{"id":93155,"date":"2025-04-08T03:28:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T03:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/google-is-allegedly-paying-some-ai-staff-to-do-nothing-for-a-year-rather-than-join-rivals\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T03:28:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T03:28:42","slug":"google-is-allegedly-paying-some-ai-staff-to-do-nothing-for-a-year-rather-than-join-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/google-is-allegedly-paying-some-ai-staff-to-do-nothing-for-a-year-rather-than-join-rivals\/","title":{"rendered":"Google is allegedly paying some AI staff to do nothing for a year rather than join rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Retaining top AI talent is tough amid cutthroat competition between Google, OpenAI, and other heavyweights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Google\u2019s AI division, DeepMind, has resorted to using \u201caggressive\u201d noncompete agreements for some AI staff in the U.K. that bar them from working for competitors for up to a year, Business Insider <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/google-deepmind-ai-talent-war-aggressive-noncompetes-2025-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some are paid during this time, in what amounts to a lengthy stretch of PTO. But the practice can make researchers feel left out of the quick pace of AI progress, reported BI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the U.S., <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/04\/25\/the-ftcs-ban-on-noncompete-clauses-could-be-good-for-startups-but-it-also-might-be-struck-down\/\">the FTC banned most noncompetes last year<\/a>, but that doesn\u2019t apply to DeepMind\u2019s London headquarters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last month, the VP of AI at Microsoft posted on X about how DeepMind staff are reaching out to him \u201cin despair\u201d over the challenge of escaping their noncompete clauses:<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Dear @GoogDeepMind ers, First, congrats on the new impressive models.<\/p>\n<p>Every week one of you reaches out to me in despair to ask me how to escape your notice periods and noncompetes. Also asking me for a job because your manager has explained this is the way to get promoted, but\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Nando de Freitas (@NandoDF) <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NandoDF\/status\/1904818330143273222?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 26, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Google didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment from TechCrunch but told BI it uses noncompetes \u201cselectively.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/07\/google-is-allegedly-paying-some-ai-staff-to-do-nothing-for-a-year-rather-than-join-rivals\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retaining top AI talent is tough amid cutthroat competition between Google, OpenAI, and other heavyweights. Google\u2019s AI division, DeepMind, has resorted to using \u201caggressive\u201d noncompete<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}