Some DeepMind AI engineers in the UK are being compensated by Google to take a year off from work.
Due to their noncompete agreements, these engineers are currently on “extended garden leave.”
DeepMind AI Engineers in the UK Being Compensated by Google To Take a Year Off From Work
Google still pays them during this noncompete period even though they are no longer with DeepMind.
After leaving a company, employees are prohibited from joining a rival for a predetermined period of time by a noncompete agreement.
Depending on an employee’s role or the significance of their work, a noncompete agreement may have different durations.
Six-month noncompete agreements are common at DeepMind, according to two former workers.
These provisions also apply to individual contributors who worked on Google’s Gemini AI models.
Although getting paid during this period sounds good, some people believe that because AI is developing so quickly, they are falling behind.
Being away from AI for a year feels like missing out on significant advancements, according to a former DeepMind employee.
Google claimed that its noncompete agreements are in line with industry norms and that it employs them sparingly to safeguard its interests.
Nonetheless, some workers feel that their career mobility is unjustly restricted by the noncompete agreements.
This news coincides with widespread layoffs in the tech industry, with over 8,500 workers let go by Google, Microsoft, HP, and Meta in March alone.
AI Will Replace Most Occupations
With a few exceptions, tech titans like Bill Gates, Jensen Huang, and Sam Altman have predicted that AI will replace most occupations.
Notwithstanding these forecasts, there is still a need for AI engineers, who will probably be employed for many years to come.
Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean recently stated that AI is responsible for writing 25% of Google’s software. This aligns with what CEO Sundar Pichai previously shared about the company’s use of AI-powered coding tools. Google has trained its Gemini model on internal codebases to support its developers, enabling AI to handle routine coding tasks while engineers focus on reviewing and refining AI-generated work.
