Organize | Kexin Zhu
Produced | CSDN Program Life (ID: coder_life)
As a profession with high "gold" content, software engineer's salary is always a hot topic.
Job hopping is a must! Check the salary, check the level, please accept these two websites~
On June 26, according to the latest data from the salary website Levels.fyi, the annual salary of software engineers at OpenAI is as high as $925,000!
However, the received salary only accounts for 1/3, which makes many netizens wonder: your company's salary structure "implicits mystery"?
Special salary structure: "basic salary" < "equity"
Official data from Levels.fyi shows that OpenAI can offer a basic salary of 210,000 US dollars to software engineers with 2 to 4 years of work experience, and the details of the bonus have not been officially disclosed.
For software engineers with 10 years of work experience, OpenAI can offer an annual salary of up to 925,000 US dollars, and its salary structure includes: a basic salary of 300,000 US dollars + 625,000 "equity".
It is worth noting that the "equity" is not issued on an annual basis, but employees receive it every 4 years.
If the salary at hand only accounts for 1/3, you can't help but wonder: what is "equity"?
In this regard, a blog from Levels.fyi revealed the secret of OpenAI’s special salary structure. Officially, OpenAI’s employee salary has two components: “basic salary” and “equity.”
The self-explanatory "base salary," which is the cash employees receive every two weeks.
And "equity" is OpenAI's original unit that participates in the distribution of profits - PPU (Profit Participation Units).
The most confusing aspect of the PPU is that companies sometimes use profit participation or profit interest supplements in different ways. So, how to determine the value and change of PPU?
Original PPU: 25% per year, internal valuation, profit-based
It is reported that OpenAI's PPU is almost the same as PIU. (PIUs, a form of equity compensation with highly customizable terms, are popular among startups backed by private equity investors.)
In short, with PIUs, employees are entitled to a certain percentage of profits based on the number of PIUs. Example: If an employee owns 1 PIU and the company has a total of 100 PIUs, he will be entitled to 1% of the company's profits.
Unlike stock options, which PPU employees do not have to purchase themselves, they are awarded an average of 25% per year over 4 years. In addition, when OpenAI is financing, employees who hold PPU can sell their own PPU for cash.
It can be seen that OpenAI's original PPU mechanism can be understood as an incentive given to employees by the company.
As for the value of PPU, according to OpenAI employees, there is a valuation tool within the company to determine the value and growth of PPU.
However, PPU also has certain "locking restrictions" and "zero risk".
On the one hand, new employees are not allowed to sell PPU during the first two years of employment. In addition, the selling price cannot be capped at more than 10 times the internal valuation. OpenAI will also make an offer and value its PPU based on the last price investors paid for the employee's PPU.
On the other hand, if OpenAI is not profitable, PPU is inherently non-redeemable. Some employees who are preparing to join OpenAI said that the value of PPU is based on OpenAI's ultimate profitability. If the company does not achieve profitability, there is a risk that the value of the PPU will go to zero.
In addition, if the plan of not going public is followed by OpenAI, the specific value of PPU, the number of copies of PPU and other information will not be known to the public.
OpenAI still has 51 jobs with high salaries
Although some netizens believe that the PPU mechanism is suspected of being a "routine", it is well known that OpenAI does not hesitate to "spend a lot of money" in hiring talents.
Levels.fyi official data shows that the current median annual salary of OpenAI software engineers is as high as $900,000. In addition to software engineers, salaries for other positions also range from about $100,000 to $450,000.
According to the recruitment information currently released by OpenAI, there are still 51 positions being recruited.
In terms of job demand, in addition to technical positions such as software engineers, machine learning engineers, R&D engineers, and R&D experts, there are also talent needs for positions such as procurement supervisors, litigation assistants, public policy, and accounting managers.
In terms of salary and treatment, technical posts are still popular. The annual salary of many engineering positions is between 200,000 and 370,000 US dollars, and there are even many positions that have "face-to-face salary negotiation". That compares with $230,000 to $290,000 for purchasing executives and $180,000 to $230,000 for accounting managers.
In fact, for many job seekers, in addition to paying attention to the scope of annual salary, the amount received is also a "number" that cannot be ignored.
Seeing the news that the OpenAI software engineer got only 300,000 US dollars, it also triggered complaints from many migrant workers at home and abroad: "If there is no next financing, maybe the PPU on hand will not be sold", "It still feels like the boss painted pie", "How to judge the accuracy of OpenAI's internal valuation of PPU"...
In this regard, do you still envy the "high salary" of OpenAI software engineers?
Reference link:
https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/openai/salaries/software-engineer