28 Jul 2025 4 min read 2025 Trends

AI's Great Divide: Why Meta Is Paying $300M for PhDs—While Juniors Can’t Even Get a Phone Screen

When Meta gives $300M to PhDs and entry-level devs get “404: Job Not Found.”

Summary

Big Tech’s AI arms race has created two very different job markets. Elite researchers are getting $200M+ offers from Meta and co. Meanwhile, junior engineers can’t even get an interview. Here's why this is happening—and what it means for the future of work.

Introduction: Welcome to the AI Barbell Economy

Imagine two engineers. One just got a $250 million offer from Meta. The other just got rejected by a chatbot after applying to 134 jobs.

Both are real. Both are working in AI.

This is not a job market—this is a stratification machine. In 2025, we’re seeing a historic split: an elite class of AI researchers commanding CEO-level packages, and everyone else, especially entry-level software engineers, watching hiring pipelines vanish.

Let’s walk through what’s really going on.

1. Apple Isn't Poaching—It’s Bleeding

Despite rumors that Apple was luring AI stars with $10M offers, the reality is far more ironic: Apple is losing top AI talent to Meta.

Head of Foundation Models, Ruoming Pang, was poached by Meta with a reported package over $200M.
Pang’s key team members followed—Meta also snapped up Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, gutting Apple’s internal LLM team.
Apple reportedly offered retention bonuses to 100+ engineers just to stop the bleeding.

Meanwhile, Apple is exploring replacing its own LLMs with external models like Claude or ChatGPT to power Siri.

Meta-comment: If you’re building a $3T company and still considering “renting” your AI, something’s off.

2. Meta’s Billion-Dollar Superteam Strategy

While everyone else was laying off engineers, Meta decided to build the Avengers of AI.

Meta offered $200–300 million over four years to top-tier AI talent.
They’ve recruited Alexandr Wang, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross—effectively acquiring brains instead of startups.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman called it “insane,” which probably means it’s working.

"The typical offer for the folks being poached... is $200 million over 4 years. That is 100x that of their peers."

That’s not a talent war. That’s a compensation coup.

3. The Entry-Level Ice Age

Now the flip side. While Meta is launching golden parachutes, junior engineers are falling without a net.

Software job postings are down 35% vs. 2020.
Programming employment is at its lowest since 1980.
Entry-level hires? Only 2.5% of AI roles are open to new grads.
Salesforce and Microsoft now say AI writes 30%+ of their code.

"Junior engineers have a little bit of a target behind them."

Which is polite-speak for: They’re expendable now.

If you’re just out of school with a CS degree, good luck. Unless you also have a PhD, 2 YOE, Kaggle trophies, and maybe a podcast.

4. Trumpism: Tough on Visas, Soft on Billionaires

Trump’s AI hiring stance isn’t a total shutdown, but it’s no open door either.

He supports H-1B visas—but only for high-wage roles.
Proposed changes prioritize wage-based selection and restrict vague “specialty occupation” claims.
Tech CEOs are nervous. Companies like Google and Amazon are advising H-1Bs not to travel abroad.

Quote-worthy: “77% of top U.S. AI companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants.”

So if immigration slows down, America’s AI dominance could too.

5. The Numbers Don’t Lie: It’s a Barbell

AI research roles: +22% growth
Data science: +36% growth
ML engineers: +74% growth over 3 years
Entry-level tech jobs: down 50%+ since 2019

And compensation?

OpenAI researchers: $10M+ annually
Entry-level applicants: 2% phone screen rate

"We’re going from mass hiring to precision hiring."

This is no longer a pyramid. It’s a barbell. Heavy hiring at the top, nothing in the middle, and light (or zero) at the bottom.

So What Now?

If you're a developer:

Learn to build or leverage LLMs.
Specialize in niche + AI (think: AI + law, AI + bio, AI + policy).
Accept that vanilla SWE is becoming commoditized.

If you're a company:

Compete for elite AI talent—or figure out how to use their tools better than your competitors.

If you're a policymaker:

Treat AI talent like rare earth metals: strategic, scarce, and not easily replaceable.

Takeaways

Meta is reshaping tech hiring by paying superstar AI talent CEO-level packages.
Apple is quietly falling behind—and may outsource Siri’s brain.
Junior engineers face the worst market in a generation.
Trump's visa policy may target wage thresholds, not outright bans, but fear is spreading.
The future of tech work is not evenly distributed—it’s being concentrated at the very top.

Sources

Derek from TrendFoundry

Breaks down AI, tech, and economic trends—usually before your boss asks about them. Founder of TrendFoundry. Writes like a smart friend with too many tabs open. Still refuses to call himself a “thought leader.”

San Diego, CA, United States