I want to know rank and file salaries as opposed to stock options
They had had tender events (where you can sell your private stock super easily)
https://fortune.com/2024/12/17/hundreds-openai-employees-10-...
This article feels more like paid publicity than it does journalism
"X increased by Y"
Sure... but:
- What's the relative increase? - Is this increase out of the ordinary? Annually? Globally?
But I don't think this is some sort of conspiracy. Rather: Most journalists are not very smart.
At least the revenue is large enough to cover the payroll. That's a good milestone.
Not really a fan of Altman, but I don't mind the competition he brings to the landscape.
It usually ends in blood and tears, for both employees and investors.
BUT: the SOTA has been greatly advanced, which matters a great deal more than the destiny of a particular corporation or the social status of sam-i-am.
So, overall: good news.
If there are enough opportunities to offload stock on the secondary market (which seems to be the case of them), then it’s not fiction.
If not, I am to assume this isn’t true, and that they are functionally non liquid possible assets at the discretion of OpenAI to sell
> OpenAI has finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a record $500 billion valuation, according to a person familiar with the transaction.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/02/openai-share-sale-500-billio...
Until traditional RSUs that once they are vested you can sell them, with few exceptions
https://openai.com/careers/research-engineer-research-scient...
> The compensation figures have been adjusted into 2025 dollars to account for inflation.
The excellence is there.
But, one thing has been consistent for the past 3 years: After every release from all the serious competitors, the hype can go either way.
As far as the hype cycles go, OpenAI is oscillating between "Best model ever" and "What a letdown, it's over" at least twice a year.
The competition is fierce, and a never-ending marathon of all the players getting ahead just a bit. No clear long-term winner.
OpenAI has no real moat. Anthropic is focusing on developers as a clear target, and Gemini has the backing of Google.
I don’t see OpenAI winning the AI race with marginally better models and arguably a nicer UI/UX (ymmv, but I do like the ChatGPT app experience).
That said, my usage decreases month over month.
Based on the 'code red' they declared, this model seems to have been rushed a bit.
When I see this technology improve and free the lives of those whose salary is akin to slavery, then I might reconsider.
Context: I've been reading about the Mondragon Corporation, and it seems a much better model than this maximum extraction economy we are building. I'll submit a story for it, although I discovered it through a HN book recommendation (Kim Stanley Robinson).
The way Altman and others want AI to develop, this is what they’re working toward too
I argue that BigAdTech solves important logistical problem connecting buyers and sellers, and makes humanity more efficient.
Maybe a wild round of mergers & acquisitions, combined with regulatory capture and some monopoly will be what settles everything. Probably with a crash in the middle of it all.
Anyone that works for startups knows that it’s not really “compensation” until it’s cash in your bank account. Until then it’s just a theoretical number on paper, which tends to end up being worth a lot less than originally advertised/hoped.
I’ve lost track of the number of times that someone’s startup got acquired for (insert what sounds like a big number) and everyone is like “wow the employees must all be rich” only to find out later that after preferred cap tables and other terms the employees got very little.
A lot could happen here, but history says “watch this space” on this stock-based comp. Some options on the secondary markets but that only works as long as OpenAI can convince more people to dump money on the burning pile of cash they have going at the moment.
The user experience is nearly the same as cash if you have an ounce of interest in having cash
way before private secondaries got big, there were boutique funds and lawyers that set up the contracts and structures to circumvent this friction
and most companies do not care about that covenant, they care about the optics around their cap table to attract other investors and also satisfy securities regulators
Anyone know if that’s true? I only heard it second hand.
https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html
Might change how you evaluate the value here.
When you work at BigCorp for an extended period of time, your salary often ends up being majority by RSU as the vest rolls start to stack up
The tax situation around options also makes for many more variables in the risk calculation (i.e. do I exercise as soon as I vest to reduce potential AMT, but then I may need to find sizable cash to execute), while RSUs are just much simpler
Of course they aren’t liquid yet, but they’re still RSUs, and it’s much more common than OpenAIs profit shares structure
bookofjoe•1mo ago