500K is a top engineer you can expect top performance from, but like any other job it costs the company about twice that per year total when you add in benefits and overhead so that's about $1 million right there. So 250K for tokens is like 25% more cost but can be perceived like a 50% bonus or enhancement.
And at only 25% more cost those utilizing the tokens to the fullest advantage have a pretty good chance at achieving more than 25% more accomplishment which is not such an unreachable bar to overcome. "Anybody" should be able to do that. And the upside from some users can be way above 25%, so the more the merrier :)
>I'm going to ask them how much did you spend in tokens? If that person said $5,000, I will go ape
>"This is no different than one of our chip designers who says, 'Guess what? I'm just going to use paper and pencil,'" he said, referring to top engineers who underutilize AI tokens.
I would be "alarmed" too but leverage it to wake myself up early, for a one-on-one with the top engineer to learn how they are making progress without burning through all the valuable resources at the rate that everyone else is. Progress is progress and proven top performers are hard to come by so I would put all effort into tempering my primate behavior ;)
By the same "token" if you had someone at an investment broker who could make as much money as anyone else just by manually looking at what amounts to live ticker-tape data, they wouldn't fit in either.
Even if they made more money than the average professionals who were using all the most advanced resources. Then they would fit in even less, but I would imagine at the most decent companies there would still be a place for them if the company was big enough. Top performer is still a top performer and some of the best have never fit in anyway.
Now if they only brought in comparable money, that's not any better than the guys with all the tools, so they would probably be kicked out because it can still be interpreted as making everyone else look bad by comparison. Odds are. Then again I wouldn't expect all top leaders to lose their ability overnight when it comes to making more money from any top engineer than they could make for themselves. And legitimately pocket the difference as usual. The kind that consistently beat the odds.
>tokens could be part of his recruitment strategy for engineers.
I like Huang and think he is one of the better CEO's so it does seem like a sensible business move for Nvidia to become a source of tokens itself, if not already.
That would be not exactly like having a "company town", but more like a company currency to provide some compensation with, honored at like a "company store".
FWIW.
