[kccqzy]

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.

[raydev]

> 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.

[nojvek]

Word 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]

Word 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-a...

[comp_throw7]

I 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]

> 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.

[shuckles]

Did you mean permission, not position? I’m not sure I understand what someone’s position could mean.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yes.

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

You have no idea what youre talking about

[whimsicalism]

don’t comment if you don’t know what you’re talking about, they have tender offers

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Google itself is now filled with TC optimizing folks, just one level lower than the ones at Open AI.

[almostgotcaught]

> 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.

[doktorhladnjak]

When 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]

> 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

[whimsicalism]

> 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]

> 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]

Netflix is just cash, no stock. That’s different from 400k stock + cash.

[whimsicalism]

> The only place you can get 400k cash base for senior is quantfi

That statement is false for the reasons I said. I’m not sure why your point matters to what I’m saying

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

Amazon pays 400k cash lol. Many companies do

[almostgotcaught]

Up until 2 years ago you were extremely wrong and you're still wrong: 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.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

Everything OpenAI does is about weights.

[DaiPlusPlus]

bro does their ceo even lift?

[almost_usual]

You mean PPUs or smoke and mirrors compensation. RSUs are actually worth something.

[whimsicalism]

why 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]

> 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

Edit:

I’m realizing we had the exact same conversation a month ago. It sounds like you have more insider information.

[iknownthing]

Seems like you need to have been working at a place like Google too

[whimsicalism]

the thing about mentioning compensation numbers on HN is you will get tons of pissy/ressentiment-y replies

[kccqzy]

I 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.