You dont get to kill off coding skills and expertise then expect people to give a f*** about some vision. The vision is that the people you’re hiring now wont have a job in the future. Wtf do you think people are going to do while the clock is ticking?
The paycheck is the thank you for working for your vision. That’s the end of the agreement for any good worker who understands capitalism.
It's always possible that the capitalists involved care so much more about money than anything else, especially people, that the acorn can not fall far from the tree.
They would know better than us.
Aren't new hires actually expected to need the money more than people who are already rich?
I, as an engineer, shall work for a mission and not (so much) for money. But as soon as the mission can possibly be completed without me using the latest shiny AI tool, it is okay for the company to get rid of me.
The concept of job security and stability has been broken, so everyone is too busy securing their future by collecting as much money before there is another record profit layoff!
It's funny when these executives, on one side, will happily lay people off, implement attrition policies, or engage in morally-questionable behaviors, all with the purpose of maximize profits, while on the other hand blame the employees that they don't care about the company, and are only in it for the money. It's a thinly veiled way of saying "only I am allowed to play the game as the ruthless capitalist".
People give him a lot of shit for these antics. The "regulate us!" cries, disaster-marketing of escaped models, now this. I am slightly annoyed to be paying for a product (Claude Max) with such eyeroll worthy marketing.
But it works. Fable is truly amazing, maybe not head and shoulders above the rest but at least a head. Apparently, this neurosis-driven development does attract AI talent.
It suprises me. It shouldn't because the same target demo has been following Eliezer Yudkowsky for decades now but it still does. I just don't have a theory of mind where this is an attractor.
Even amongst the middle class, the people that act like they’re really on a job out of passion have assurances that their downpayment on a house will be covered, or are subsidized by prior military service, or some kind of financial support system they don’t notice is not available to others
The people that are passionate that really only have salary is effectively zero
Founders aren’t educated on this power dynamic and need to be coached
You're supposed to build the machine that's designed to replace you and all labor and make me a neofeudal lord for the love of the game, you greedy pigs!
It's hard to think notions like company loyalty have ever meant something in Silicon Valley. Amodei himself would have never subscribed to a "mission" in the entirety of his career, having jumped from Baidu to Google to OpenAI and finally backstabbing them to form their own company. It's all just a performance; inevitably the same thing is going to happen to Anthropic too.
It's an industry where companies with "open" right in the name lobby against open models and training on stolen data is viewed as more ethical than training on existing models. It takes some time to catch up with reality there.
Almost every founder cares about this but he’s in a business where he genuinely thinks he’s walking the Secher Nbiw to paradise with extinction on either side. I can see how someone in that position would be concerned about this.
There’s an ego element though. Being mission driven and choosing to work for Anthropic is implicitly validating of the “peril” and of the leadership team as the ones to steer through it, so they are indirectly asking for this validation.
I accept different people have different incentive and the direction of the company is what attracting them. If a company could not show long term reliability, it would attract only short-term minded people.
I know a lot of good people that got thrown away by mission focussed companies. They were loyal and put with all kinds of BS for those companies. I was laid off from jobs I went way above and beyond for. They didn't hesitate. They are the ones that turned us all into disposable mercenaries. Why wouldn't we go for the money? What else are they offering, thumbs up emojis?
Supply and demand eh, Mr. Amodei. Just like your extraordinary gobbling up of all memory, storage and gpu causes extraordinary prices for consumers. I bet you don't care about that, so ask me again why i should care about your supply and demand issues at your company.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 31.2 ms ] threadNew hires earn a small fraction of what existing employees make.
You dont get to kill off coding skills and expertise then expect people to give a f*** about some vision. The vision is that the people you’re hiring now wont have a job in the future. Wtf do you think people are going to do while the clock is ticking?
The paycheck is the thank you for working for your vision. That’s the end of the agreement for any good worker who understands capitalism.
They would know better than us.
Aren't new hires actually expected to need the money more than people who are already rich?
But it works. Fable is truly amazing, maybe not head and shoulders above the rest but at least a head. Apparently, this neurosis-driven development does attract AI talent.
It suprises me. It shouldn't because the same target demo has been following Eliezer Yudkowsky for decades now but it still does. I just don't have a theory of mind where this is an attractor.
Like, really easy
Even amongst the middle class, the people that act like they’re really on a job out of passion have assurances that their downpayment on a house will be covered, or are subsidized by prior military service, or some kind of financial support system they don’t notice is not available to others
The people that are passionate that really only have salary is effectively zero
Founders aren’t educated on this power dynamic and need to be coached
Once you reach a certain level of wealth, you don't really need money just to survive—you already have enough.
After that point, money becomes more like a high score you're trying to beat.
Hitting certain revenue targets, reaching specific asset milestones—that kind of thing.
And because of that, they start to believe they're working for some other value, not for money.
But if you talk to them long enough, you always end up at the same conclusion: 'It's still about money, isn't it?'
They'd never admit it, though.
'Because I'm not earning money just to survive—I'm different from you guys.'
They genuinely believe that.
Meanwhile, I'm here thinking that if I don't do work I hate, I'll literally go hungry tomorrow.