'Pretentious, low-accountability term': Musk drops 'researcher' title at xAI
What's the story
Elon Musk, the founder of xAI, has announced that his firm will no longer use the job title "researcher" for his employees. The change followed a job listing shared by xAI employee Aditya Gupta, which mentioned openings for both "researchers" and "engineers." Musk quickly responded, stating that the term "researcher" would no longer be used at the company, prompting an immediate update to the post.
Industry parallels
Musk compares xAI to SpaceX
Musk called the distinction between "researcher" and "engineer" a "thinly masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system," and said there are only engineers at his company. He also compared xAI to SpaceX, his rocket manufacturing company. The billionaire stressed that "SpaceX does more meaningful, cutting-edge 'research' on the advancement of rockets and satellites than all the academic university labs on Earth combined." "But we don't use the pretentious, low-accountability term 'researcher,'" Musk said.
Similar strategies
OpenAI's approach to job titles
Musk's stance on job titles isn't unique. OpenAI, the company he co-founded with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2015, has a similar approach for its technical hires. In February 2023, Brockman revealed they didn't want to "bucket people into researchers and engineers" and had put a lot of thought into what job titles to use. Eventually, they decided on "Member of Technical Staff."
Title adoption
Anthropic's stance on job titles
Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI employees, also uses the title "Member of Technical Staff" for all its research and engineering hires. The company says on its website that all engineers are credited as authors on their research papers, often as first authors.