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.<p>I want to know rank and file salaries as opposed to stock options
In general, I wish the media would stop using just the average when the distribution is not normal.
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).
Illlquid “stock options” in a private company is not what I consider compensation.
This is the general rule, but not for ones the size of OpenAI. There’s always a secondary market for prominent enough companies.
OpenAI has regular tender offers for their employees, so while this advice is reasonable in general it is less true for this case.
Dont worry...there is always an acquisition by Meta, on the horizon for any company with nowhere to go.
I am sure you can make OpenAI stock liquid pretty easily.
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.
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.
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).<p><a href="https://openai.com/careers/research-engineer-research-scientist-post-training-san-francisco/" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/careers/research-engineer-research-scient...</a>
I'm not surprised they have to pay higher, since no amount of money could convince me to work towards human irrelevance, or BigAdTech.<p>When I see this technology improve and free the lives of those whose salary is akin to slavery, then I might reconsider.<p>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).
> I'm not surprised they have to pay higher, since no amount of money could convince me to work towards human irrelevance<p>The way Altman and others want AI to develop, this is what they’re working toward too
Do people who contribute to YouTube Shorts get paid a lot? It's a very nasty thing in the current form.
I just can't see any clear winners in the AI race. At least not as far as the models/products go.<p>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.
"OpenAI’s compensation as a percentage of revenue was set to reach 46% in 2025"<p>At least the revenue is large enough to cover the payroll. That's a good milestone.<p>Not really a fan of Altman, but I don't mind the competition he brings to the landscape.
GPT-5.2 has radically changed my outlook on OpenAI. Head and shoulders above others.<p>The excellence is there.
I'm also a happy customer.<p>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.<p>As far as the hype cycles go, OpenAI is oscillating between <i>"Best model ever"</i> and <i>"What a letdown, it's over"</i> <i>at least</i> twice a year.<p>The competition is fierce, and a never-ending marathon of all the players getting ahead just a bit. No clear long-term winner.
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).<p>OpenAI has no real moat. Anthropic is focusing on developers as a clear target, and Gemini has the backing of Google.<p>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).<p>That said, my usage decreases month over month.
[dead]
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)<p>Anyone know if that’s true? I only heard it second hand.
Looking at the stick compensation of companies in 2000 doesn’t seem particularly relevant today?
The funniest part is there is no amount of money that would get me back in the office again
no paywall: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-is-paying-employees-more-than-any-major-tech-startup-in-history-23472527?st=aAAaWw&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-is-paying-employees-more-...</a>
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.<p>It usually ends in blood and tears, for both employees and investors.<p>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.<p>So, overall: good news.
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.
Definitely. If VCs want to fund expensive salaries, so what?
OpenAI doesn't offer traditional rsus (at least to regular employees?), but instead profit sharing units.<p><a href="https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html</a><p>Might change how you evaluate the value here.
“Paying” is a relative term here.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
this is a completely false and outdated take, you can easily sell openai shares
The private secondary markets are extremely liquid if you’re a household name<p>The user experience is nearly the same as cash if you have an ounce of interest in having cash
Adjusted for inflation?
oh no, that might put upward pressure on Amazon employee salary demands!