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Aren't they making $500k-1m/y total comp? Set for life even if they do get ground up after ten years.
Everything I've seen is that they make about $300k TC in the Bay, which isn't the insane salary you think it is, with that cost of living.
Unlikely. When you join early a company that then becomes highly successful, the equity grant you get is going to the moon. So yeah, maybe they got offered $300k TC when they joined, but that $300k is worth much more after a year or two.
I get how vested options work, I'm in tech. xAI is private right? It could be that Elon is offering stock but we don't know that. Until they IPO their fake money is worth literally nothing. If so, then they are likely making far less than the 300k TC. I pulled the xAI from some leaked memo about the Lawsuit between xAI and OpenAI, it didn't include the equity split though (can't find it now rip).
However this says 188k - 440k, I image the 440k is for for Senior and Staff engineers, Like 2-3 on that whole team, afterall someone needs to be the junior, and SWE2/MLE2s https://cybernews.com/news/musks-x-ai-jobs-salaries-/
You clearly don't actually understand how equity works. It obviously is worth something, because investors are paying billions of dollars for it. Being public or private only has indirect effect on how much stock is worth.
Going public provides easy liquidity, which is good, especially to small stockholders, but private companies of the size we are talking about also usually provide liquidity options to stockholders. SpaceX, for example, had a tender offer a couple months ago. This event allows individual SpaceX stock holders to sell their holdings to institutional investors, in case you don't understand what that is.
To put it in more concrete terms: I'd happily go to any of these X AI employees, and buy whatever they vest in a year for $10,000. This offer establishes that their stock is worth something. (I'm not just making a point, this offer is 100% serious: if you work for X AI, feel free to DM me, I'm open to negotiations even).
These figures only include cash compensation, and they are a very reasonable range for cash part of the comp for between junior and staff levels.
There are around 40 people in the photo. I bet you that at least 10 of them are seniors or above.
Trust me I do, the real discrepancy is that we have different risk appetites. But please keep talking down to me.
I linked twitter salaries in the above thread. Everything in the Bay is talked about in the TC range because it sounds more impressive. If the post-Elon twitter salaries are any benchmark, then the 118-440k are TC as well. That means probably about 50% is in equity.
Anyone who worked for xAI would be a fool to take this offer because you are massively lowballing them. If they vest over 3 years as is typical, that 150k vested would be 50k a year. They would be a fool to sell it to you at 10k, Realistically based on how much you value it they would be better charging you 3x-5x the price since you clearly think its worth it. Would you cough up 150k-250k cash for 50k vested stock in xAI? You do after all think it is worth near half a million+, that would be quite the steal for you...
You made me go back and count, there are 26 people visible in that photo. If we assume a typical corporate structure of Junior, Engineer II, Senior, Staff. The general ratio is a mix of 1-3 Juniors/IIs per Senior, and 1-2 Seniors per Staff. I'd say there is 4-6 Seniors and 2-4 Staff Engineers.
You say:
You also say:
How can I be lowballing them when their stock is literally worthless? Can you make up your mind?
No, you quoted an article that was citing figures from job postings. Those figures are not there to sound impressive, they’re there to satisfy legal requirements California imposes on job postings.
Sigh Ok lets play do this dance then...
Here's a hypothetical: Say I'm a Senior MLE with 8+ years of experience looking for a new job. I get contacted by/apply at a startup that is a start trying to do the next big LLM/LLM Agent/LLM dongle/Dohicky/Whatever. They cite to me an impressive amount of "just so" about who's funding them/running them/working at them and that their strategy to capitalize on ELITE human capital like myself as a non-progressive, white, male. With me so far?
They are a Series A/B startup, and don't believe in remote work so I'll have to move to the Bay, non-negotiable. Their comp offer to me is: 250k Base + 200k in equity + 50k in equity every year after the first that I work there. Equity value was calculated based on the rate sold to their investors. Vested over several years to make sure I stick around. If I leave early, before it vests, I will forfeit my shares. Pretty standard.
Ok first question, how much is that comp offer worth?
The Wlxd stance seems to be that is 450k TC and I would be stupid to turn down nearly half a million! I could work there for 5-10 years and retire early!
The Akka stance is that the 250k base is nice, but that 200k equity is realistically worth $0 at this time. It could pay off but it also very likely could not. The LLM market is very saturated right now. Everyone and their rich uncle is trying to capitalize on it. Akka would consider that offer based on the base and how worthwhile that job would be, with the equity as a nice-to-have but not absolute. For this hypothetical, let's just say Akka takes it.
The next month the company goes bankrupt. How much is that comp worth?
Or:
You put the labor in, but it's a toxic workplace and is killing your mental/physical health so you quit and forfeit. How much is that comp worth?
The rival company has a better strategy and a headstart, they beat you to market, you IPO late. How much is that comp worth?
Your company's CEO is a known narcissistic asshole and while he's good at his job, one day he decides he doesn't like you and shit-cans your ass: How much is that comp worth?
In addition to being a narcissistic asshole your CEO also gets involved in politics, the other side develops quite the hateboner for him and when the incumbent swaps they punish him. How much is that comp worth?
Now somewhere before this all happens some rando on the internet has a PRIME offer for you. He'll give you 10k for all of your equity. Because after all, you value it as $0 or somewhere low like that. However like any MLE, you are a smart fucking cookie and you look at your $250k salary and the estimated 200k equity you have and think 10k REALLY?. Would you really be so dumb as to take literal pennies on the dollar for your equity?? It's not worth anything now and it very likely could never be, but 10k is fucking chump change, pardon my french. Then this Internet rando has the gall to tell you he thinks it's worth millions. You definitely aren't selling it to him at 10k a pop now, if this investment is worth so much then why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and buy it from you at 90-95 cents on the dollar after all it's an AMAZING investment?
And yes, I get that its an investment, like i said it's all about risk appetite, and obviously, mine is less than yours. Lots of people who work at startups probably have a closer appetite to you, but also lots of them end up with nothing. That said 10k is an insultingly low offer and you clearly don't think it's a good investment or you would have offered more so....
Afterword
We can just agree to disagree on this. I've been in this field for a bit and know of zero no-name MLEs who make 448k salary. Maybe an Ian Goodfellow, or a Yann LeCun would command that sort of cold hard cash. Even the Senior Staff SWE at twitter make like 275k Salary, their half a million comps come from equity which is calculated in. As far as I know neither Ian, or Yann, or Schmidhuber, et al work at xAI, and in fact I don't know any big name who does. If you do, feel free to share for my learning.
No, my stance is that you need to use your judgement to decide how much the stock is worth to you, taking into account all relevant data points. For example, you should consider the likelihood of that company succeeding or going bankrupt, and incorporate it into the expected value. You implicitly ignore this when you say that
as if it didn't matter what the startup is actually doing. It does. Similarly, for me, there's a difference between how much I value Blue Origin vs SpaceX equity.
Working in toxic environment might command a pay premium? Wow, I didn't know that. You're telling me now for the first time.
More seriously, obviously you should take this into account while valuing the compensation offer you received.
The point of my $10k offer was to argue that the equity in a private company is not worth nothing, contrary to what you said. This argument was extremely successful, because you are now arguing for my side, telling me that the stock is worth more than $10k, and that the owner of that stock should hold out for better offer than mine.
Have you considered that maybe X AI is trying to attract talent of this caliber?
In any case, the salary brackets in job postings for this segment of the market have no actual relevance for anything. Everyone knows that equity is where the action is, and since the California law does not mandate including equity compensation in these brackets (as if there even was a reasonably useful way to do that), nobody cares about these figures.
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