A company pays its employees to stay for nothing. “No American corporation should have so much control, especially in Europe.”
In order to keep their top artificial intelligence specialists, Google resort to a less common method: it pays some employees not to work for a year.
Some of the employees are paid to stay for nothing. Photo archive
Google's Deepmind Division, specialized in artificial intelligence, has resorted to a less common measure, for fear of competition. He has appealed to extremely strict non -competition clauses, whereby some of the employees, including in Europe, are forbidden to work for rival companies for up to 12 months. Thus, for a year, the employees continue to be paid, although they do not carry out any activity, which is equivalent to an extended period of notice, according to Business Insider.
The measure comes against the background of an intense competition between technology giants, such as Google, Openai and Microsoft.
Although they have the opportunity to stay in vain and receive money, many of the specialists are totally dissatisfied with this, because in this way they are disconnected from the accelerated pace of innovations in the field, which affects their professional evolution.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) banned most of the “aggressive” non -competition agreements in the US, but the Deepmind headquarters in London, for example, but this does not apply to the Deepmind headquarters in London, the British press notes.
The controversy was recently fueled by a post by the Vice -President for Artificial Intelligence from Microsoft, Nando de Freitas, who distributed on the X platform a message stating that it is frequently contacted by employees “desperate” to get out of these restrictive clauses.
“Dear @googdeepmind-eiri,
Congrats on the new remarkable models.
Weekly, I receive messages from you, asking for advice on how to get rid of the notice periods and the non -competition clauses. Some even ask me for a job, because they were told that they can only be promoted.
Please talk to each other, not with me. Your leaders should answer for this situation. I know that @koraykv and @douglas_eck declared themselves against-maybe it's a good starting point.
And, most importantly, do not sign such contracts. No American corporation should have so much control, especially in Europe. It is an abuse of power without justification ”, he told Nando by Freitas to his colleagues.
So far, Google has not offered an official view of this situation.
