🌏 In this week’s episode, we find the AI talent tug o' war reaching a new level of intensity (or is it insanity?).
Chatter about the battle for scarce AI engineers has been going on for so long in the tech world that it has become background noise.
But some stories I’ve read over the past few weeks raised the volume on the issue for me.
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First, The Information reported that Meta is making offers to some AI role candidates nearly sight unseen - no interview required!
Packages offered to those applying to the more senior roles can reach as high as $2 million annually.
And Mark Zuckerberg communicates with the candidates personally during the hiring process.
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Then this week the publication highlighted the move of a machine learning engineer, Ethan Knight, from Tesla to Musk’s xAI.
Per Musk’s posts on X, Knight was going to jump to nemesis OpenAI so Musk offered him a role at his own AI house.
Musk is also raising the salaries of all his AI engineers to prevent them from defecting.
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I looked up Ethan on LinkedIn.
His profile details indicate he’s roughly 22 years old.
And that he had worked at Tesla for four years.
So since about age 18 when he began pursuing his degree as a freshman at Stanford.
He most recently led the computer vision program that supports Tesla’s self-driving capabilities.
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Now, I’m sure Ethan is beyond brilliant and capable.
And congrats to him for likely being on his way to becoming a millionaire before reaching 30.
But take a second to absorb that at age 22 he spearheaded a key department supporting the most important program for Tesla in the eyes of Musk. One with an ambitious goal that many people are quite squeamish about, to boot.
The war for AI talent is indeed real, folks.
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