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Comment by karolist | Hacker News Reader

I think this could be cultural differences, AMD's software department is underfunded and doing poorly for a long time now.

* https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amd/salaries/software-engin...

* https://www.levels.fyi/companies/nvidia/salaries/software-en...

And it's probably better now. Nvidia was paying much more long before, also their stock growing attracts even more talent.

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> I think this could be cultural differences, AMD's software department is underfunded and doing poorly for a long time now.

Rumor is that ML engineers (that AMD really needs) are expensive; and AMD doesn't want to give them more money than the rest of the SWEs they have (for pissing off the existing SWEs). So AMD is caught in a bind: can't pay to get top MLE talent and can't just sit by and watch NVDA eat its lunch.

AMD recently acquired Silo AI.

I find this strange to believe. Every big company has levels, unless your existing L7+ IC is below market, you can just pull L7+ salaried ML engineers with some secret signing bonus like literally everyone else.

The dirty secret in the tech industry is that most people at AMD or Intel or IBM and historically Nvidia/Oracle (this changed post 2022), were the 2nd-3rd tier tech companies. Staffed heavily by the rejects of the FAANG, they were still happy to have their 100-200K in their MCOL areas, but no free food and a much more boring work culture. Intel's "great place to work" corporate propaganda was known as "great place to leetcode" while I worked there, as Intel was always seen as a stepping stone before you "made it" in a FAANG.

Culturally, none of these companies were happy to pay anyone except the tip, top "distinguished" engineers more than 300K. AMD seems to be stuck in this mentality, just as IBM is.

> AMD seems to be stuck in this mentality, just as IBM is.

And that's why creative destruction is essential for technological progress. It's common for organizations to get stuck in stable-but-suboptimal social equilibria: everyone knows there's a problem but nobody can fix it. The only way out is to make a new organization and let the old one die.

> So AMD is caught in a bind: can't pay to get top MLE talent and can't just sit by and watch NVDA eat its lunch.

This isn't being caught in a bind. This is, if true, just making a poor decision. Nothing is really preventing them from paying more for specialized work.

So nothing has changed since the era of ATI.

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