Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

Posted by spenvo 7/1/2025

Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'(www.wired.com)

344 points | 699 commentspage 9

hearsathought 7/2/2025|

Mercenaries are just missionaries with better funding. Altman needs more capital to compete.

mikkom 7/2/2025||

Says a guy who is poaching openAI

kylecordes 7/2/2025||

That's the kind of thing you say when you don't want to pay the market price.

fudgy73 7/2/2025||

I don't think I've ever seen someone use two semicolons in one sentence.

charlescearl 7/2/2025||

“I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole; of course there will always be some mercenaries.”

In the context of the decisions of largely East Asia born technical staff, can’t help but reflect on the role of actual western missionaries and mercenaries in East Asia over the last 100+ years & also the DeepSeek targeted sinophobia.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_missions_in_China

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Beleaguer

https://monthlyreview.org/2025/02/01/imperialism-and-white-s...

blackhaj7 7/1/2025||

Couldn't think of a worse steward of AI than Meta/Zuck (not a fan of OpenAI either). One of the most insidious companies out there.

Sad to see Nat Friedman go there. He struck me as "one of the good ones" who was keen to use tech for positive change. I don't think that is achievable at Meta

psunavy03 7/1/2025||

But if they give you tens of millions of reasons to go there . . .

garciasn 7/1/2025||

For Sam to seemingly claim that Meta is hiring mercenaries while OpenAI is hiring missionaries seems a bit counter to OpenAI's mission of having closed weight models vs an open weights at Meta.

I could definitely see those who are 'missionaries' wanting to give it away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

blackhaj7 7/1/2025||

Agreed

komali2 7/2/2025||

If you're getting poached, pay more. If you can't pay more, give away your equity instead. Nobody owes you their labor, especially if you're already a billionaire.

karel-3d 7/2/2025||

Why is it still called Meta? Do they still do the Metaverse thing?

lawlessone 7/2/2025||

Why doesn't Sam try hire more juniors and train them up?

ChuckMcM 7/2/2025|

I don't know, maybe all the big AI companies could come to an agreement not to poach each others employees?[1]

It is always surprising to me when billionaire CEOs are complaining that their own employees are min-maxing their earning potential.

[1] https://www.ere.net/articles/tech-firms-settle-case-admit-se...

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