Would high salaries create disruptive ai inventions? Very unlikely. Then why are ai salaries going through the roof.
History suggests something more interesting: many of the biggest technological breakthroughs came from environments where salaries were modest but the mission was enormous. Consider the example of the Apollo Program.
In the 1960s, thousands of scientists and engineers worked to land humans on the Moon. They were talented, highly trained, and working on one of the most complex engineering challenges in history. But they were not paid superstar salaries. Their compensation was comparable to other professional jobs of the time.
What they had instead was something far more powerful: a clear mission, a national sense of urgency, freedom to solve unprecedented problems, and access to large-scale resources and infrastructure.
That combination produced extraordinary breakthroughs in computing, materials science, control systems, and aerospace engineering.
The lesson is important for today’s ai innovation ecosystem.
High salaries can attract talent, but they rarely create breakthroughs on their own. Money helps attract talent, but history suggests that mission often matters more than compensation.
So why are ai salaries breaking all records. That happens for five key reasons – first is to damage the existing employer who will face delays and possibly failure if key people leave.
Second is ipr theft. When you hire key people from competitors they come with all kinds of secrets which no patent filing or public disclosures will contain. An important part of ipr is, “what not to do”
Third is to create teams where the hope is that the sum of parts will be more than the total. It is a gamble that a unique combination of competencies will lead to disruptive innovations
Fourth is valuation. There is little to value in an ai company other than the people. Salaries are often stock based and to that extent notional. Funding is money in the bank.
Fifth is the devil in the detail. Top of the line announcements are for PR. They don’t reveal the clawback clauses or the conditions precedent embedded in the employment contracts. These may include all kinds of conditions. The American courts are highly pro BigTech. I don’t know of any employee who managed to get a favourable court order against the Big Hollywood studios or against BigTech.
and of course, the industry is small with very few experts. The search is for those who can hit the ground running. And help win jackpots.
All in all, it is the makings of a bubble. Great. Till it bursts. And then it is the dot com and dot gone playbook.
