Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta gave a 24-year-old artificial intelligence whiz a staggering $250 million compensation package, raising the bar in the recruiting wars for top talent — while also raising questions about economic inequality in an AI-dominated future.
Matt Deitke, who recently dropped out of a computer science doctoral program at the University of Washington, initially turned down Zuckerberg’s “low-ball” offer of approximately $125 million over four years, according to the New York Times.
But when the Facebook founder, a former whiz kid himself, met with Deitke and doubled the offer to roughly $250 million — with potentially $100 million paid in the first year alone — the young researcher accepted what may be one of the largest employment packages in corporate history, the Times reported.
“When computer scientists are paid like professional athletes, we have reached the climax of the ‘Revenge of the Nerds!'” Professor David Autor, an economist at MIT, told The Post on Friday.