The Fight for AI Talent: Pay Million-Dollar Packages and Buy Whole Teams


人工智能的蓬勃发展正将硅谷的人才争夺战推向新的高度。



人工智能(AI)的蓬勃发展正将硅谷的人才争夺战推向新的高度。 6park.com
The artificial-intelligence boom is sending Silicon Valley’s talent wars to new extremes. 6park.com
    6park.com
科技公司纷纷推出百万美元年薪方案、加速股票归属计划并拿出挖角整个工程团队的要约，试图吸引在生成式AI方面拥有专业知识和经验的人才；ChatGPT和其他类人机器人都要依赖生成式AI。这些科技公司不但彼此竞争，同时也在与那些想要成为下一个爆点、将巨头挑落马下的初创企业竞争。 6park.com
Tech companies are serving up million-dollar-a-year compensation packages, accelerated stock-vesting schedules and offers to poach entire engineering teams to draw people with expertise and experience in the kind of generative AI that is powering ChatGPT and other humanlike bots. They are competing against each other and against startups vying to be the next big thing to unseat the giants. 6park.com
    
即使按照该行业过去相对奢侈的高额薪酬和福利标准，这些公司开出来的条件也非比寻常。当前AI人才短缺问题引人注目的另一个原因是：其他科技领域正持续裁员，而各公司却在重新分配资源，加大投入，以支付开发AI技术的巨额成本。 6park.com
The offers stand out even by the industry’s relatively lavish past standards of outsize pay and perks. And the current AI talent shortage stands out for another reason: It is happening as layoffs are continuing in other areas of tech and as companies have been reallocating resources to invest more in covering the enormous cost of developing AI technology. 6park.com
  
“在需要什么样的人才方面，出现了一种长期性转变，”Databricks生成式AI部门主管Naveen Rao说。“一边是人才过剩，另一边是人才短缺。” 6park.com
“There is a secular shift in what talents we’re going after,” says Naveen Rao, head of Generative AI at Databricks. “We have a glut of people on one side and a shortage on the other.”


Databricks生成式AI部门主管表示，可能只有区区数百人符合从零开始训练大型语言模型，或能帮助解决AI领域棘手问题的条件。

Databricks是一家数据存储和管理初创公司，该公司在寻找软件工程师方面不成问题。但说到从零开始训练大型语言模型(LLM)或能帮助解决AI领域棘手问题（如幻觉）的候选人，Rao说，可能只有区区数百人符合条件。 6park.com
Databricks, a data storage and management startup, doesn’t have a problem finding software engineers. But when it comes to candidates who have trained large language models, or LLMs, from scratch or can help solve vexing problems in AI, such as hallucinations, Rao says there might be only a couple of hundred people out there who are qualified.  6park.com
  6park.com
其中一些很难招到的第一梯队候选人可以轻松拿到每年100万美元甚至更高的薪酬方案。 6park.com
Some of these hard-to-find, tier-one candidates can easily get total compensation packages of $1 million a year or more.



AI领域的销售人员也很抢手，而且很难招到。在瞬息万变的技术转型初期进行销售，需要与以往不同的一套技能和知识储备。合格应聘者的收入大约是企业软件销售人员的两倍。但对于大多数从事AI工作的人来说，情形并不是向来如此，Rao说。 6park.com
Salespeople in AI are also in demand and hard to find. Selling at the beginning of a technology transition when things are changing rapidly requires a different skill set and depth of knowledge. Candidates with those skills are making around double what an enterprise software salesperson would. But that isn’t the norm for most people working in AI, Rao says.  6park.com
  
WTW对1500多名雇主进行的一项调查显示，从2022年4月到2023年4月，AI和机器学习领域管理岗位的基本工资涨幅在5%到11%之间。同期，非管理职位的基本工资涨幅在13%到19%之间。 6park.com
For managerial roles in AI and machine learning, base-pay increases ranged from 5% to 11% from April 2022 to April 2023, according to a WTW survey of more than 1,500 employers. The base-pay increases of nonmanagerial roles ranged from 13% to 19% during the same period.  6park.com
  
