They can’t, and don’t. The secret is that experienced PhDs (mostly) dominate the high end of “AI” hiring, but don’t have much title or departmental differentiation from people who are “only” specialized software engineers in top tech companies. But this isn’t very well known, large companies want to recruit as much talent as they can regardless of role, and startups want to compete on paper - therefore, you have the following effects:

1. Startups give whatever sexy title they want to the people they can afford, which makes titles fairly useless, because they almost never can afford the talent commanding “sky-high” salaries.

2. Within large tech companies like Google and Facebook, it’s hard to immediately tell which of the many data sciencey, machine learning-y titles correspond to the truly stratospheric salaries versus the engineers that work with those roles. For some teams, like DeepMind, Google Brain or FAIR, it’s easier to tell. But for others it’s a mixed bag.

For comparison, see the fashionable term of art “quant” in the financial industry, which has similarly devolved into marketing and a bimodal distribution. As a rule of thumb, you generally can’t trust AI titles or salaries at startups unless those startups are really known for their talent; further, you can safely assume that, at companies capable of paying for top talent, the very impressive salaries belong to titles which seem the most exotic and out of reach for general engineers in the job description.

Fortunately startups don’t really need to compete for top talent as a genuine technological differentiator, they just need to engage in signaling, so this is mostly a non-problem. Startups almost never have problems usefully improved by the cutting edge of machine learning research, and can instead use off the shelf tools and existing software to accomplish the same things. Frankly, it’s exceptionally rare for a startup to even have the massive data, pipeline and munging infrastructure requisite for actual research.

This actually makes a lot of sense. I have a lot of friends employed as Data Scientist or Data Engineers who don't seem to be able to explain exactly what they do, or describe what "research" they are doing. From what I understand, it seems like they are designing pipelines that ingest data, run an off the shelf AI algorithm and display nice graphs. There is a lot of pipelines you can design for different kinds of data so I imagine they always have something to do.

It’s not just startups. Big business and government have slapped the ‘data scientist’ label on anyone who can drum up a chart in Excel.

As Napoleon said: titles don’t honour men, men honour titles.

Is this not the impetus behind the "data engineer" title that's been thrown around lately?

You don't. You sell solutions.

In most enterprises, 90% of problems can be solved by somebody who can get phone calls answered, a $20/hour intern and Excel.

I think that's a sign of enterprise dysfunction - problems that can be solved in that way aren't real problems, they are neglect and delinquency.

At some level, sure.

But... Consider the wide variety of solutions for taking notes. It’s a trivial problem that can be addressed in any number of ways. But it’s a problem that people spend a lot of time solving.

Existing start ups can't. But if you are a well-known AI researcher, or the student of one, you start your own company with students and friends and get your team bought for the talent.

In my experience, the best scientists are not motivated by money, at least not beyond enough to provide a comfortable lifestyle. For me it's much more important to work on interesting problems in a good team. Also, startups can provide an exhilarating feeling of 'anything is possible' which you rarely get at a large corporation.

Stop wasting money on lavish offices and bro-ish perks, and rather put that money toward salaries.

You'd be amazed how little impact spreading that wealth around in the form of salaries will actually make on an individual salary. And on just how much those offices and perks actually contribute to company image.

Coders should stop being so mercenary.

"Coders should stop being so mercenary."

Why?

Because it makes everyone less civil.

I strongly disagree. And given that I'm working for a company who's entire purpose is to make money, I fail to see why I should not do the same. Nothing good comes from me forgoing making all that I can make.

Agree with you absolutely. Everyone here to make money. If they don't need you or they need you and you don't work, will they give you money ? If you are good at something, never do it for ...

You'll make a lot more money just starting your own business. Like, a ridiculous amount more. Then when you start hiring, you'll understand why attitudes like yours are toxic.

Again, I'm failing to see why you're advocating for a business to make all the money it can, but why you decry the same for employees. Double standard much?

You support one family. Companies support dozens to hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands.

And why should I not get as much as I can for my family?

Also, how do you reconcile your statement with the fact that companies will fire someone as soon as it makes sense for them?

You should try to get as much as you can for your family. But the best way to do this is to move up the value chain, not keep trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. You seem dead set on getting more compensation for bringing the exact same amount of value to the table.

My solution to your "fact" is to not work for a bunch of dicks. I've never gotten fired "as soon as it makes sense" once I transitioned into development. You seem to work for a lot of dicks. Stop doing that.

No, I work for business people. The very same type of people you tell me I should gift money by leaving it on the table.

This is going to be the last reply, but you've not made your case as to why I should gift my employer free money by leaving it on the table. There is exactly zero benefit to me for not getting everything I can, and quite a bit of upside. I have also found your double standard regarding the behavior of companies and the behavior of employees, and your handwaving away of that double standard, to be quite insane.

