> Meta hiring researchers en masse at $100m+ pay packages is fairly new, as of this summer.

En masse? Wasn't it just a couple of outliers?

en deux

I think it was more than 2 though... en few? En feux.

It was a few researchers and they stopped doing that already. In a way, the AI market in H1 2025 is VERY different already than H2 2025.

This summer was a lifetime ago.

"en masse" is a stretch

A lot of them left in the first days on the job. I guess they saw what they were going to work on and peaced out. No one wants to work on AI slop and mental abuse of children on social media.

I don't understand how an intelligent person could accept a job offer from Facebook in 2025 and not understand what company they just agreed to work for.

It’s probably a VC fundraising strategy, “Meta gave me 100s of millions so you should give me more”.

It helps when they hand you comically large sacks with dollar signs on them

I wonder if the 100 million dollar guys got a signing bonus like athletes. Just take 10 mill and chuck up deuces.

Those people are intelligent, they’re just selfish and have no qualms over making money off the repugnant crap they’re doing.

In that case, how come they "left in the first days of the job" because "they saw what they were going to work on and peaced out"?

They may have found that the work they were called upon to perform was worse than what they'd been led to expect. Maybe much worse.

With the amount of money Facebook was offering I could see them having a hard time refusing. If someone offered me 100 million dollars to work on AI I know I would have a hard time refusing.

Stated without a shred of evidence and getting no pushback. Classic for a nonsense claim about big tech company HN doesn't like, lol.

Stated with no more evidence than the figure of $100M of compensation, which was started by Sam Altman on his brother's podcast. But surprisingly everyone seems to be entirely fine with this wild claim and not asking for proof.

> No one wants to work on AI slop and mental abuse of children on social media.

If this was true, we wouldn't have AI slop and mental abuse of children. Since we do, we know your comment is just flat out incorrect.