Superstar coders are raking it in. Others, not so much

Lucas Beyer is not a celebrity. But in Silicon Valley’s rarefied world of machine-learning talent, he is seen as one. A former researcher at OpenAI, Mr Beyer announced last month that he was leaving the artificial-intelligence (AI) lab behind ChatGPT to join Meta, a social-media giant with big AI ambitions of its own. With rumours swirling that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s boss, was offering packages worth $100m to poach AI whizzes, Mr Beyer clarified that he had not secured a nine-figure deal. That he needed to say so at all reflects the extent of the frenzy.