OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-is-paying-employees-more-than-any-major-tech-startup-in-history-23472527

by megacorp • 7 months ago

100 78 7 months ago

bookofjoe• 7 months ago

no paywall: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-is-paying-employees-more-...

no_wizard7• 7 months ago

The article talks about averages, but what I want know is the median. The usual situation, and I have zero reason to believe OpenAI is different, is that stock options are top heavy leaning heavily toward executives.

I want to know rank and file salaries as opposed to stock options

raw_anon_11112• 7 months ago

Illlquid “stock options” in a private company is not what I consider compensation.

ceejayoz• 7 months ago

This is the general rule, but not for ones the size of OpenAI. There’s always a secondary market for prominent enough companies.

Eridrus• 7 months ago

I am sure you can make OpenAI stock liquid pretty easily.

ls6122• 7 months ago

OpenAI has regular tender offers for their employees, so while this advice is reasonable in general it is less true for this case.

belter• 7 months ago

Dont worry...there is always an acquisition by Meta, on the horizon for any company with nowhere to go.

eitally• 7 months ago

Business & back office employee salaries are standard but not impressive. Similarly, stock grants are better than most places but not wildly high unless you're in specific engineering & research functions. This is the same at Anthropic, too (I recently interviewed for director level business roles at both).

lokar3• 7 months ago

In general, I wish the media would stop using just the average when the distribution is not normal.

functionmouse• 7 months ago

That's exactly why they use averages, though. Propaganda is insidious in that way.

pcurve• 7 months ago

"OpenAI’s compensation as a percentage of revenue was set to reach 46% in 2025"

At least the revenue is large enough to cover the payroll. That's a good milestone.

Not really a fan of Altman, but I don't mind the competition he brings to the landscape.

lokar3• 7 months ago

Does that include stock? I bet it’s just cash.

jsnell• 7 months ago

The opposite. The article is just about stock-based compensation, and that 46% number is explicitly just that, not cash compensation.

saagarjha• 7 months ago

Looking at the stick compensation of companies in 2000 doesn’t seem particularly relevant today?

ur-whale• 7 months ago

OpenAI is exactly what happens when a company finds itself in such a far, far away blue ocean strategy that there are no more traditional "economic anchors" (to call it that) to reason with.

It usually ends in blood and tears, for both employees and investors.

BUT: the SOTA has been greatly advanced, which matters a great deal more than the destiny of a particular corporation or the social status of sam-i-am.

So, overall: good news.

philipallstar• 7 months ago

Definitely. If VCs want to fund expensive salaries, so what?

plaidfuji• 7 months ago

I like this viewpoint - it basically casts VC-backed AI startups as privately-subsidized applied R&D projects, which largely seems to be the case for foundational model companies.

causal• 7 months ago

Browsing OpenAI's careers page, I'm seeing at most $275k for most positions, so I'm assuming the median is much lower than an average being pulled up by a few rockstar positions.

tonfa3• 7 months ago

You also need to take into account equity, since it went up 250% in a year it can be a large amount of someone's compensation.

no_wizard7• 7 months ago

Until it’s really liquid it’s still fiction. The salary and other cash compensation is all that matters until you can actually sell the options

sailingparrot• 7 months ago

You must be looking at non tech positions, most of their research/applied role go up to ~550k, and they do offer more than advertised for strong candidates. + hiring cash bonus + equity (which is a lot).

https://openai.com/careers/research-engineer-research-scient...

hn_throwaway_994• 7 months ago

The article is talking about $1.5 million in stock-based compensation (i.e. equity) per employee. That's in addition to cash salaries.

pfannkuchen2• 7 months ago

Adjusted for inflation?

hn_throwaway_994• 7 months ago

From the article:

The compensation figures have been adjusted into 2025 dollars to account for inflation.

pfannkuchen2• 7 months ago

I skimmed but missed that, thanks! I have seen so many times where comparisons are breathlessly made without adjustment in the media, so I’m pleasantly surprised it was done here.

jacknews• 7 months ago

oh no, that might put upward pressure on Amazon employee salary demands!

cmiles82• 7 months ago

The best people have all seemed to fled Amazon the last 24 months. LinkedIn is flooded with long tenured top tech folks leaving. I doubt that gives those left a great deal of leverage and Amazon was never known for market-leading comp.

sinenomine• 7 months ago

GPT-5.2 has radically changed my outlook on OpenAI. Head and shoulders above others.

The excellence is there.

TrackerFF2• 7 months ago

I'm also a happy customer.

But, one thing has been consistent for the past 3 years: After every release from all the serious competitors, the hype can go either way.

As far as the hype cycles go, OpenAI is oscillating between "Best model ever" and "What a letdown, it's over" at least twice a year.

The competition is fierce, and a never-ending marathon of all the players getting ahead just a bit. No clear long-term winner.

Insanity• 7 months ago

5.2 is good. But at this point every few months company A trumps company B with a new “SOTA” (for some definition of SOTA).

