Musk has an advice for Zuckerberg amid Meta's hiring spree
What's the story
Elon Musk has taken a dig at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the latter's aggressive talent acquisition strategy. The criticism comes as reports suggest that Meta is offering exorbitant salaries, sometimes up to $250 million, to lure top AI researchers from tech giants like Google, Apple, and OpenAI. Despite the industry chatter, Musk claims his AI firm xAI has successfully hired several engineers from Meta without such high salary offers.
Recruitment strategy
Musk's dig at Meta
Musk took to social media to share his thoughts on the matter. He said, "Many strong Meta engineers have and are joining xAI and without the need for insane initial comp (still great, but not unsustainably high)." This statement highlights that people are joining xAI because of its vision rather than just for a paycheck. He also stressed that while salaries at xAI are competitive, they aren't as astronomically high as some of Meta's offers.
Advice
Musk advises Zuckerberg
Musk's comments were a clear message to Zuckerberg: focus on building something meaningful in place of trying to buy talent. He said, "Do something great and your comp can shift substantially higher," pointing to xAI's performance-based pay model.
Industry response
Dario Amodei joins in on criticism
Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, also criticized Meta's approach. He said it is unfair to throw huge offers at individuals while ignoring equally talented team members. "If Mark Zuckerberg throws a dart at a dartboard and it hits your name, that doesn't mean that you should be paid 10 times more than the guy next to you," Amodei said. He accused Meta of trying to buy what can't be bought as AI work is driven by passion and innovation.