Google is reportedly paying some of its AI software engineers working in the DeepMind division to do nothing for an entire year. According to Business Insider citing four former employees, DeepMind staff in the United Kingdom with noncompete agreements are being put on what it calls “extended garden leave” for 12 months. This means that these employees, who have already left DeepMind are still being paid by the tech giant for the duration of their noncompete agreements.
For those unaware, when employees join a company, their contract may include a ‘noncompete agreement’, a clause used by tech giants to prevent people from working for a competitor for a certain amount of time after they leave the company.
These clauses are affected by various factors like an employee’s seniority and how important their work is for the company. The report suggests that amongst the four former employees, two said that six-month noncompetes are pretty standard for DeepMind employees. As it turns out, this also applies for individual contributors who worked on Gemini AI models.
While these long paid time offs are good, some employees may feel like they are missing out on the rapidly evolving landscape with a former DeepMind employee saying that a year is forever in the world of AI.
Google told the publication that its “employment contracts are in line with market standards” and the company selectively uses noncompetes to protect its interests. However, some DeepMind employees feel like the clause is restricting their movement.
The news at a time when big tech companies like Google, Meta, HP, Microsoft are laying off employees, with over 8,500 people losing their jobs in month of March. And while tech leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang and Microsoft’s Bill Gates have hinted that AI will replace almost all jobs except for a handful of professions, it looks like there AI engineers will be around, at least for the next few years.
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