At 8 a.m. Beijing time on August 13th, Microsoft is in a talent battle for Meta’s AI pros. According to inside information and internal documents reviewed by Business Insider,Microsoft has compiled a list of Meta engineers and researchers it most wants and is launching a new process aimed at making its hiring terms more competitive,including a requirement that the company match Meta’s compensation for top talent.
Zuckerberg with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
Microsoft recently released a strong earnings report, driving its market value to briefly exceed $4 trillion, thanks in large part to the market’s enthusiasm for generative AI. To maintain this positive momentum, Microsoft needs to attract top AI engineers and researchers.Despite laying off thousands of employees this year, the company insists that the total number of employees will remain stable, indicating a large-scale hiring plan.
Matching top salaries
But it will not be easy for Microsoft to catch up with Meta’s compensation levels. Meta has been offering nine-figure sums to top AI talent. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, revealed that Meta offered a $100 million signing bonus to entice his engineers.Recently, Meta has been offering as much as $250 million in compensation packages to attract AI researchers.
Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider show that Microsoft is also offering multimillion-dollar compensation packages. Two people familiar with the process said that companies are increasingly offering multimillion-dollar retention bonuses for A.I. talent.
These people revealed that the Microsoft AI team, led by Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Google DeepMind, and the CoreAI team, led by former Meta engineering director Jay Parikh, both have dedicated recruitment teams to develop competitive compensation packages.
The team structure chart of Parikh that Business Insider recently reviewed shows that most of its core members are former colleagues he worked with at Meta.
Microsoft has drawn up a watch list of employees it is most interested in poaching from Meta in spreadsheet form, with a list of names, locations and job titles, and with multiple sheets dedicated to teams and roles that Microsoft is targeting, like Reality Labs, generative AI infrastructure and Meta’s AI research division. The list is being circulated among some of Microsoft’s AI teams’招聘 managers, according to a person familiar with the situation.
24-hour approval
To entice top AI talent, Microsoft has also launched a new, competitive bidding process that flags candidates as “key AI talent,” a move that draws senior attention and allows for a decision on the highest bid within 24 hours.
The documents obtained by Business Insider show how the process worked, such as providing a “case for hire” that outlines a candidate’s AI skills and experience, using a confidential “compensation modeling tool” to craft a customized range of pay for candidates and retaining compensation consultants to assist.
This system is expected to help Microsoft break out of traditional compensation parameters and gain an edge in the AI talent wars. Business Insider recently obtained Microsoft’s internal compensation guidelines for engineers and researchers, which include the highest compensation packages that include:$408,000 in base salary, $1.9 million in stock awards upon hire, nearly $1.5 million in annual stock awards, and up to 90% in annual cash bonuses.
Notably, the documents specify that recruitment officers may apply for a special exception to higher salary packages for top AI talent.