI companies don't like the license, they will ignore it or pay to be given a waver. Long may they rot in hell for doing that.

Hell is, by design, a consequence for poor people. (People could literally pay the church to not go to hell[0]). Rich people have no consequences whatsoever, let alone poor people consequences. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/preaching-the-crusa...

Not "by design", as historically the hell came first. It was only much later that they catholic church started talking about the purgatory and the possibility of reducing your punishment by paying money.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#539
Mercenaries over missionaries.

Many employers want employees to act like cult members. But then when going gets tough, those are often the first laid off, and the least prepared for it.

Employers, you can't have it both ways. As an employee don't get fooled.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#540
post #538

What drama. Hype it up. Make the bubble bigger. If Sam Altman is upset, he should look in the mirror for making his people work so many hours. They didn't leave because of the pay.

Every single one of these companies are like IBM selling servers, we're all waiting for the home computer, that's when things will really take off.
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