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Big tech

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

Courtney Vinopal

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As the war for AI talent continues, it’s become pricier than ever.

At least that’s the case for a small group of companies seeking to capitalize on the revolution that proponents of the technology are promising.

Meta, which is going all-in on AI investments with the creation of a “superintelligence” lab, is reportedly offering multi-million dollar pay packages to poach top AI talent from competitors like OpenAI. At least one offer reached $1.5 billion, but the prospective hire turned it down, according to 

Some of the companies Meta is looking to poach AI talent from are outside the tech firms it has traditionally competed with for workers. To field his superintelligence team, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reaching out to employees not only from OpenAI, but also Anthropic and Thinking Machines Lab, which OpenAI alumni founded and only launched in the last five years.

While not all HR leaders can afford to hire AI talent for the price Meta is paying, they may well be taking a similar approach in their hiring strategy, forming separate AI “peer groups” to understand where top talent works, and what they earn, according to compensation experts.

How companies use peer groups to recruit workers, set salaries. 

Establishing peer groups is a longstanding practice in executive compensation. When determining executive pay packages, compensation committees will look at market data from a select basket of companies they typically compete against (at Meta, for example, this group included Alphabet, Microsoft, and Netflix in 2023, according to a 

When determining peer groups, employers typically “look at [their] competitive labor market for this pocket of employees that [they’re] thinking about,” Jonathan Jebson, compensation insights director with the compensation software firm Compa, told HR Brew. They ask themselves, “who are we hiring from? Who is hiring our people?” Companies also take into account factors like size and industry when selecting a peer group.

While this practice is common when setting pay for executives, it’s also used by companies seeking “more granular benchmarking data” for a broader set of employees, Jebson explained.

Such data is particularly valuable for companies hiring for AI-related roles as the field is fairly nascent, said Tom McMullen, senior client partner with Korn Ferry. “It’s not a mature space,” he said. “The technology is new…organizations are figuring out how to use it.” While employees may be using AI in their jobs, their roles may not be entirely dedicated to it, he said.

“When you don’t have firmed up roles…the published compensation surveys aren’t going to survey those jobs because the jobs aren’t firm,” McMullen explained, though he added that HR professionals may be able to glean how companies are paying for AI roles through job postings, given the increasing 

To help determine what pay might look like for roles requiring AI skills, compensation teams are identifying peer groups that look different from the set of organizations they would typically compete against for most roles, said Compa CEO and co-founder Charlie Franklin.

Compa sees many companies “explicitly targeting” Magnificent 7 firms for their AI peer groups, he said, referencing a term to describe a group of tech companies with large market capitalizations that includes Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia. Organizations are looking not only to these firms, but also “some of the largest, most famous, private AI companies” to pull AI talent from, he added.

Once HR teams identify an AI peer group, they have to figure out if their company can afford talent from the firms they’re targeting, sources told HR Brew.

 for certain AI skills means engineering and HR teams are having to strike a balance in discussions about talent, Jebson said. While an engineering lead might be hoping to hire a candidate that hails from OpenAI, Anthropic, or a big tech company, the compensation team must then ask, “Can we effectively afford this?” and consider how hiring an elite machine learning engineer may affect internal pay equity.

Compensation teams lean on peer groups to guide these conversations, Jebson said. If the market for pay looks too high for a very narrow peer group, they may point to a different set of companies where talent is more affordable.

Paying top-of-market salaries for AI talent may be out of the question for many smaller startups, but Kaitlyn Knopp, founder and CEO of the compensation management software firm Pequity, encourages them to consider other factors that may drive talent to their company. A generous equity offer, work-life balance, and the opportunity to “work really hard at cool, new problems” are all things that could hold sway over a promising candidate, she said.

To price top AI roles, HR teams are leaning on peer groups

Companies have long relied on peer groups to help inform their hiring strategy, but their competitors are evolving as the war for AI talent continues.

To nab top AI talent, companies are pricing roles against a new set of competitors

No, Microsoft employees haven’t gathered together to watch the series finale of 

Instead, they’re engrossed in the latest season of 

, a highly produced series that has the allure of prestige television, with a focus that’s decidedly less sexy: ethics and compliance.

 compliance and ethics governance, training, and culture, at Microsoft, leads the work on the compliance training videos, which first premiered in 2017. He told HR Brew his team had been seeking “a different way to engage employees around compliance,” which led them to pivot to a narrative format.

He said the series has spurred Microsoft employees to talk more about ethics and compliance, and consider how the lessons apply to their professional lives, even after the show ends.

, Microsoft’s compliance training was more standard, according to Jackson, characterized by videos, content, and click-through messaging.

