YoungAchamian
No bio...
User ID: 680
YoungAchamian
30d ago
It actually goes beyond that. In MTBI a T isn't just a T, but a cognitive function at a particular placement. You have 4 placements: Dominant, Aux, Tertiary, and Inferior and together they make your categorization. Cognitive functions can be extroverted or introverted, the E/I on MTBI marks which starts first then they alternate. So not only are they an axis but a T in two different types means two different things.
For example, a T in an INTJ is their Aux function: Extroverted Thinking, a T in an INTP is their Dominant function: Introverted Thinking. There're all sorts of analyses on what that actually means but it definitely doesn't mean that all Ts, Es, Is, Fs etc. are alike, will get along together, or will connect.
The hardcore real MTBI tests require an in-person psychologist visit that takes hours. the hokie test that corpo's give you or that you can find online generally aren't very "accurate" and thus really lend to the stereotype of sciency-astrology.
YoungAchamian
30d ago
You are completely unwarranted in making this assumption, and you're only saying this to be nasty towards me. It's a really cheap shot, doubly so because I cannot show how wrong you are without doxxing myself. You can do better than this.
I did not mean for this to be a cheap shot so if it came across as one, I apologize. You could straight up say that, yes you too, are an MLE in this field, so it is also a consideration for you. That's not doxing, I'd take that at a face value statement, honor system. No proof needed until proven otherwise.
(you know what these two are, right?), (if you don't understand how I came up with this number, X AI's Grok will helpfully explain it to you, just copypaste this paragraph to it verbatim, and enable Think mode).
That said as far as cheap shots you seem to like giving as good as you get... Let's take the spice level down.
"is entirely dependent on the individuals estimation of its long term payoff and the time horizon on which they want a return on it". Yes, thank you, that's exactly what I was trying to get across the entire time.
Then we agree on this...
So yeah, maybe they got offered $300k TC when they joined, but that $300k is worth much more after a year or two.
We disagree on this, because they aren't taking home any more money. This is still entirely dependent on whether or not xAI IPOs or provides a vehicle to sell their equity. Currently it doesn't sound like there is a plan to do so. The stock rising might be a great sign, but shit happens and if xAI kicks it tomorrow then they didn't actually make all that extra money. Counting it now is counting chickens before they hatch.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
I see you took this pretty personally.
That tends to happen when you insult people out of the blue Dase. This:
a sign of mediocre understanding of ML
Is called being an asshole. I do ML for a living, insinuating my competence is mediocre because we disagree intellectually is poor taste. There are ways to have this discussion intellectually without resorting to being a douche. The last AI thread you commented on you were a prick to everyone who disagreed with you, up and down the thread. I have no desire to put up with your shit. Call it taking it personally or giving what was given. It's up to you if you want to be an adult and have conversation or be a bratty child.
not ScaleAI
This was heavy sarcasm on my part. ScaleAI did OpenAIs data engineering but I don't think that makes them a top AI company. data engineering is needed and important! But it's not revolutionary. Data engineering, is the same as its always been.
«low-level Cuda compiler writing and server orchestration»
This is why arguing with laymen is annoying. Low level is not "condensation" it is the technical term for "low on the compute stack" or "closer to the compiler". It's very important, the theories I have heard is that it's one of Deepseek's great winning points for why they were able to train their LLM much cheaper than everyone else. They were willing to go even more low level than the Cuda and write their own firmware-level orchestration code.
see DeepSeek's NSA paper.
We agree.
lolcow, so has Schimidhuber.
Schmidhuber has always been a lolcow, he's an inside joke. Any other ML person knows his schtick and finds it funny and doesn't take him seriously. I included it as a humorous inside joke.
Past glory is no evidence of current correctness, however. LeCun with his «AR-LLMs suck» has made himself a lolcow,
At the same time someone who has actually contributed to the field, who is in the arena, infinitely outweighs a nobody posting hot takes on an obscure forum. Regardless of my humor on Schmidhuber, even he, far out weights me as a titan in the ML field because he has contributed groundbreaking research. Where does that leave you? Jeering in the audience like its a sporting match?
