The battle for AI talent is so hot that Google would rather give some employees a paid one-year vacation than let them work for a competitor.
Some Google DeepMind staff in the UK are subject to noncompete agreements that prevent them from working for a competitor for up to 12 months after they finish work at Google, according to four former employees with direct knowledge of the matter who asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to share these details with the press.
Aggressive noncompetes are one tool tech companies wield to retain a competitive edge in the AI wars, which show no sign of slowing down as companies launch new bleeding-edge models and products at a rapid clip. When an employee signs one, they agree not to work for a competing company for a certain period of time.
Google DeepMind has put some employees with a noncompete on extended garden leave. These employees are still paid by DeepMind but no longer work for it for the duration of the noncompete agreement.
Several factors, including a DeepMind employee’s seniority and how critical their work is to the company, determine the length of noncompete clauses, those people said. Two of the former staffers said six-month noncompetes are common among DeepMind employees, including for individual contributors working on Google’s Gemini AI models. There have been cases where more senior researchers have received yearlong stipulations, they said.
“Our employment contracts are in line with market standards,” a Google spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. “Given the sensitive nature of our work, we use noncompetes selectively to protect our legitimate interests.”
As the AI field has blossomed in the past two years with new startups and opportunities at heavyweight tech companies, some DeepMind employees feel their lengthy noncompetes have restricted their movement.
“Who wants to sign you for starting in a year?” said one former DeepMind employee. “That’s forever in AI.”
Noncompete laws in the US vary by state, though noncompete clauses are unenforceable in California, where Google and several other tech giants are headquartered. New legislation introduced in 2023 expanded California law to ban the enforcement of noncompetes entered into outside the state.
In the UK, where DeepMind’s headquarters is located, noncompetes are enforceable if they are deemed reasonable to protect the employer’s legitimate business interests.
It can pose a serious challenge to some talent at one of the world’s leading AI labs seeking career opportunities elsewhere during a boom period for the industry, particularly as some of DeepMind’s competitors, such as OpenAI and Microsoft, grow their UK offices and try to poach staff.
One former DeepMind employee said they were aware of colleagues who considered leaving London for jobs in California just to get out of the noncompete.
‘It’s abuse of power’
The issue of noncompetes spilled into the public domain last week when Nando de Freitas, Microsoft AI’s vice president and a former DeepMind director, posted a message to DeepMind employees on X.
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“Every week one of you reaches out to me in despair to ask me how to escape your notice periods and noncompetes,” he wrote. He added that employees unhappy about the terms should reach out to DeepMind leaders, including CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu and senior research director Douglas Eck, whom de Freitas said are “against it.”
“Above all don’t sign these contracts,” de Freitas wrote. “No American corporation should have that much power, especially in Europe. It’s abuse of power, which does not justify any end.”
The AI talent wars
In the past, the idea of receiving full compensation without working for several months didn’t seem so bad to some staff, though in the red-hot fight for talent now happening in the AI field, it risks becoming a problem.
“It’s becoming less popular now because there’s loads of cool startups that would not be willing to wait six months-plus, so people end up missing out on some good opportunities,” said one former DeepMind employee.
A former Google employee said the noncompetes prevalent in the generative AI boom are a stark contrast to those seen in the tech industry in the previous decade, when “people working on some of the highest value systems in the world” could more readily take a job offer elsewhere without being bound by such agreements.
The former employee also drew parallels between noncompetes in AI and those seen in hedge funds, where clauses have proven notoriously aggressive.
“AI is interesting. It seems to be the first time in my career that you have this insane race, like a space race,” the former employee said. “People really feel like to be six months ahead, a year ahead, could make all the difference.”
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