Is it interesting? They want to be rich.
The interesting thing to me is that the belief that Anthropic is going achieve something like AGI appears to have really spread through SV. If not AGI, at least greatly disturb their old cushy SaaS jobs.
Also, I still do believe some people just want to work on "cool" stuff.
edit: not just CTOs and CPOs, I mean John freakin Jumper, who got the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, left his VP role at DeepMind to have no reports, and be an IC at Anthropic.
I find this whole trend extremely interesting.
So wether it's belief in AGI or a desire for building cool stuff, as an outsider looking in, it seems to be informed by the same echo chamber of thought.
One thing I’ve noticed more and more is all the “cool” jobs require you to already be an established domain expert.
Another things I’ve noticed, and this is probably mostly just my opinions evolving, but all the “cool” stuff that catches my interest these days is not in software. Software is boring.
I mean, this is happening right now.
I doubt there are few people talking to customers and potential customers that haven't run into the "look what I rolled last week with Claude" only for it to be legitimately impressive. The idea of technical moats is evaporating in front of our eyes.
The IC pay at OpenAI alone is comparable to that of an EM at Google. CTOs at most large orgs end up earning the same as an EM at Google.
OpenAI and Anthropic pay is extremely competitive. The last time I saw something similar in SV was Google back in the 2000s.
Is it that at Anthropic, you are technically an IC due to the fact that all of your direct reports are Claude agents? That sounds about right, doesn't it?
That seems like an obvious choice to make. Managing people, looking at Gantt charts, meeting with compliance & legal and all the other organizational work of management is tedious, boring and miserable. But it pays well and signals high-status, so people do it.
If you've won the Nobel Prize, you don't need any other signal of high-status and he's surely making plenty of money at Anthropic. Of course he'd choose to spend his time doing interesting work for lots of money instead of boring work.
If you're earning $300k at some company as a "Ninja Grandmaster (World Wide) Director CTO with 50 Reports", and a "Super Stinky Junior IC" at OpenAI is earning $400k, the IC is doing better than you.
*more precisely, the cumulative compensation at the end of your career, to account for gambits. it is not relevant that you "climbed the ranks" and were bestowed the title of "CEO" at your company or that you were "entrusted" with 5000 people in the org under you - these are strictly elements of some company's internal gamification and person-role-optimization system.