Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Ma Huan
Silicon Valley's battle for metaversary talent is heating up.
This meta-universe talent storm has shaken a number of technology giants, swept away a large number of talents from Microsoft, Google, Apple and other giants, from ordinary engineers to company executives are on the run.
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 12 that Microsoft revealed that its AR team has lost about 100 employees in the past year, most of whom have switched to Facebook CEO Zuckerberg's Facebook parent company, Meta, "because they are the most needed talents for the current metaverse concept."
Because the metacosm combines virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), artificial intelligence and other technologies into one, and builds another near-real "world" in a digital virtual space, the salaries of engineers with experience and ability in this area have soared.
According to the recruitment website Indeed, salaries for metacosmic-related positions have risen 10-fold.
Facebook robbed people, Microsoft was injured
According to the New York Times, Amazon's vice president of cloud computing, Sandy Carter, recently left to join an unknown virtual tech startup, and then she posted a job post for a new company, receiving more than 350 applications in two days, many of them from traditional Internet tech giants.
This is just a microcosm of the current Silicon Valley talent metacosm storm.
2021 is known as the first year of the meta-universe. On October 28 last year, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg publicly announced: "From now on, we will be a metaverse first, not a Facebook priority." In the future, we want to be seen as a metacosmic company. At the same time, Facebook was renamed Meta, which was taken from the word Metaverse, meaning metaverse.
Zuckerberg (Credit: Getty Images)
The media generally believes that in 2022, the meta-universe will bring more expectations to the technology community.
Although the metaverse is still in the conceptual stage, because the world it envisions involves a variety of technologies, the skill requirements for talents are also very diverse, from VR/AR, blockchain, artificial intelligence and other infrastructure-equipped "infrastructure" skills, to technical art, 3D modeling, game design and virtual people and other "creator" skills, which are essential core capabilities on the "landing road" of the concept.
Microsoft is one of the first pioneers to enter the field of virtual reality, and its AR team has developed the most advanced technology and headset devices.
But Zuckerberg is not to be outdone. In order to gain a head start in the development of the meta-universe, he not only announced the company's name change, but also did not slacken his efforts to grab talent.
According to the Wall Street Journal, several of the people who left Microsoft's AR team were team leaders who had worked at Microsoft for many years, and more than half of these people went to Zuckerberg's Meta.
According to a former Microsoft employee, peers have been vigorously robbing Microsoft's meta-universe talents and offering salaries several times higher than Microsoft.
Image source: cityam
Poaching Microsoft's talent will not meet Zuckerberg's ambitions, Meta said that in 2022 will recruit more employees to participate in the meta-universe plan, the next 5 years alone in Europe will reach 10,000 people.
Zuckerberg said: "Over the next decade, the metaverse will benefit 1 billion people, spawn hundreds of billions of dollars worth of digital commerce, and provide jobs for millions of creators and developers." ”
Before this goal is achieved, it will inevitably be a large-scale robbery and burning money war.
Silicon Valley Giants: Raises to Retain
The temptation of the meta-universe is hard to resist, which makes major technology companies distressed to retain talent.
At Google, how to retain employees has been the subject of discussion at CEO Sandal Pichai's weekly executive meetings. At the same time, Google has also begun to provide employees with additional stock rewards to avoid being poached.
Earlier, Google vice president Suroggit left to go to Coinbase, the largest virtual currency trading company, to become the company's chief product officer. Coinbase is currently listed, and Suroggit's stake in the company is worth more than $600 million (about 3.8 billion yuan).
Apple, which has a market capitalization of $3 trillion, is also aware of this robbery crisis and has offered some engineers a different stock dividend benefit than usual.
According to Bloomberg, Apple offered a stock benefit to some engineers and staff in the software department. The amount of this additional income ranges from US$50,000 to US$180,000 (about RMB320,000 to RMB1.14 million), which will be issued in the form of restricted shares for a period of 4 years. Apple hopes to reduce job-hopping among senior employees.
An insider said that providing stock dividends is not within Apple's salary, and that the size of the funds is "unusual" and the timing is "unexpected."
In order to retain the team, Apple also revised regulations on office work during the epidemic.
Previously, Apple wanted ordinary employees to have 3 days a week to work in the office, and hardware engineers needed to work in the office 4-5 days a week. But now, Apple has promised that employees can stay home as much as possible. In addition, Apple also provides a subsidy of $1,000 (about 6,400 yuan) per employee to help them buy office facilities that they may use.
Bloomberg said that for Apple, The Meta that is laying out the metaverse is a particular threat, and Apple cannot tolerate poaching its own technical talent.
Will the meta-universe talent storm continue? Sandy Carter argues: "The answer is yes, now is the perfect time to jump on this bus. ”