In hiring and employment negotiations, what are the ethics and potential pitfalls of hiring top talent from your competitors? This question arose amid recent media reports that Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerburg has been attempting to hire staffers from OpenAI to run his new superintelligence lab. Let’s take a look at this negotiation case study of employee poaching.
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A Superintelligent Recruiting Effort?
Meta has lagged behind other top tech firms in its artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, including repeated delays in the release of its latest flagship model. Determined to catch up and move to the front of the pack, Zuckerberg launched Meta Superintelligence Labs, a team of 50 people tasked with meeting the goal of “superintelligence”—AI that is smarter than humans, according to the Wall Street Journal. Recruiting talent from his competitors would be at the center of this initiative.
Rather than letting recruiters lead the hiring process, Zuckerberg has been personally contacting his targets via email and WhatsApp messages in the belief that “an email from him is a more powerful weapon than outreach from a faceless headhunter,” the Journal reports. For some, the personal touch continues with invitations to dine at one of his homes, and he stays involved throughout the process of recruiting and employment negotiations.
Chipping Away at OpenAI
OpenAI, creator of the popular ChatGPT large language model, appears to have been the target of Zuckerberg’s most brazen poaching attempts. Meta has made at least 10 “staggeringly high” offers to OpenAI staffers—pay packages of up to $300 million over four years, including Meta stock, sources told Wired.
A Meta spokesperson said the reports are exaggerated. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, however, reports that Meta has tried to poach some of his top personnel with signing bonuses of up to $100 million. OpenAI’s chief research officer, Mark Chen, complained in a note to staff that the poaching felt “as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”
Altman said it has managed to limit Meta’s poaching by offering counteroffers to team members, including more money and greater responsibility. While at least seven OpenAI staffers are said to have accepted offers from Zuckerberg, the company’s “best people” have stayed put, Altman said on the Uncapped podcast.
In June, Zuckerberg introduced new leadership of Meta Superintelligence Labs, including new chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, the founder and CEO of AI start-up Scale AI.
Can and Should You Poach?
The poaching of top AI talent might lead one to wonder about the legalities and ethics of stealing a competitor’s top employees. In fact, U.S. antitrust law prohibits private companies from negotiating no-poach contracts—agreements not to steal each other’s employees—since such agreements can artificially stunt employees’ careers. In 2015, Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe agreed to pay $415 million to settle an antipoaching civil class-action lawsuit filed by thousands of their former employees.
That said, no-poach agreements can be permissible between companies that are doing business together, Transworld Data president Mary E. Shacklett writes for InformationWeek. For example, joint venture partners may be able to legally agree not to recruit employees involved in the venture. (Of course, you’ll want to consult a lawyer when discussing poaching with a business partner.)
Notably, in 2025, the Trump administration appeared to be moving toward allowing a national ban on noncompete agreements between employers and employees to lapse. This could eventually lead to a loosening of the prohibition on no-poach agreements between companies, though it’s too soon to say.
Many would say that poaching is an essential component of healthy markets. That said, be aware that aggressive poaching initiatives such as Zuckerberg’s are likely to anger your competitors, deepening their drive to “beat” you and perhaps look for ways to retaliate.
Poaching Best Practices
Altman predicted that Zuckerberg’s poaching strategy would not be a recipe for success. “Saying ‘we’re just going to try to copy OpenAI . . . that basically never works,” he said on the podcast. “You’re always going to where your competitor was, and you don’t build up a culture of learning what it’s like to innovate.”
Indeed, hiring a stable of superstars isn’t typically the best path for collaborative, innovative team building. Clashing egos can easily lead to infighting and turf wars.
This is a lesson Meta might have learned firsthand. “A grueling pace of product development, infighting among team leaders and a tight labor market” have fostered dissatisfaction on its broader AI division, the New York Times reports. In fact, competitors have successfully poached from Meta in recent months as some of its researchers have sought to escape a dysfunctional workplace culture.
This turn of events suggests the value of investing not only in top talent but also in the building blocks of organizational culture, including careful integration of people from various teams. Rather than just recruiting “rock stars” with great brains and top skills, remember to also seek out those known for building collaboration across teams and functions. They’ll be needed to manage all those egos.
What experiences have you had with poaching in employment negotiations and beyond?
Claim your FREE copy: Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate Better Business Deals
Discover step-by-step techniques for avoiding common business negotiation pitfalls when you download a copy of the FREE special report, Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate Better Business Deals, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
