Comment by TrackerFF 3 days ago
I really do wonder if any of those rock star $100m++ hires managed to get a 9-figure sign-on bonus, or if the majority have year(s) long performance clauses.
Imagine being paid generational wealth, and then the house of cards comes crashing down a couple of months later.
They’re pretty sophisticated people and weighed the trades. It’s not as if they’re deserving of any sort of sympathy.
I think we are stretching the term "corporate rat race" a bit in this case.
Taking rockstar players 'off the pitch' is the best way second-rate competitors can neutralize their opponents' advantage.
Patrick Boyle on youtube has a good explanation of what's going on in the industry: https://youtu.be/3ef5IPpncsg?feature=shared
tl;dw: some of it is anti-trust avoidance and some of it is knee-capping competitors.
Its a great way to kneecap collective growth and development.
Who would be the first-rate companies in this analogy?
Its all in RSUs
Supposedly, all people that join meta are on the same contract. They also supposedly all have the same RSU vesting schedules as well.
That means that these "rockstars" will get a big sign on bonus (but its payable back inside 12 months if they leave) then ~$2m every 3 months in shares
It's not even in RSUs. No SWEs/researchers are getting $100M+ RSU packages. Zuck said the numbers in the media were not accurate.
If you still think they are, do you have any proof? any sources? All of these media articles have zero sources and zero proof. They just ran with it because they heard Sam Altman talk about it and it generates clicks.
I have never heard of anyone getting a sign on bonus that was unconditional. When I have had signing bonuses they were owed back prorated if my employment ended for any reason in the first year.
This is a very weird take. Lots of people want to actively work on things that are interesting to them or impactful to the world. Places like Meta potentially give the opportunity to work on the most impactful and interesting things, potentially in human history.
Setting that aside, even if the work was boring, I would jump at the chance to earn $100M for several years of white collar, cushy work, purely for the impact I could have on the world with that money.
It's not such a weird take from a perspective of someone who's never had quite enough money. If you've never had enough, the dream is having more than enough, but working for much much more than enough sounds like a waste of time and/or greed. Also, it's hard to imagine pursuing endeavors out of passion because you've never had that luxury.
I was a startup where someone got an unconditional signing bonus. It wasn't deliberate, they just kept it simple because it was a startup and they thought they trusted the guy because he was an old friend of the CEO.
The guy immediately took leave to get some medical procedure done with a recovery time, then when he returned he quit for another job. He barely worked, collected a big signing bonus, used the company's insurance plan for a very expensive procedure, and then disappeared.
From that point forward, signing bonuses had the standard conditions attached.
Is it imminent? Reading the article, the only thing that's actually changed is that the CEO has stopped hand-picking AI hires and has placed that responsibility on Alexandr Wang instead. The rest is just fluff to turn it into an article. The tech sector being down is happening in concert with the non-tech sector sliding too.
If we're actually headed for a "house of cards" AI crash in a couple months, that actually makes their arrangement with Meta likely more valuable, not less. Meta is a much more diversified company than the AI companies that these folks were poached from. Meta stock will likely be more resilient than AI-company stock in the event of an AI bubble bursting. Moreover, they were offered so much of it that even if it were to crash 50%, they'd still be sitting on $50M-$100M+ of stock.
I am very certain that AI will slowly kill the rest of "social" in the social web outside of closed circles. And they made their only closed circle app (WhatsApp) unusable and ad invested. Imo either way to are still in the process of slowly killing themselves
I've heard of high 7-figure salaries but no 9 figure salaries. Source for this?
"Why Andrew Tulloch Turned Down a $1.5 Billion Offer From Mark Zuckerberg" - https://techiegamers.com/andrew-tulloch-rejects-zuckerberg/
"according to people familiar with the matter."
aka, made up. They can make up anything by saying that. There are numerous false articles published by WSJ about Tesla also. I would take what they say here with a grain of salt. Zuck himself said the numbers in the media were widely exaggerated and he wasn't offering these crazy packages as reported.
"The New Orleans Saints have signed Taysom Hill to a record $40M contract"
I'm sure everyone is doing just fine financially, but I think it's common knowledge that these kind of comp packages are usually a mix of equity and cash earned out over multiple years with bonuses contingent on milestones, etc. The eye-popping top-line number is insane but it's also unlikely to be fully realized.