What has Hinton done recently
Won a nobel prize.
is still within the Transformer (Vaswani et al., 2017) framework
Don't quote the old magic to me I was there when it was written. You seem to be labouring on the delusion that LLMs == ML/AI. LLMs are a subset of ML/AI. The current hottest topic definitely! The this "Algo Fetish" you say goes far beyond just LLMs. The research on model architectures has lead us to the encoder/decoder, then self attention, then Transformers. It's not a fetish and its not mediocre because it's not going to stop at transformers. Maybe you've forgotten a fundamental tenet of the Scientific Theory, but experiments fail. It sounds like you've just listed a bunch of experiments that failed. Should we give up and go on praising on the altar of bronze because no one has figured out how to forge iron? Seems like you are asking us to praise ignorance over discovery?
Transformer training is easy to parallelize and it's expressive enough. Incentives to find anything substantially better increase by OOM year on year, so does the compute and labor spent on it, to no discernible result. I think it's time to let go of faulty analogies and accept the most likely reality.
The problem is transformer's don't work on everything, and the whole field isn't just LLMs. That's the reality.
I'm not sure I believe AGI will come from transformers. If you want to have this as a separate discussion. You can let me know, nicely and we can talk about it.
Likewise my entire point, before you jumped into insult me, is that the Big Names in ML/AI are "fetishy algo freaks" They shockingly don't want to do non "mediocre algo butt sniffing" work. And Data Engineering isn't new, it isn't revolutionary, it's great, it works well, but it doesn't require some 1% ML researcher to pull it off. It requires a solid engineering team, some technical know-how, and a willingness to get your hands dirty. But no one is going to get famous doing it. It's an engineering task not a research task. And since research tasks are what people pay the ludicrously big bucks for at tech companies the engineers at xAI aren't being paid some massive king-sized salary...
As an exercise, can you tell me THE engineer at Deepseek who proposed or wrote their Parallel Thread Execution(PTX) code with a citation?
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
No, I never said that someone is making that. All I said that this is reasonable range for cash compensation at a place like X AI, and that these ranges are only published to satisfy California labor law.
I'm not really sure what your disagreement with me is then other than risk appetite and investment value. My stance this entire thread is that Average MLEs working at xAI make the a likely comparable comp to other MLEs at other FAANGs, which is ballparked at 300k to 350k. Part of that is equity so the likely take home is lower. It's not enough to retire early or live like kings or really any of the grandiose claims made up thread that I originally responded to...
I encourage you to try the following exercise. Pick any person, and ask him to name something he owns that’s literally completely worthless, as in, worth $0 to him, and offer to buy it for $10,000. Do you expect him to reject this offer, or eagerly jump for it?
Thanks I'll take that rhetorical trick under consideration. However something can be worthless at the moment and theoretically still be worth more latter. It entirely will depend on the individuals estimation of its long term payoff and the time horizon on which they want a return on it.
I would assert that to me personally, equity in xAI earned from working there is not valuable to me for a number of reasons that are beyond monetary. If I was like you and could purchase it on a private exchange I also might.
Maybe they do for you, but I have higher expectations of success for companies ran by Elon Musk, and value them accordingly.
Maybe, I'm likely to be wrong, betting against musk seems like a bad idea but at the same time the man just keeps betting on black, eventually he's going to lose and I currently do not see the value difference that xAI has over its entrenched rivals. A non-woke ai is great but I'm not sure to will convert into monetary value. I also think he made it to piss on Sam Altman in their little spat.
I think you just use the word “value” and “worth” in a much different way than most people who deal with stocks do. By my definition, if the stock is worth $0, then any offer above $0 is not lowball. You seem to be interpreting it as “stock value is what it trades at on public markets” which is not that far from how I interpret it when talking about public companies, but completely useless and confusing when talking about private companies.
