Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree

This is a Bighead on the roof scenario. They aren't paying $250m to actually have $250m worth of work produced. They're paying it so that their competition doesn't have it.

kjkjadksj5• 11 months ago

If they are worth $250M to not work imagine how much they’d be worth if they said “screw that I’ll spin out my own company and license myself out.” I guess being paid a quarter billion to not work is hard to argue against though.

platevoltage2• 11 months ago

I liked it better when companies were hoarding bootcamp grads.

IncreasePosts2• 11 months ago

That implies that the dude can generate $250M+ of value in a couple years. No need to put him on the roof, make him work. But, my point is - doesn't it seem reasonable that if you hire 5 people who take the $50M offer, you have a good chance of getting a better outcome than hiring the one guy for $250M?

hooloovoo_zoo• 11 months ago

Meta already bought all openAI’s secrets; now it just needs to let the GPUs cook.

ipnon• 11 months ago

When it is framed in this way the compensations are rational.

voxgen• 11 months ago

What makes you think the secrets are small enough to fit inside people's heads, and aren't like a huge codebase of data scraping and filtering pipelines, or a DB of manual labels?

coro_1• 11 months ago

As of mid-August, Meta had successfully hired more than 20 researchers and engineers from OpenAI for the effort, at least 13 from Google, three from Apple, three from xAI and two from Anthropic for a total of 50-plus new employees.

The rest of us look for cultural fit.

yahoozoo• 11 months ago

Surely Meta is going to be the company that turns LLMs into, not just AGI, but ASI.

sarlalian• 11 months ago

Boy are they going to make that instagram feed fire.

pm90• 11 months ago

Interesting that investors can pressure Meta this way. I assumed that since Zuck has the “power shares” he can overrule anyone?

Ianjit• 11 months ago

The pressure didn't come from investors. Investors expect Meta to increase capex by $30bn next year, a few engineers here or there is a rounding error in financial models.

tushar-r• 11 months ago

Layoffs incoming?

platevoltage2• 11 months ago

But I've always dreamed about being laid off for low performance by Meta.

habitue• 11 months ago

There has to be adverse selection here from the amount of money being offered right? Like ok, very few people could turn it down, but it's not going to result in a motivated team.

I am imagining all these overpaid founders etc just sitting in a room like reality show contestants. Trying to make smalltalk, brainstorm jamming for months, not really producing much because... who cares, they have unbelievable money and this is the weirdest scenario ever.

andsoitis• 11 months ago

You’re assuming they’re not ambitious, self-motivated, or curious.

BoredPositron• 11 months ago

Usually things that go away with lots of money and corporate structure. I bet a good part of those new hires will land on the roof sooner or later.

smegger001• 11 months ago

I would imagine there is some sort of incentive structure for the megamillions being offered by meta to these people not just throwing all of the money at them upfront. Payout structed around meeting measurable goals not just show up and collect fuck you money. Or maybe it is silcon valley redux and they will set on the roof with big head what do I know.

qwertyuiop07• 11 months ago

why do you need hiring when you have ai?

buyucu• 11 months ago

without paywall: https://archive.is/20250821033002/https://www.wsj.com/tech/a...

Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree

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