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Comment by ham_sandwich | Hacker News Reader

I don’t work at FAANG, but the general sense I get is that while there is no doubt top DL talent that should command mid six to seven figure salaries, it seems that with AI programs stuffed at both the undergrad and grad levels that things should cool off eventually.

More broadly, does success in academia usually translate to delivering business value? Are these companies betting on these researchers to come up with the next great DL architecture?

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I'm not in academia or at a FAANG, but I think that talented professors should always have applicable skills. A professor successfully running a research lab is basically running a small company. They need to raise grant money, and then deliver results, all while needing to mentor their employees. Because most of their workers will be students and leave after graduation.

So if you define top talent to be research lab or publication success I think that top talent will always be attractive corporate RD, assuming there's a match in the research area. I don't really know how these companies are evaluating their RD, so delivering business value is another question.

Ian Goodfellow already has come up with the next great DL architecture. So its possible he will do so again.

edit: thinking about your question more-as an AI person I think the business logic behind hiring AI research talent if you are FAANG is not that they are going to deliver much business value in the next five years but they may deliver astronomical returns in the next 25 years. when you have the financial strength of google hiring these people is not a very large risk.

edit: I'm an ML grad student.

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