I likely do value stock that I make as part of compensation much less than stock I buy as investment. I'd say my time horizon for a return is much shorter. That's just my preference for compensation. It's not better, it definitely has lost me money before but at some level money has lesser importance to me. I argued this point from my personal beliefs as someone who is in a position to go potentially work for xAI, it's not an abstract argument like it might be for you.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
Senpai comes down from his castle in the clouds to debate me... What a time to be alive.
Fetishizing algorithmic design is, I think, a sign of mediocre understanding of ML, being enthralled by cleverness. Data engineering carves more interesting structure into weighs.
This isn't data engineering either. Its low-level Cuda compiler writing and server orchestration. Goodfellow, Hinton, Schimdhuber, LeCun, et al. are definitely designing architectures, they aren't doing any more data engineering than normal MLEs, like me do... They clearly enjoy designing "algos", and the world clearly respects them greatly for that expertise. Also calling it "algo" design is incredibly reductive. Afterall everyone knows LLMs were discovered when Hinton invented the Boltzmann machine decades ago. This Transformer is just a paltry, fetish, "algo". The Data Engineering in Boltzmann machines was just too primitive!!!
But obviously you must have a far deeper understanding of ML/AI, why don't you quite your day job and start an AGI company? Put your clever prose and subtle insults to work on something more real. Maybe you can compete with ScaleAI, they do data engineering. Definitely the top AI research company.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
You got me, it appears Neil used Ellis's playbook too.
as if it didn't matter what the startup is actually doing. It does. Similarly, for me, there's a difference between how much I value Blue Origin vs SpaceX equity.
It does matter but there are so many of these companies that call you when you do AI/ML that they all blend together. They have very little in the way of actual value add. I have personal, if-non-proven, technical opinions on how unlikely these companies are to take-off. It was pointless for the hypothetical because while I wouldn't take an xAI-like job 26 people did.
The point of my $10k offer was to argue that the equity in a private company is not worth nothing, contrary to what you said. This argument was extremely successful, because you are now arguing for my side, telling me that the stock is worth more than $10k, and that the owner of that stock should hold out for better offer than mine.
It actually makes my point; it is worth $0. But just because an investment is currently worth $0 doesn't mean you should cash it in for the first lowball cash offer. Most people understand that level, I guess you don't, or you desire to be obnoxiously pedantic. Whatever...
In any case, the salary brackets in job postings for this segment of the market have no actual relevance for anything. Everyone knows that equity is where the action is, and since the California law does not mandate including equity compensation in these brackets (as if there even was a reasonably useful way to do that), nobody cares about these figures.
Your argument was that someone is making 448k salary, you've pretty much agreed with me that no one at xAI is making that, they might get equity but realistically since xAI isn't seed funded that equity is worth how much Musk decides it is. And that's only if the company goes public. Looping us back to the above argument where it is currently worth $0 but could potentially be worth a Bajillion, but it's not like they can live off of xAI stock before that happens. Hence their TC is their salary + bonus. Which is likely ballparked at 300k just like Twitter/X MLEs... So again, they aren't living like kings and there is no guarantee that they will retire early in the future either. They are in it likely for the name-rec and love of the tech.
Have you considered that maybe X AI is trying to attract talent of this caliber?
Yes, but there aren't that many people of that caliber to go around, and they charge wayyyy more than 448k in cash. Google just "paid" the creator of the transformer over a billion in cash to come back to work for them, by buying out his current company.
Regardless of whether transformers are a dead-end or not, the current approach isn't doing new science or algo design. Its throwing more and more compute at the problem and then doing the Deepseek approach of finetuning the assembly level gpu instructions to exploit the compute even better so you can throw more compute at it. I doubt, Hinton, Goodfellow, LeCunn, Schimdhubber et al. have any desire to do that. Maybe if xAI did something revolutionary like leave the LLM space or introduce a non-MoE-Transformer model for AGI, then talent of that caliber might want to work there. Currently they exist so Elon can piss all over Altman.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
I picked up The Universal State of America: An Archetypal Calculus of Western Civilisation by Simon Sheridan on @thejdrizzler 's recommendation, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
It definitely has me thinking of my own life from a Jungian archetype perspective and whether I've actually completely transcended the orphan stage into adulthood especially since the transitional, exoteric societal rites don't seem to exist, or have any meaning. I also just got to the section about the increase of Sage's who are disconnected from the cultural milieu and because the "magic" is gone from the societal rites it causes them to question the societal metaphysics. I can clearly see the parallel with a lot of the dissident right and woke left that gets discussed on here.
