Comment by etiennebausson
1 month ago
> The unbearable cheapness of open weight models
So the closed model try to get client with their model by saying it's cheaper than employees, and then turn around to lawyer-out cheaper alternative?
Truly the american dream.
The important thing is that Sam Altman and Dario Amodei become trillionaires. Everything must be decided in service of that one primary goal.
And the verdict is still out on if it's going to be cheaper than employees in the long run. Maybe for companies in HCoL areas (SV/NYC), but any smaller mid-market org in a LCoL area, frontier model token spend may not end up all that cheaper when your employee salaries are $55k-$75k/year so you're mostly evaluating it as an additional force multiplier expense rather than a headcount replacer.
For hosted models, there's no way to know what the real costs are. But we know what it costs to run the open models, and moore's law tells us that it's going to get cheaper, at least for the same capabilities they have today.
The fully loaded cost of employees at that salary level is likely over $100K. You may still be right on the relative expenses, but you can't just look at the top-level salary line.
There are a lot of unknowns. It will probably be harder to get an acceptable quality outcome in most fields than in the text-based, limited vocabulary, comparatively highly structured, granularly documented, relatively unambiguous world of code. For the ones where it’s even possible with our current approach, the economics might not even be feasible to provide the service. Based on how much money these companies need to start making to keep the infrastructure running, let alone expanding, we just don’t know what the landscape will even look like in a couple years.
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Those salaries seem low for mid sized cities even no?
I think they're generalizing beyond software engineers with what they're saying. G&A, Marketing, etc roles pay significantly less than software engineers and that $55-75k figure is realistic in lower cost of living areas. Even in Colorado, which the Denver Metro Area is HCOL, there are companies (smaller, regional, not national/global) still offering that level of salary.
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Nope, not low at all. In the Midwest that’s exceedingly normal, even for non-entry level. $70k a year is living good in the Midwest, especially if dual income household ($140k a year is plenty when a decent house goes for $300k).
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55k??
That is a completely normal programmer salary in many countries, Silicon valley wages are just nuts. For example in Finland 55k before taxes is pretty good for ordinary non-wizard guy who can code, if you are a junior 40k is more realistic (and finding job in the first place can be a huge chaĺlenge..).
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