# Anthropic kept fixed pay levels during Meta's recruiting push Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/anthropic-kept-fixed-pay-levels-during-metas-recruiting-push/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Dario Amodei](https://realalpha.app/builders/dario-amodei/) · Dario Amodei is CEO of Anthropic. · Co-founded Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude; earlier led OpenAI's GPT-2 and GPT-3 research. - Host: [Alex Kantrowitz](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-kantrowitz/) · Founder, Big Technology · Former BuzzFeed News senior tech reporter and author of Always Day One. - Show: Big Technology Podcast - Episode: [Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: AI's Potential, OpenAI Rivalry, GenAI Business, Doomerism](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/), Jul 30, 2025 - Moment: 16:13 to 20:21 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/anthropic-kept-fixed-pay-levels-during-metas-recruiting-push/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=973 ## Quote > “we are not willing to compromise our, you know, our compensation principles, our **principles of fairness** to respond individually to these offers.” > — [Dario Amodei](https://realalpha.app/builders/dario-amodei/) at [18:24](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1104) · Big Technology Podcast ## Takeaways 1. Employees were assigned levels, and the company did not negotiate them. 2. Some employees declined offers without taking meetings. 3. Amodei framed resisting counteroffers as a culture decision. ## About this segment Dario Amodei says Meta's recruiting offers did not change Anthropic's level-based pay system. He argued individualized counteroffers would undermine fairness and company culture. From “Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: AI's Potential, OpenAI Rivalry, GenAI Business, Doomerism”, Jul 30, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [16:18](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=978) maybe Anthropic is the company with the right idea, but the wrong resources. Because you look at what's happening with XAI and inside Meta, where Elon's built his massive cluster. Mark zuckerberg is building this five gigawatt data center and they are putting so much resources towards scaling up um is it possible i mean anthropic obviously you have raised billions of dollars but these are trillion dollar companies yeah so we've raised i think at this point a little short of 20 billion dollars it's not bad so that's that's not that's not nothing and i would also say if you look at the size of the data centers that we're building with for example, Amazon, I don't think our data center scaling is substantially smaller than that of any of the other companies in the space. You know, in many cases, these things are limited by energy, [17:10](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1030) they're limited by capitalization. You know, when people talk about, you know, these large amounts of money, they're talking about it over several years, right? And when you hear some of these announcements. Sometimes they're not funded yet. We've seen the size of the data centers that folks are building. And we're actually pretty confident that we will be within a rough range of the size of the data centers that they built. You talked about talent density. What do you think about what Mark Zuckerberg is doing on the talent density front? I mean, combining that with these massive data centers, it seems like he's going to be able to compete. [17:49](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1069) Yeah, so this is actually very interesting because, you know, one thing we noticed is that relative to other companies, you know, I think a lot fewer people from Anthropic have been caught by these. And it's not for lack of trying. I've talked to plenty of people who got these offers at Anthropic and who just turned them down, who wouldn't even talk to Mark Zuckerberg, who said, no, I'm staying at Anthropic. [18:19](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1099) And our general response to this was, you know, I posted something to the whole company Slack where I said, look, you know, we are not willing to compromise our, you know, our compensation principles, our principles of fairness to respond individually to these offers. the way things work. philanthropic is there's a series of levels. When candidate comes in, they get assigned a level and we don't negotiate that level because we think it's unfair. We want to have a systematic way. [18:50](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1130) If Mark Zuckerberg throws a dart at a dartboard and hits your name, that doesn't mean that you should be paid 10 times more than the guy next to you who's just as skilled, who's just as talented. um uh and and and my view of the situation is that you know the only way you can really be hurt by this is if you allow it to destroy the culture of your company by panicking by treating people unfairly in an attempt to to defend the company um and i think actually this was a unifying moment for the company where um you know we we didn't give in we refused to compromise our principles because we have the confidence that people are anthropic because they truly believe in the mission. [19:35](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1175) And, you know, I think that gets to kind of how I see this. I think that what they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought, and that is alignment with the mission. And, you know, I think there are selection effects here. Like, you know, are they getting the people who are most enthusiastic, who are most mission-aligned, who are most excited. But they have talent and GPUs. You're not underestimating them? [20:05](https://realalpha.app/v/mYDSSRS-B5U/?t=1205) I will see how it plays out. I am pretty bearish on what they're trying to do. So let's talk a little bit about your business because a lot of people have been wondering, is the business of Generative AI a real thing? And I'm also curious.