Definitely worth the pickup!
Sigh Ok lets play do this dance then...
Here's a hypothetical: Say I'm a Senior MLE with 8+ years of experience looking for a new job. I get contacted by/apply at a startup that is a start trying to do the next big LLM/LLM Agent/LLM dongle/Dohicky/Whatever. They cite to me an impressive amount of "just so" about who's funding them/running them/working at them and that their strategy to capitalize on ELITE human capital like myself as a non-progressive, white, male. With me so far?
They are a Series A/B startup, and don't believe in remote work so I'll have to move to the Bay, non-negotiable. Their comp offer to me is: 250k Base + 200k in equity + 50k in equity every year after the first that I work there. Equity value was calculated based on the rate sold to their investors. Vested over several years to make sure I stick around. If I leave early, before it vests, I will forfeit my shares. Pretty standard.
Ok first question, how much is that comp offer worth?
The Wlxd stance seems to be that is 450k TC and I would be stupid to turn down nearly half a million! I could work there for 5-10 years and retire early!
The Akka stance is that the 250k base is nice, but that 200k equity is realistically worth $0 at this time. It could pay off but it also very likely could not. The LLM market is very saturated right now. Everyone and their rich uncle is trying to capitalize on it. Akka would consider that offer based on the base and how worthwhile that job would be, with the equity as a nice-to-have but not absolute. For this hypothetical, let's just say Akka takes it.
The next month the company goes bankrupt. How much is that comp worth?
Or:
You put the labor in, but it's a toxic workplace and is killing your mental/physical health so you quit and forfeit. How much is that comp worth?
The rival company has a better strategy and a headstart, they beat you to market, you IPO late. How much is that comp worth?
Your company's CEO is a known narcissistic asshole and while he's good at his job, one day he decides he doesn't like you and shit-cans your ass: How much is that comp worth?
In addition to being a narcissistic asshole your CEO also gets involved in politics, the other side develops quite the hateboner for him and when the incumbent swaps they punish him. How much is that comp worth?
Now somewhere before this all happens some rando on the internet has a PRIME offer for you. He'll give you 10k for all of your equity. Because after all, you value it as $0 or somewhere low like that. However like any MLE, you are a smart fucking cookie and you look at your $250k salary and the estimated 200k equity you have and think 10k REALLY?. Would you really be so dumb as to take literal pennies on the dollar for your equity?? It's not worth anything now and it very likely could never be, but 10k is fucking chump change, pardon my french. Then this Internet rando has the gall to tell you he thinks it's worth millions. You definitely aren't selling it to him at 10k a pop now, if this investment is worth so much then why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and buy it from you at 90-95 cents on the dollar after all it's an AMAZING investment?
And yes, I get that its an investment, like i said it's all about risk appetite, and obviously, mine is less than yours. Lots of people who work at startups probably have a closer appetite to you, but also lots of them end up with nothing. That said 10k is an insultingly low offer and you clearly don't think it's a good investment or you would have offered more so....
Afterword
No, you quoted an article that was citing figures from job postings. Those figures are not there to sound impressive, they’re there to satisfy legal requirements California imposes on job postings
We can just agree to disagree on this. I've been in this field for a bit and know of zero no-name MLEs who make 448k salary. Maybe an Ian Goodfellow, or a Yann LeCun would command that sort of cold hard cash. Even the Senior Staff SWE at twitter make like 275k Salary, their half a million comps come from equity which is calculated in. As far as I know neither Ian, or Yann, or Schmidhuber, et al work at xAI, and in fact I don't know any big name who does. If you do, feel free to share for my learning.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
You clearly don't actually understand how equity works. It obviously is worth something, because investors are paying billions of dollars for it. Being public or private only has indirect effect on how much stock is worth.
