Employers such as Google frequently include one-year non-compete agreements in their contracts to keep their software engineers from moving to a rival company. The fierce competition in the AI industry, however, adds a huge sweetener. According to a recent article, employees at DeepMind can earn up to a year’s salary doing nothing, depending on several parameters. We’re not sure what else will cause you to reconsider your present decisions if this bonus doesn’t.
This is the real reason why almost 10% of software engineers are earning $300K salaries while contributing minimal work
As reported by Business Insider, information from former Google employees who wished to remain anonymous was supplied. Even after employees leave, the advertising behemoth’s desire to stay ahead of the AI pack is so great that it is prepared to forgo a whole year’s worth of revenue to keep these people from joining the competition. Of course, as you might expect, some factors, including seniority and the importance of the work, affect getting paid for a full year. For instance, two former workers at Google DeepMind who worked on the company’s Gemini AI models said that a six-month non-compete is standard procedure.
Given the delicate nature of the work being done in this area, a corporate representative emphasized that these non-compete agreements are “in line with market standards” and protect the firm’s legitimate interests. According to another former DeepMind employee, some coworkers considered moving to California for work to avoid the non-compete, calling it an abuse of power. Even if the software engineers who are no longer employed by Google continue to get their non-compete bonuses, it becomes problematic when they pass up chances that are available to them.
Many software engineers lose potentially lucrative careers due to a non-compete agreement
Because AI startups, for example, are unwilling to wait six months to a year for the non-compete agreement to expire, many people lose out on potentially lucrative career pathways. Illustrating how insanely brutal this industry has become, non-compete agreements are common in the generative AI boom because even a six-month gap means the company leading one artificial intelligence model has a solid lead over another competitor, as a former Google employee recently shared.
The future of software engineers under AI expansion
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar has hinted at a groundbreaking initiative named “Agentic Software Engineer” (A-SWE), which intends to establish an autonomous AI capable of managing the full software development lifecycle, a big step up from current AI coding aids such as GitHub Copilot. According to Friar, A-SWE was not the same as how modern LLMs improved human engineers’ coding performances. She explained that this is more than just supplementing your current software engineers, which is something Copilot can accomplish today. Rather, Friar depicted an independent AI developer: for you, an agentic software engineer can develop an application. It can accept a PR [pull request] from any other engineer and build it. A-SWE is a robust solution that manages crucial duties, including quality control, bug testing, and documentation, in addition to software development.
Because it can perform activities like bug testing and documentation that software workers frequently detest, this not only expands development capacity but also strengthens thousands of software engineers. Those who would rather not work with software experts will find this method especially intriguing. It is important to note that several attempts have been made to create AI software engineers, with the most prominent being Peter Thiel-backed Devin, launched last year. However, its steep monthly price of $500 and lack of autonomy have caused mixed reactions, with some finding it unreliable and creating buggy code.
OpenAI’s arrival in the AI coding agent field has the potential to drastically transform the industry. With its high-quality AI models and widespread feedback on its LLMs, as well as its vast distribution of over 500 million weekly active users, OpenAI can propel a capable AI software agent into the mainstream. OpenAI’s A-SWE, which can understand requirements, write code, perform QA, and even write documentation, could revolutionize the coding industry. CEO Sam Altman predicts that the world’s best programmer will be an AI by 2025. If deployed and performing tasks like human engineers, this could significantly impact the software engineering job market in the coming years.
