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Normally, I have an analysis and then a little bird (my insidery bits curated just for you). But today I am combining them because I simply have too many little birds talking to me about the new talent wars.
About seven years ago, the founder of a self-driving vehicle company told me that competing with the likes of Waymo for talent was “like a knife fight.” Now it seems there is a new poaching war going on, according to a handful of little birds. And it’s pushing base salaries (not including equity and other benefits) to between $300,000 and $500,000.
Here’s what is happening. The buzzy physical AI sector is filled with robotics and defense tech companies looking for people with a specific set of skills (to quote Liam Neeson). And these folks are mostly working at companies developing self-driving trucks and robotaxis.
As these employees get lured to other sectors — including defense — automakers and startups are being pushed to raise salaries or risk losing the talent to better-paying “physical AI” jobs.
The ideal candidate for an autonomous vehicle company has hybrid skills, a mix of classical robotics and AI know-how, according to one founder. It’s this specific understanding of how to integrate AI into hardware like humanoid robots, industrial robots, and autonomous forklifts, as well as with construction, mining, and agriculture equipment that has companies fighting over talent.
Defense tech startups are apparently the most generous when it comes to compensation, thanks to the Department of Defense’s open wallet. Jobs looking for an applied researcher or AI enablement engineer (or something similar to that) are hot tickets right now.
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