Now, employees gather each September to watch the characters in 

grapple with ethical quandaries that don’t always have a clear solution.

Microsoft develops marketing materials and employee engagement activities around the launch of the show, Jackson said. Employees will reserve conference rooms to watch episodes together, whether as a department or with other groups of colleagues.

Aerial view of a building where Microsoft's headquarters are located in Redmond, Washington.

follow a character named Nelson who learns lessons about trade requirements, proprietary ideas, and privacy while developing a product. During the first season, Nelson accesses data without permission to test the product. While a security-minded friend tells him how to report and correct the issue, he still fears losing his job over these missteps later on.

Though the actor who plays Nelson isn’t a Microsoft employee, he’s now a celebrity within the organization, according to a 

 on the series. Even Microsoft President Brad Smith 

 on a debate about whether Nelson should be fired.

Jackson and his team work closely with subject matter experts in Microsoft departments such as legal, finance, and HR to conceive of storylines and themes for each season of 

that will “capture the essence” of what they’re seeing or dealing with, he said.

They then work with an external production company to develop the script, film the season, and get 

through the postproduction process. All told, putting out a new season takes the better part of a year, he said. His team is currently working on the seventh season, which will come out this fall, and focus in part on responsible AI, digital safety, and privacy.

The goal, Jackson said, is to make the training accessible, practical, and entertaining. His team considers how to help “people better understand what are expectations, or how they should navigate situations that they may confront at some point during their career at Microsoft.”

video training has a 99% completion rate—a promising sign that employees are engaged, Jackson said. But even more encouraging is the fact it seems to stick with staff after they’ve watched a new season, he added.

“Seeing employees continue to talk about storylines, messaging, content, season over season, is also really helpful because it means that the learning doesn't just stop when they hit end on their player,” Jackson said. “They're continuing to think about it; they're continuing to apply it.”

offers one approach to a challenge that has long dogged HR departments: Getting employees not only to complete compliance training, but also learn something valuable from it.

Fewer than 1 in 4 employees (23%) who had participated in a compliance or ethics training session within the past 12 months rated the training as "excellent," a 

Companies often design compliance training to meet regulatory requirements, but “they're boring to the point of being painful,” said Hui Chen, a business ethics and compliance expert who is senior advisor for R&G Insights Lab, part of law firm Ropes & Gray. What’s more, compliance isn’t often integrated with employees’ jobs, so it’s hard for them to understand how the lessons apply to their own work.

Microsoft’s training video is “a good first step,” Chen told HR Brew, but she added its success will hinge on how the company measures what people are learning.

She likened compliance training to taking vitamins: “You're supposed to learn something from it. It's not just about entertainment.”

Jackson, via email, told HR Brew that Microsoft does a survey to gauge employees’ engagement with the course, measuring whether employees are more likely to raise concerns after watching the training, as well as “other aspects relating to the training’s effectiveness.”

Black-and-white image of a man who appears concerned, overlayed by multilayered text of code.

The story behind Microsoft’s high-production compliance videos

A high-production series has spurred Microsoft employees to talk more about ethics and compliance, and consider how the lessons apply to their professional lives.

How Microsoft got its employees excited about compliance training 

LinkedIn, the professional network that’s become a popular platform for workers to share news of their layoffs, recently announced some layoff news of its own.

, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said the company would lay off 716 workers in response to shifting customer behavior and slower revenue growth. The layoffs will affect about 3.5% of LinkedIn’s 20,000-person workforce. The company also announced it will phase out InCareer, its local jobs app in China.

LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft and counts 

, has become a go-to resource for both job-seekers and recruiters as job cuts have ticked up over the past year. Even though LinkedIn’s revenue growth has slowed over the last year, Microsoft recorded $18.3 billion in profit overall 

 that ended in March, up 14% year over year.

This is the second time LinkedIn has laid off workers this year. The network also cut jobs in February, 

 of layoffs, those reductions affected HR, as employees on LinkedIn’s talent acquisition team were let go.

A representative for the company confirmed sales, operations, and support teams within LinkedIn’s Global Business Organization were affected in this latest round.

LinkedIn also made the decision to sunset its 

, an 18-month opportunity geared toward recent graduates, according to a statement shared with HR Brew. On LinkedIn, incoming BLP associates indicated their offers had been rescinded due to this decision, 

 from the company stating they could not proceed with their placements.

It’s a bit meta to watch LinkedIn employees post about their layoffs, given layoff announcements on the platform have become something of a strategic art form for workers who’ve lost their jobs in recent years.

 have offered strategies for workers seeking to pen a LinkedIn layoff announcement that will help them find new employment. In some cases, such posts 

“It feels funny to be posting on LinkedIn about LinkedIn giving me the boot (almost feels like I should take to Facebook to protest!),” Connor Bernal, a strategy and operations associate who was laid off, 

, adding he hoped “to see firsthand how this amazing platform can help members like me find their next play.”

