Meta has recently experienced a significant loss in talent within its AI division, with three top employees departing the company in a span of just one week. The departures come amidst the ongoing battle for top talent in Silicon Valley.
The first departure was Devi Parikh, who served as Meta's senior director of generative AI for over seven years. Following her exit, Erik Meijer, the senior director of engineering leading the machine learning research team Probability at Meta, also announced his departure. Meijer expressed that the competitive pressure in the industry led him to believe there was no advantage in remaining within a large corporation to innovate.
Additionally, research scientist Abhishek Das, who was part of Meta's Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team, also left the company, stating his excitement to embark on a new venture.
In response to the talent drain, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken a hands-on approach by personally reaching out to researchers from Google's DeepMind to entice them to join Meta. The company has reportedly been offering positions to researchers without conducting interviews, highlighting the fierce competition for skilled professionals in the field.
According to data from salary data site Levels.fyi, the median compensation package for a machine learning and AI engineer at Meta is nearly $400,000, reflecting the company's efforts to attract and retain top talent.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk criticized OpenAI for aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with lucrative offers, prompting him to increase salaries for Tesla's AI engineering team. Musk described the current talent war in the AI sector as the most intense he has ever witnessed.
The recent departures at Meta follow a trend of AI employees leaving the company in recent years, with reports indicating that a significant portion of Meta's AI researchers have departed due to burnout or disillusionment with the company. Notably, Meta's AI lab cofounder, Rob Fergus, left in 2020 to join Google's DeepMind.
Meta has not provided a comment on the recent departures and talent challenges it is facing.
