Employers may be tempted to fight fire with fire by raising their AI stars’ salaries or recruiting others in return—but Anthropic thinks it would hurt its company culture.
“We are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers,” Amodei said. “The way things work at Anthropic is there’s a series of levels. One candidate comes in, they get assigned a level, and we don’t negotiate that level, because we think it’s unfair. We want to have a systematic way.”
“I think actually this was a unifying moment for the company where we didn’t give in. We refused to compromise our principles, because we had the confidence that people are Anthropic because they truly believe in the mission,” Amodei continued.
“The only way you can really be hurt by this is if you allow it to destroy the culture of your company by panicking, by treating people unfairly, in an attempt to defend the company.”
Fortune has reached out to Anthropic and Meta for comment.
Zuckerberg’s aggressive poaching strategy has ruffled some feathers in the AI world. Being scooped up with a $100 million pay package is a dream for most, but the Anthropic CEO has called out the practice for being fundamentally unfair.
“If Mark Zuckerberg throws a dart at a dart board and hits your name, that doesn’t mean that you should be paid 10 times more than the guy next to you who’s just as skilled, who’s just as talented,” Amodei said on the podcast.
Having employees who can do revolutionary work is one thing, but having a culture that makes them want to stay is another. By poaching others, Amodei doubts Meta is recruiting the best fits for its mission.
“I think that what they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought: and that is alignment with the mission. I think there are selection effects here,” he said. “Are they getting the people who are most enthusiastic, who are most mission aligned, who are most excited?”
Other tech leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have echoed Amodei’s criticism. Altman said that while Meta has managed to poach some staffers, “so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.” Even though Zuckerberg has snatched some of his AI workers, Altman is doubtful that his competitor will be able to replicate the same success of OpenAI.
