{"id":24607,"date":"2026-04-13T14:27:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T14:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/24607\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T14:27:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T14:27:34","slug":"amd-ceo-wont-offer-100-million-salaries-to-poach-talent-like-mark-zuckerberg-she-says-its-more-important-staff-dont-feel-like-a-cog-in-the-wheel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/24607\/","title":{"rendered":"AMD CEO won\u2019t offer $100 million salaries to poach talent like Mark Zuckerberg. She says it\u2019s more important staff don\u2019t feel like \u2018a cog in the wheel\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think competition for talent is fierce. I am a believer, though, that money is important, but frankly, it\u2019s not necessarily the most important thing when you\u2019re attracting talent,\u201d Lisa Su<\/a>, CEO of $284 billion<\/a> semiconductor giant AMD<\/a>, recently told<\/a> Wired. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to be in the zip code [of those numbers], but then it\u2019s super important to have people who really believe in the mission of what you\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, she wants future hires at AMD to be wooed by the thought of being part of the company\u2019s meteoric rise and making an impact on the future of technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a recruitment standpoint, it\u2019s always like, \u2018Do you want to be part of our mission?\u2019 Because the ride is really what we\u2019re trying to attract people to. It\u2019s the ride of, \u2018Look, if you want to come do important technology, make an impact, you\u2019re not just a cog in the wheel, but you\u2019re actually someone who\u2019s going to drive the future of our road map, then you want to be at AMD.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus, it\u2019s not as if AMD staffers are underpaid: \u201cI think people have done relatively well here, because the stock\u2019s done okay,\u201d Su added.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, the 55-year-old CEO says dishing out $100 million salaries to new staff would be unfair to existing workers with lower pay packages, still putting in hard work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not really about one person in our world,\u201d Su reasoned. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s really about great people, don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014we have some incredible people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortune reached out to AMD for comment.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg\u2019s $100 million pay package is \u2018trying to buy something that cannot be bought\u2019<\/p>\n

Su isn\u2019t the only Silicon Valley chief executive refusing to match Zuckerberg\u2019s eye-popping pay packages. Anthropic<\/a> CEO Dario Amodei<\/a> also isn\u2019t willing<\/a> to shell out $100 million in poaching retaliation. And the two leaders agree on one thing: Their companies care about fostering innovation above all else\u2014and that drive can\u2019t be bought with nine-figure salaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that what they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought, and that is alignment with the mission. I think there are selection effects here,\u201d Amodei recently revealed on the<\/a> Big Technology Podcast. \u201cAre they getting the people who are most enthusiastic, who are most mission aligned, who are most excited?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Meta<\/a> CEO has managed to poach<\/a> at least seven staffers from rival AI companies, including OpenAI<\/a>, with its $100 million offer. But Anthropic\u2019s leader is adamant that most of his employees are actually turning it down, and \u201cwouldn\u2019t even talk\u201d to Zuckerberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Echoing AMD\u2019s CEO that it would be unfair to pay or treat staffers differently in the AI talent war, Amodei thinks it could stifle innovation<\/a>. In fact, he believes fighting fire with fire by offering the same sky-high compensation would actually \u201cdestroy\u201d company culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers,\u201d Amodei said. \u201cThe way things work at Anthropic is there\u2019s a series of levels. One candidate comes in, they get assigned a level, and we don\u2019t negotiate that level, because we think it\u2019s unfair. We want to have a systematic way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Anthropic leader said Meta, and by extension Zuckerberg, are trying to buy employees who will be devoted to driving their AI models to new heights. But he may be hard-pressed to find such loyalty; Anthropic has a 80% retention rate for employees hired over the past two years, while Meta is trailing behind at 64%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think competition for talent is fierce. I am a believer, though, that money is important, but frankly,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[17114,10121,474,2684,766,2861,2686,17115,692,618,994,6589,613,3899,1992,2468,17116,5471,10224],"class_list":{"0":"post-24607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lisa-su","8":"tag-battle-for-talent","9":"tag-benefits","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-chatbots","12":"tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","13":"tag-compensation","14":"tag-executives","15":"tag-hiring","16":"tag-lisa-su","17":"tag-mark-zuckerberg","18":"tag-meta","19":"tag-millionaires","20":"tag-openai","21":"tag-salaries","22":"tag-semiconductors","23":"tag-stock","24":"tag-talent-acquisition","25":"tag-tech-workers","26":"tag-worker-benefits"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116397869870448891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}