The salaries of the employees who brought the company to its knees are quite striking: How much do OpenAI engineers earn?

OpenAI is one of the first companies that comes to mind when talking about artificial intelligence, one of the most prominent technological developments of recent years... However, the company has recently been in the news not for a newly developed artificial intelligence system, but for one scandal after another.

While everyone was shocked by the dismissal of OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, things became even more chaotic after his departure. Greg Brockman, another co-founder of the company, resigned from his position following Altman's departure, and 95 percent of the company's employees even threatened the management by saying they would resign if Altman did not return to his post.

Following all these developments, OpenAI took a step back and gave Altman his seat back.

The engineers of the startup, which is a pioneer in artificial intelligence, are seen as almost irreplaceable. According to new reports, the salaries of the employees who brought the company to its knees are quite striking. According to a Bloomberg report, engineers working at OpenAI earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

According to an analysis published in May by the compensation data platform Levels.fyi, artificial intelligence engineers earn 8 to 12.5 percent more than their non-AI engineer colleagues.

Roger Lee, co-founder of the compensation benchmarking company Comprehensive.io, said that the most common salary range for engineering positions listed on OpenAI's website is between 200 thousand and 370 thousand dollars, but some more specialized roles range from 300 thousand (approximately 8 million 600 thousand lira) to 450 thousand dollars (approximately 13 million lira). According to Levels.fyi, salary ranges, including annual bonuses or stock options, reach 800 thousand dollars (approximately 23 million lira).

Despite these staggering figures, the company did not want to lose any of its employees. Yet, it could have chosen a much more economical path if the employees had left. However, the fact that there is a very limited group of people experienced in newly emerging technologies puts OpenAI employees in a highly advantageous position.

The company was shaken to its core with the dismissal of Sam Altman.

At this point, the company is aware that the people who create the product are also the company itself.

Julia Pollak from ZipRecruiter, an employment marketplace for job seekers and employers, points out that thanks to this advantageous position, employees have a strong position where they can exert direct pressure on company management: “You cannot easily train these people, you cannot easily hire them from elsewhere. Retaining what you have is the most important strategy.”

Furthermore, according to Pollak, if the company were to attempt to hire from universities at this point, this move would also be insufficient, as she points out that there is a big difference between understanding artificial intelligence models at a theoretical level and having the skills and experience to actually implement them:

“It takes a long time to learn the code and technology stack of a real company. Given this dynamic, one artificial intelligence engineer within the company is worth three artificial intelligence engineers outside the company.”