Trust me I do, the real discrepancy is that we have different risk appetites. But please keep talking down to me.
These figures only include cash compensation, and they are a very reasonable range for cash part of the comp for between junior and staff levels.
I linked twitter salaries in the above thread. Everything in the Bay is talked about in the TC range because it sounds more impressive. If the post-Elon twitter salaries are any benchmark, then the 118-440k are TC as well. That means probably about 50% is in equity.
To put it in more concrete terms: I'd happily go to any of these X AI employees, and buy whatever they vest in a year for $10,000. This offer establishes that their stock is worth something. (I'm not just making a point, this offer is 100% serious: if you work for X AI, feel free to DM me, I'm open to negotiations even).
Anyone who worked for xAI would be a fool to take this offer because you are massively lowballing them. If they vest over 3 years as is typical, that 150k vested would be 50k a year. They would be a fool to sell it to you at 10k, Realistically based on how much you value it they would be better charging you 3x-5x the price since you clearly think its worth it. Would you cough up 150k-250k cash for 50k vested stock in xAI? You do after all think it is worth near half a million+, that would be quite the steal for you...
There are around 40 people in the photo. I bet you that at least 10 of them are seniors or above.
You made me go back and count, there are 26 people visible in that photo. If we assume a typical corporate structure of Junior, Engineer II, Senior, Staff. The general ratio is a mix of 1-3 Juniors/IIs per Senior, and 1-2 Seniors per Staff. I'd say there is 4-6 Seniors and 2-4 Staff Engineers.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
For context I'm an MLE, and while I'm not in the Bay, what I see is a 10-20% pay bump for MLEs over traditional backend SWEs. Frontend SWEs (Websites and stuff) are paid much less than backend SWEs. Database peeps can make wildly varying salaries depending on how much DevOps stuff they are doing and how critical the Database is.
MLE is generally a really nebulous job title as well, and than can really impact salaries a lot. I'm more analagous to an ML Researcher + SWE, but it can run the gamut from Data Scientist, Mathematician + SWE(I imagine this is a Quant), ML + Database/MLOps, SWE that interfaces with ML models, and most recently LLM specific Engineers (Generally called AI engineers).
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
I get how vested options work, I'm in tech. xAI is private right? It could be that Elon is offering stock but we don't know that. Until they IPO their fake money is worth literally nothing. If so, then they are likely making far less than the 300k TC. I pulled the xAI from some leaked memo about the Lawsuit between xAI and OpenAI, it didn't include the equity split though (can't find it now rip).
However this says 188k - 440k, I image the 440k is for for Senior and Staff engineers, Like 2-3 on that whole team, afterall someone needs to be the junior, and SWE2/MLE2s https://cybernews.com/news/musks-x-ai-jobs-salaries-/
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
A Senior Software Engineer at Twitter makes about $335k TC. A senior puts you in probably your mid 20s to early 30s depending on how much you grind. A Senior MLE is 387k TC
Source: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/twitter/salaries/software-engineer?country=254 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/twitter/salaries/software-engineer/title/machine-learning-engineer?country=254
Levels tends to be a good source in my experience. If anything its high because people like to brag on levels. Honestly people wild overestimate tech salaries, unless you are a founder, are in at the ground floor, or have some astronomically rare skillset you get a nice 300k+ which isn't much in the Bay.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
Everything I've seen is that they make about $300k TC in the Bay, which isn't the insane salary you think it is, with that cost of living.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
Be careful, I think the overlap between people who read MBotF and Motteposters/Rationalists is pretty high. I greatly enjoyed the series, definitely in my top 5. Definitely not some sexless dork. MBotF itself isn't particularly progressive, though the most recent Witness books had some cringe immigrant/refugee moments. I think this is far more explainable by influencers being highly fake; people who seek out fame are not normal. Clout chasers like the above are seeking to exploit their niche and in this case their only skill is being able to read/enjoy dense literature.