Levels.fyi联合创始人Zuhayeer Musa表示，曾向该职业服务平台咨询OpenAI招聘信息的六名求职者薪酬中位数为92.5万美元，其中包括奖金和股权。他补充说，向Levels.fyi透露薪酬的344名Meta机器学习和AI工程师的年薪中位数接近40万美元，包括奖金和股权。 6park.com
Levels.fyi co-founder Zuhayeer Musa says the median salary for six candidates who had consulted the career-services platform about job offers from OpenAI was $925,000 including bonus and equity. The median compensation of 344 machine learning and AI engineers at Meta who revealed their pay to Levels.fyi was nearly $400,000 a year including bonus and equity, he added.  6park.com
   
Faro Health首席执行官Scott Chetham的目标是将薪酬保持在该公司所在领域薪酬的前25%。该公司利用AI帮助制药公司设计更高效的药物试验。在2023年之前，由于异常值极高，很难做到这一点，但现在他看到了今年出现改进迹象。Chetham说：“现在还早，但已经不像以前那么严重了。” 6park.com
Scott Chetham, CEO of Faro Health, which uses AI to help pharmaceutical companies design more efficient drug trials, aims to keep salaries in the top 25% of what companies in the space pay. Through 2023, that was hard to do because of extremely high outliers, but he is now seeing signs of softening this year. “It’s early, but it’s not as bad as it was,” Chetham said. 


向Levels.fyi透露薪酬的344名Meta机器学习和AI工程师的年薪中位数接近40万美元。

Chetham的公司最近在从最大的咨询公司之一挖一位候选人，并向她发出了工作要约。这家公司的反击方式是将这名员工的薪水翻了一番。这位候选人告诉他，她得到一份竞争性工作时她的公司才给她双倍的薪水，这让她很恼火，因为他们原本应该一直付给她更高的薪水。 6park.com
Chetham’s company was courting a candidate recently from one of the largest consulting firms and made her an offer. The firm countered by doubling the employee’s salary. The candidate told him she was annoyed that her company only offered to double her salary when she was presented with a competing job because they could have been paying her more all along. 6park.com
   
为了留住自己的人才，Chetham为他的顶级员工提供了更多的股权激励。他们的第一批股票将在届满四年的时间点授予，但在满两年时，他们将获得另一批股票，并在五年期满时开始授予。 6park.com
To keep his own talent, Chetham has added more equity incentives for his top employees. Their first set of shares in the company vest over four years, but at the two-year mark they get another grant of shares that starts vesting at the five-year mark. 6park.com
   
他说：“我们必须不断调整股权机制，以保持对员工的激励。” 6park.com
“We have to keep refreshing equity to keep people incentivized,” he says.  6park.com
   
虽然初创企业的基本薪酬往往低于大型科技公司，但一些具有创业本能的员工押注，他们可以通过自己的努力闯出一片天地。曾在谷歌工作的Arthur Mensch离开谷歌后创办了初创公司Mistral AI，成立不到一年，估值已略高于20亿美元。 6park.com
While base compensation tends to be less at startups than at major tech companies, some employees with entrepreneurial instincts are betting they can make a bigger mark by striking out on their own. Arthur Mensch, a former Google employee, left the company to launch the startup Mistral AI and at less than a year old, it is already valued at a little over $2 billion.  


Arthur Mensch在谷歌DeepMind工作一段时间后，创办了他的人工智能初创公司Mistral AI。

谷歌的一位AI研究员说，过去五年经常有猎头找他，最近明显增多了。 6park.com
One AI researcher with Google says he has been approached by recruiters regularly over the past five years but that there has been a noticeable uptick recently.  6park.com
  6park.com
这位研究员说，初创公司的机会没有让他动心，因为没几家初创公司有足够资金来训练LLM，这是一种以海量文本训练的机器学习算法，为AI程序提供动力。这位研究员说，谷歌拥有他所需要的资源，除此之外，他还关心工作本身是否吸引人，是否能促进AI的发展。他说，与许多同事不同，他最近还获得了额外的股权作为奖金。 6park.com
The researcher says he hasn’t been tempted by opportunities with startups because so few have the funding needed to train LLMs, the machine-learning algorithms trained on mountains of text that power AI programs. Google has the resources he needs and, on top of that, he cares about the work itself being interesting and furthering AI for good, the researcher says. And unlike many of his co-workers, he says, he recently received extra equity as a bonus. 6park.com
  
