A typical engineer at a top AI startup makes over 1M/year, mostly equity. You may think that the equity is worthless, but they don't and that's part of why they are willing to work hard

> startup [...] mostly equity

So, a purported 1M/yr but it's in funny money.

Sure, but some of these companies are valued at multiples lower than public companies doing AI. It's reasonable to discount that but foolish to ignore it

- What background do you assume a typical engineer has? (I.E., title, years of experience, internal level)

- Which firms qualify as top AI startups?

- What percentage of the $1M is paid as salary?

- How widely do equity packages vary for people with this background?

0-10 years experience (wide range)

Let's say top 30 by valuation

Depending on the startup, 10-25%

Very widely

I claim the median is around 1M at these top companies. Not the median offer, but the median current employee

You're claiming contradictory things

> A typical engineer at a top AI startup makes over 1M/year, mostly equity. [0]

>> - What percentage of the $1M is paid as salary?

> Depending on the startup, 75-90%

Which one is it? I've worked for multiple AI startups and have many friends in the space and I don't know that many are making $750-900k cash, but calling $100-250k cash + dreams and wishes a million doesn't add up either.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44698470

I read it backwards, 75-90 is equity. I fixed.

But I should make it clear that ordinarily I'd agree with the haters, but AI is actually different and so much wealth will be created that many of these unicorns will end up exiting for plenty. The people who got left out of the windsurf deal will still make millions (just not tens of millions)