LinkedIn first introduced “open-to-work features” 

, including a banner that allows members to show they’re in the market for a job. Currently, more than 20 million LinkedIn users have turned on its open-to-work feature, Francisco Tobon, a senior manager for corporate communications, told HR Brew via email. He added posts mentioning #opentowork were up 22% year over year in November 2022.

US benefit-eligible employees affected by this recent round of LinkedIn layoffs will receive career transition services, according to Tobon. Laid-off employees will also have access to an “internal mobility process” to see if there’s a new role within the company that’s a fit for their skills.

In a recent earnings call, Microsoft’s VP of investor relations Brett Iversen said the “persistently tight labor market,” had been good for LinkedIn’s business, although the rate of growth has been slowing since Q4 21. He noted the company’s Talent Solutions tool—geared toward recruiters and talent acquisitions professionals—drove revenue growth for the quarter ending in March.—

Close-up of a person's hand holding a phone that reads "LinkedIn" against a black background with multicolored lines.

HireVue

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LinkedIn is laying off more than 700 workers

After LinkedIn announced it was laying off more than 700 workers, affected employees turned to the platform to start looking for new jobs.

The world’s largest professional network is laying off workers

Susanna Vogel

, Google’s HR department asked employees to rate the company’s performance review process in its 

. The reviews of the reviews, it seems, demanded further review. As 

, nearly half of Googlers surveyed place the company’s twice-annual reviews somewhere on the spectrum of toiling away at the DMV, arguing with a relative about politics on Facebook, or scrolling TikTok. Performance reviews are certainly 

 to do, but only 53% of Googlers categorized them as “time well spent.”

Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, Adobe management might beg to differ.

 that Adobe employees have received quarterly reviews for the past 10 years, and that’s 

not enough for these feedback fiends. As the company has grown larger and remote work has become the norm, some Adobe professionals told HR they want more feedback—a prospect some Googlers might regard as a nightmare.

So how are these tech giants revamping reviews to fit employee needs, and why?

 Google announced that beginning in May, the company will transition to an annual performance-review model, while still promoting qualified employees twice a year, according to The Information.

 that, previously, Google formally reviewed employee performance twice a year. The company also solicited 360-degree feedback—a self-review, a colleague review, and a supervisor review. Not only did this likely lead to far too many Thesarus.com searches for “self-starter” and “team player,” but it also took 

 the move to a more streamlined process, which they’re calling Googler Reviews and Development (GRAD). The company said the move to a pared-down process reflects that most Google employees “deliver significant impact” to the company daily, and a new performance management process “will help employees stay focused on what matters most while developing their careers, as we continue to deliver helpful products and services to people around the world.”

 Then there are Adobe employees, who the company says desire more frequent feedback and the opportunity to provide it.

Previously, the company conducted quarterly reviews, conducted in-person, between managers and direct reports. As of March 2022, Fortune reports, the company uses a new dashboard to manage “employee KPIs and career goals, and allows managers and their direct reports to request feedback from peers at any time." Prior to ousting the processes that had been in place for the last decade, HR solicited feedback from employees, piloted the new dashboard with 3,000 global employees, and trained managers to use the tool. 

Arden Madsen, director of talent management at Adobe, told Fortune that the change stemmed in part from employee concerns about remote work and worry that their managers would be less attuned to everything that goes into their work. Using the dashboard, Madsen said, employees can celebrate their own successes.

“It empowers employees to drive their career,” Madsen told Fortune, “because your boss can celebrate all the things they don’t see. It can also help you recognize blind spots of how you’re showing up culturally, to different levels of individuals and to different teams.”

 There’s no clear consensus in the tech industry on how to conduct performance reviews. The Information reported that Meta is also a fan of the annual-review approach, while

 favor Adobe’s constant-feedback approach. Whatever approach companies take, Aubrey Blanche, Culture Amp’s senior director of equitable design, product, and people, believes HR should 

Blanche recently told HR Brew, “You’re not actually doing DE&I if you’re not auditing [performance reviews], because so much of someone’s opportunity and experience hangs on that one process.”

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email susanna@morningbrew.com or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

Two people in an office sit on opposite sides of a desk.

Big tech

To nab top AI talent, companies are pricing roles against a new set of competitors

How Microsoft got its employees excited about compliance training

The world’s largest professional network is laying off workers

Two tech giants are going in very different directions when it comes to performance reviews

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