Comment by sigmoid10
1 day ago
I'm starting to think talent is way less concentrated in these individuals than execs would have investors believe. While all those people who left OpenAI certainly have the ability to raise ridiculous sums of venture capital in all sorts of companies, Anthropic remains the only offspring that has actually reached a level where they can go head-to-head with OpenAI. Zuck now spending billions on snatching those people seems more like a move out of desperation than a real plan.
Meta/Facebook waiting until they're out of step, then trying to hire the leaders has been their modus operandi since they missed on mobile photo sharing and acquired Instagram.
They've kind of played themselves making "genius engineers" their competitive advantage. Anyone can hire those engineers!
At this point, it seems to be more engineering throughput that will decide short to medium term outcomes. I’ve yet to see a case where an IC who took a position only because of X in fact outrageous compensation package (especially if not directly tied to longterm company performance through equity) was ever productive again. Meta certainly doesn’t strike me as a company that attracts talent for their “mission.”
TLDR Zuck’s recent actions definitely smell like a predictable failure driven by desperation to me.