半导体猎头公司SBT Industries总裁Justin Kinsey说，应聘者可能会被各种因素打动，例如薪酬、对一家初创公司的使命抱有强烈的信念，或者公司承诺应聘者在工作上拥有自主权等等。 6park.com
Justin Kinsey, president of SBT Industries, a semiconductor-recruiting firm, says candidates can be won over by various factors, from compensation to being a true believer in a startup’s mission to being promised autonomy over their work.  6park.com
  
他说，他最近为一家AI硬件初创公司从微软招聘了一名工程经理。Kinsey说，这位应聘者放弃了100多万美元的奖金和微软股票，接受基本工资少10万美元的条件，加入了这家初创公司，因为这位应聘者对CEO非常信任。Kinsey说，五到七年内，预计仅股票一项他就能获得4000万美元。 6park.com
He said he recently recruited an engineering manager for an AI hardware startup from Microsoft. The candidate forfeited more than $1 million in bonuses and Microsoft stock, and took a $100,000 cut in base pay to join the startup, Kinsey said, because the candidate had enormous confidence in the CEO. In five to seven years, the recruit anticipates he will get $40 million from the stock alone, says Kinsey. 


谷歌拥有研究人员训练LLM所需的资金，没几家初创公司有足够资金去做这个。

另一位应聘者则获得了口头承诺，一旦他成功制造出公司的第一块芯片，就可以开辟一条全新的产品线。 6park.com
With another candidate, what sealed the deal was a verbal promise that the person could start an entirely new product line once he delivered on making the company’s first chip. 6park.com
 
芯片是训练LLM所需的硬件。打造芯片的竞争异常激烈，在过去一年里，Kinsey有四个客户要求他从竞争对手那里挖来整个工程团队，以节省新团队磨合所需的时间。 6park.com
The race to build chips—the hardware required to train large language models—is so intense that Kinsey has had four clients in the past year ask him to poach entire engineering teams from competitors to shave off the time it takes a new team to collaborate well together.  6park.com
  
“有客户要求我们去对家那里挖整个技术团队，”他说。“一到岗就可以直接工作，省去培训和磨合时间。” 6park.com
“We’ve been asked to help really with team extraction,” he says. “They could plug and play, and it eliminates a steep learning curve.”  6park.com
  
那些在AI领域没有工作经验的技术人员也希望在自己的简历上添一笔。宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院(Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania)的发言人Caroline Pennartz说，沃顿商学院最近在旧金山举办了为期四天、名为“生成式AI与业务转型”(Generative AI and Business Transformation)的高管教育课程，学费为1.2万美元，50个名额很快就报满了。 6park.com
Tech workers who don’t have experience in AI are looking to add it to their résumés. When the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania recently held a four-day executive education program in San Francisco called Generative AI and Business Transformation for $12,000, the 50 available spots filled up very quickly, says Caroline Pennartz, a spokeswoman with Wharton.  6park.com
   
Alexis Roucourt曾在Meta工作，目前从事咨询方面的工作。他说，身边许多从事技术工作的朋友都注意到，需要AI知识的工作越来越多。这一点已经引起人们的关注，大家正在你追我赶，加入这场竞赛。他认识的一些技术人员正在提高技能，以跟上AI的发展趋势，并为自己的简历加分。 6park.com
Alexis Roucourt, who previously worked at Meta and is currently consulting, says many of his tech worker friends are noticing the growing number of jobs requiring AI knowledge. It has been causing concern and a race to get up to speed. Several workers he knows are upskilling to stay up on trends in AI and build out their résumés.  6park.com
   
“也包括我自己在内，”他说。“我正在学一门AI课程。” 6park.com
“Me included,” he says. “I’m taking a course on AI.”