OpenAI has no real moat. Anthropic is focusing on developers as a clear target, and Gemini has the backing of Google.

I don’t see OpenAI winning the AI race with marginally better models and arguably a nicer UI/UX (ymmv, but I do like the ChatGPT app experience).

That said, my usage decreases month over month.

jackling• 7 months ago

Really, I found 5.2 to be a rather weak model. It constantly gives me code that doesn't work and gets simple APIs wrong. Maybe it's just weak on the domain I'm working in.

NBJack3• 7 months ago

It hasn't done great in the head-to-head comparisons I've seen, and has trailed in several areas on the leaderboards (though not all).

Based on the 'code red' they declared, this model seems to have been rushed a bit.

whitehexagon• 7 months ago

I'm not surprised they have to pay higher, since no amount of money could convince me to work towards human irrelevance, or BigAdTech.

When I see this technology improve and free the lives of those whose salary is akin to slavery, then I might reconsider.

Context: I've been reading about the Mondragon Corporation, and it seems a much better model than this maximum extraction economy we are building. I'll submit a story for it, although I discovered it through a HN book recommendation (Kim Stanley Robinson).

no_wizard7• 7 months ago

I'm not surprised they have to pay higher, since no amount of money could convince me to work towards human irrelevance

The way Altman and others want AI to develop, this is what they’re working toward too

Tiberium• 7 months ago

Do people who contribute to YouTube Shorts get paid a lot? It's a very nasty thing in the current form.

riku_iki• 7 months ago

BigAdTech

I argue that BigAdTech solves important logistical problem connecting buyers and sellers, and makes humanity more efficient.

TrackerFF2• 7 months ago

I just can't see any clear winners in the AI race. At least not as far as the models/products go.

Maybe a wild round of mergers & acquisitions, combined with regulatory capture and some monopoly will be what settles everything. Probably with a crash in the middle of it all.

imiric• 7 months ago

The market has not settled yet. We're in the late 90s internet era when it comes to "AI". As with the dotcom bubble, real value will only become evident after the crash.

cmiles82• 7 months ago

“Paying” is a relative term here.

Anyone that works for startups knows that it’s not really “compensation” until it’s cash in your bank account. Until then it’s just a theoretical number on paper, which tends to end up being worth a lot less than originally advertised/hoped.

I’ve lost track of the number of times that someone’s startup got acquired for (insert what sounds like a big number) and everyone is like “wow the employees must all be rich” only to find out later that after preferred cap tables and other terms the employees got very little.

A lot could happen here, but history says “watch this space” on this stock-based comp. Some options on the secondary markets but that only works as long as OpenAI can convince more people to dump money on the burning pile of cash they have going at the moment.

yieldcrv2• 7 months ago

The private secondary markets are extremely liquid if you’re a household name

The user experience is nearly the same as cash if you have an ounce of interest in having cash

dwaltrip• 7 months ago

You need company approval to sell yeah? That could be a major issue.

mikert89• 7 months ago

this is a completely false and outdated take, you can easily sell openai shares

NBJack3• 7 months ago

Citation needed. Please provide more information.

sam0x17• 7 months ago

The funniest part is there is no amount of money that would get me back in the office again

faizshah• 7 months ago

I heard that the environment there is 996 with high turnover. So you might be paid double in comparison to a FAANG job but you work double as well. (This was about dev positions not researchers)

Anyone know if that’s true? I only heard it second hand.

therealdrag0• 7 months ago

I would expect so. They have no moat and are in a race to survive.

bespokedevelopr• 7 months ago

Employees also have no moat, and that is not unique to OAI. You either work as much as the other people on your team or you get replaced by one of the many people eager to work harder than you for that money.

suzakus• 7 months ago

OpenAI doesn't offer traditional rsus (at least to regular employees?), but instead profit sharing units.

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

Might change how you evaluate the value here.

kristianc• 7 months ago

The value of any traditional RSU is to treat it as a nice bonus if you get it, so not so much different from any other stock or option package.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 7 months ago

I don't think this way at all. RSU (for public companies) is real, tangible money. Sure, there is some amount of risk involved with it, but it is WAY more tangible than options than can just be diluted if the person with the cap table is feeling ornery that day. The key that makes RSU's real money is their immediate liquidity on award, so you can literally just treat them as cash compensation in this regard if you decide not to hold them.

When you work at BigCorp for an extended period of time, your salary often ends up being majority by RSU as the vest rolls start to stack up

hn_throwaway_994• 7 months ago

Most private companies don't offer RSUs.

dasil003• 7 months ago

This is not true. Most fast-growing private tech companies with valuations a fraction of OpenAIs switch from ISOs to RSUs because exercise costs start to become prohibitive.

Of course they aren’t liquid yet, but they’re still RSUs, and it’s much more common than OpenAIs profit shares structure

darqis• 7 months ago

The codex github gatekeeper is the wrong hire for the job. He's hurting progress

OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history

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