In short, you feel free to do whatever you want, and gift your employer free money. I, on the other hand, am going to take care of myself and my family by getting the maximum value I can out of the time I have to give my employer, and get paid as much as I can.

Have fun playing hardball over a few hundred bucks a month.

Do you think the nature of the employer-employee relationship is civil to begin with?

The original employer-employee relationship was between farmers and strongman warlords. If the strongmen didn't protect the farmers then they didn't get fed and if the farmers didn't produce as much as they could then they ran the risk of getting overrun by guys they didn't have an existing working relationship with.

So yeah, I think that was an inherently civil relationship. Agrarian empires were the original forms of civilization. Just because there's a hierarchy doesn't make it not civilized. Hierarchy is instead what makes it civilized. Hierarchy means that everyone can relax and focus on what's in their wheelhouse.

This is a value for value business relationship. It’s not mercenary for “coders” to capture more of the value that they created in the first place. An employer is not entitled to get cheaper labor just because it helps them get richer.

Like I told the other commenter, if you want to capture more of the value, you need to own more of the business.

Look, if we're talking giant corporations here, I agree with you. The company isn't going to miss another $5k/year. But if you play hardball with a $3M company, then they're only going to keep you until they can outsource your job away. Their budget is what they live and die on, and surplus profit typically gets rolled back into the business, not wasted on dividends.

You're directly affecting company viability by not being willing to leave some money on the table.

I understand what you are saying especially when it comes to a "lifestyle" business that keeps an employee on when they have a bad year. The employee trades some salary for security. I'm not so sure how common that sort of business is though.

You've got the start-ups that are focused on a big exit to pay their investors and let the founders cash out. They (and their VC investors) want their employees to sacrifice/invest/commit "like a founder" - but without the founders upside.

You've also got the large businesses that will, in your own words, "keep you until they can outsource your job away" for a little more profit.

This is the reality for developers and they have slowly decided to seek their fair share to the consternation of businesses that were used to adding that value to their own bottom line.

When I hear someone saying that "coders" (or sometimes "code monkeys") shouldn't be focused on salary I hear someone who (A) doesn't respect my profession and (B) doesn't see why they shouldn't be able to exploit me.

(When it comes to my own clients, I do leave money on the the table. I could justify it by saying that I do it "in the interests of a long term relationships" but in reality I'm emotionally invested in their success and I want their projects to succeed.)

I'm as salary focused as the next guy. But my approach to earning more is to bring more value, not to play the zero-sum game of hardball negotiations.

That's not a bad approach but...from my perspective, why should I work for a company that either doesn't value my contributions or can't capitalize on them? The money I leave on the table doesn't go to charity after all, it goes in someone else's pocket or is invested to the benefit of the business owners.

To paraphrase on old saying "Developers go where they are wanted and stay where they're well treated."

Look at from a developers perspective; why should they bust their hump to deliver 20% more value only to be rewarded with a 3% increase in salary? ("Gee Chris, I would love to give more but company policy...") Why shouldn't I go someplace that does value my efforts?

The only way to fix the structural inequality of the employer-employee relationship is to have your own business. It is not a business relationship. It's an evolution on the lord-serf relationship.

> Look at from a developers perspective; why should they bust their hump to deliver 20% more value only to be rewarded with a 3% increase in salary? ("Gee Chris, I would love to give more but company policy...") Why shouldn't I go someplace that does value my efforts?

You should not bust your hump. Deploy adroit political acumen to reduce your workload. I can't remember the last time I busted my hump on a development job.

But if you want more money, you absolutely should go somewhere else. What I'm saying is that expecting your existing company to be the vehicle for that advancement is naive at best.

I requested, and got, two large raises at my last job. I was still underpaid at the end of it. I'm underpaid now, even though I got another massive raise when I switched companies.

The reality is, you get a market salary from the market, not from any one company. A company is either going to be open to paying market rates or they won't be. You have to make the decision whether to accept that. Playing hardball with a company that's not prepared to pay you market just won't get you anywhere. Find a company that's prepared to pay market.

I have brought additional value to a company and had them just tell me no. No they were not going to give me a raise. I had to jump ship to get a raise. You're stance is nice from an ideal CEO perspective but it never works.

"But if you play hardball with a $3M company, then they're only going to keep you until they can outsource your job away."

They're going to do that anyway.

"You're directly affecting company viability by not being willing to leave some money on the table."

If my extra $5k is the difference between live and die, then the company was failing anyway, and I should take as much as I can before the company closes, to tide me over while I look for a new job.

$5k over the course of a year. It's not a lot of money.