Ex-Stripe Engineer: Half My Best Colleagues Went to Anthropic, Half to OpenAI
rickasaurus · x · 2026-11-06
Former Stripe engineer brandur wrote long, slightly bearish thoughts on Stripe's talent situation: of the best people he worked with, roughly half are now at Anthropic and the other half at OpenAI, with a few scattered into startups.
He describes a perfect storm:
- Anthropic/OpenAI engineering comp bands are so much higher than Stripe's that they barely overlap—the minimum at Ant/OAI is around or above Stripe's maximum.
- Both AI labs have signaled IPO intent, providing clear future liquidity, while the Collisons remain adamant about not IPOing, reminding employees of this regularly (most recently in an Aug 2026 investor letter).
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