Anthropic—Refused to match Meta's poaching offers to maintain internal compensation fairness
When Meta offered over $100 million to poach Anthropic employees, Amodei refused to negotiate individually: 'We are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers.' Maintains level-based compensation without individual negotiation. Company has 95% offer acceptance and 80% retention rate.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Worker Rights | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | +0.590 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
Amodei announced in August 2025 that Anthropic refused to match Meta's $100M signing bonuses, maintaining level-based compensation fairness
In early August 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sent a Slack message to all staff announcing the company would not compromise compensation principles when individual employees receive outside offers. Meta had been offering $100 million signing bonuses to poach staff from competitors including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Amodei stated on the Big Technology Podcast: 'We don't negotiate that level because we think it's unfair' and 'We are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers.' Anthropic maintains level-based compensation tied to employee classification, not individual negotiation. The result: Anthropic achieved 80% retention rate for employees hired over the last two years, compared to 78% at Google DeepMind, 67% at OpenAI, and 64% at Meta. Amodei said fewer people from Anthropic were poached 'not for lack of trying' from Meta, calling it 'a unifying moment for the company.'