I think this maps cleany to the progressive impulse to want to be special, the pronouns, the celebration of different lived experiences. It all tracks that some nerd desiring to me special/famous, uses their love of deep fantasy to be different and then, because they are immersed in the the zoomer zeitgeist, then tries to become some niche influencer.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
I would also like a breakdown. I followed him back in covid before I started to divest myself from the whole youtube ecosystem.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
I like this theory the most. It definitely maps to my observations of people exploiting niches to get what they need sexually.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
Tiberius Gracchus was the one they killed/tried to prosecute, for disturbing their hold on the levers of powers. I think he most maps to Trump.
YoungAchamian
1mo ago
It's extremely reductive, but it's basically Rousseau? Has he been cast out of the Liberal canon?
My understanding is that he was never in Liberal canon. He had a huge distrust of private property, individual choice, and markets. All things that are actual cornerstones of Liberalism.
YoungAchamian
2mo ago
I'm interested in whether, as a self-defined progressive, you feel that progressiveness as whole is define by holding the virtue, whose shadows are kindness, charity, generousness etc.?
I don't want to force you into a no-true-scotsman situation or an inevitable dogpile so I apologize in advance if that happens. Anyways, quite a few progressives I know in my circle of friends and family definitely express their virtues as kindness and/or empathy. But the longer one talks to them the more it really appears their kindness or empathy is very narrowly directed. They clearly have outgroups they are not kind or empathetic to. They don't consider the second order effects of their "kind" policies and who it hurts or sometimes even care that it does hurt people. I'm not saying this is you or even your bunch but have you encountered this, how do you differentiate yourself?
Irish mythology doesn't really have a Zeus figure as there are a handful of tribes of gods who are not unified like the greek, roman, or norse pantheons. But the more civilizationally-aligned Irish Gods are the Tuatha De Dannan. The Dagda is the Chief of the TDD. He's sort of a cross between Odin and Freyr.
YoungAchamian
2mo ago
Google says its Mad Max, one of Immortan Joe's Wives. I doubt that's true. While probably not what you were going for, I always interpreted it as The Dagda.
YoungAchamian
2mo ago
Is there a good source to see what executive order's trump has signed and a general summary of them?
YoungAchamian
2mo ago
The community notes on his posts are hilarious. The take I saw recently is the Elon wants to be "King of the Nerd", and with his eggshell-thin ego he really can't take being called out by people nerdier or smarter than him.
(Edit) After some thought, I decided to tone done my dismissive vitriol and maybe offer a more constructive response.
Despite what you might think I don't have unlimited free time/brain power to engage in high-effort debate with random people online, I'm a shape-rotator, not a word-cell. Particularly since debating people online rarely leads to any information exchange or substantive opinion change. As such I apply a heuristic when having a discussion online on whether my interlocutor is worth it. Needless antagonism, unfounded arrogance, pithy insults and pettiness are the typical markers that its not. People who don't engage charitably and treat discussion as some sort of mal-social debate team competition, where anything goes, doubly so.
Dase you tripped up all of the above. To my chagrin, I snapped back which was unbefitting of my expectations for myself. If you want people to engage with you substantively, with high information density conversation, you have to give them a reason to put the effort in. If you write only for extreme heat with unproportionate amounts of light then no one reasonable is going to engage with you. Maybe that is to your taste, who am I to judge pigs that want to roll in the mud. Regardless I have better uses of my time than getting into the stie with you.
Food for thought: ML != LLMs, if your comment here:
was changed to this:
Then it is a far more applicable to the evidence you have provided and honestly I think the topic you actually care about. I might even agree, however the original doesn't align with the reality of ML as a field across ALL domains. But who knows, maybe my attempt at being charitable here will go nowhere, you'll double down on being an ass, and I'll update my weights with finality on the pointlessness of engaging with you in the future.
Have a good one.
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