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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
Because op’s usage of base implies base + stock. including a place where base = total comp is really misleading and is just being unnecessarily pedantic about terminology.
OP is correct that a base cash of 400k is truly rare if you’re talking about typical total comp packages where 50% is base and 50% is stock.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make other than being super pedantic. This was a discussion about how OpenAI’s base of 400k is unique within the context of a TCO in the 800-900k range. It is. That quantfi and Netflix offer similar base because that’s also their TCO is a silly argument to make.
> This was a discussion about how OpenAI’s base of 400k is unique within the context of a TCO in the 800-900k range.
That's not how I interpret the conversation.
I see a claim that 900k is a BS number, a counterargument that many big AI companies will give you 400k of that in cash so the offers are in fact very hot, then a claim that only finance offers 400k cash, and a claim that netflix offers 400k cash.
I don't see anything that limits these comparisons to companies with specific TCOs.
Even if the use of the word "base" is intended to imply that there's some stock, it doesn't imply any particular amount of stock. But my reading is that the word "base" is there to say that stock can be added on top.
You're the one being pedantic when you insist that 400k cash is not a valid example of 400k cash base.
Notice how the person being replied to looked at the Netflix example and said "Okay that's true". They know what they meant a lot better than you do.
ok so the conversation starts out with 900k TCO with 400k in cash, a claim that that’s BS and then morphs into a discussion about a TCO of 400k all cash being an example of equivalent compensation to OpenAI packages?
Nobody said it was equivalent. The subdiscussion was about whether you can even get that much cash anywhere else, once TCO got pulled apart into cash and stock to be compared in more detail.
Again, the person that made the original claim about where you can get "400k cash base" accepted the Netflix example. Are you saying they're wrong about what they meant?
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.
> 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.
