Meta’s $100M talent poaching strategy has already failed!

Meta’s $100M talent poaching strategy has already failed. They got engineers & researchers, but NOT the best ones. While Meta was throwing cash around, Anthropic quietly became the industry's talent magnet with zero bidding wars. This is what happens in the AI talent wars, when egos and money collide. The salary wars have gotten absolutely insane:

• Meta is offering 8 figure salaries and supposedly $100M packages

• OpenAI's top researchers earn $10M+ annually. Their retention bonuses hit $2M+ with equity bumps of $20M+ to stop defections

• Even startups like Mira Murati's TML are offering $500K+ base salaries for every role

Yet Anthropic continues to win without playing this game. In an industry known for high turnover, Anthropic's talent retention is 80%, compared to OpenAI's 67% and DeepMind's 78%. It's 8x more likely for an OpenAI engineer to move to Anthropic than vice versa. That's 11x more for DeepMind. Despite aggressive poaching across the industry, only 1 Anthropic researcher left for Meta (he had 11 years at Meta previously). In reality, Zuck could only hire the mercenaries, but not the true mission-driven researchers who care about safe AGI.

He hired Daniel Gross, but not Ilya from SSI

He hired Alex Wang from Scale AI but not Edwin Chen from Surge AI

He hired Trapit Bansal but couldn't buy Mira Murati or the Perplexity team

But he’s not giving up. Yesterday, he poached Apple's head of AI models for his superintelligence unit. But was Siri any good? This explains the mercenary vs missionary divide:

Mercenaries:

- Chase compensation and status

- Jump between companies for better offers

- Motivated by short-term gains

Missionaries:

- Aligned with company purpose

- Stay through market swings

- Driven by long-term vision

Mission-driven companies have 40% higher employee retention and they are 54% more likely to stay 5 years. Like it or not, the dirty secret of the tech industry is that you can't fake authenticity (Trust me, employees can smell BS from three conference rooms away). Meta's cash splurge netted many hires, but it did not get them top people because they stayed for the mission. The best talent is looking beyond the biggest paycheck. They want to work on something that matters, something bigger than themselves. That's why Anthropic doesn't need to outbid competitors. They literally have an official policy against negotiating pay to ensure pay equity across the board. Their mission IS their moat. For companies: Stop the salary arms race and build something people want to be part of. A compelling mission attracts talent organically and keeps them longer than any bonus. (Plus, it's way cheaper than $100M signing bonuses)

For talent: Don't just chase the money.

Ask yourself: "Does this company's mission excite me?" The ones who stay years at mission-driven companies are more fulfilled and more engaged.

In the AI talent war: Mission >>> Money

Every single time.