Observation: Over ten thousand AI core employees earn a total of $20 million, intensifying Silicon Valley class anxiety

AIMPACT News, May 16 (UTC+8), according to Beating Monitoring, Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das pointed out today that, influenced by the AI wave, the San Francisco Bay Area is experiencing severe wealth polarization and psychological rifts. Over the past five years, approximately 10k core employees and founders from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and NVIDIA have accumulated over $20 million in wealth. This cliff-like wealth creation myth is making traditional software engineers feel hopeless about their career prospects.
Along with layoffs at major companies and daily work being transformed by AI, four typical mindset shifts are emerging in Silicon Valley’s tech scene:
• Traditional promotion paths are failing. Most people realize that a regular job paying $500k a year cannot bridge the wealth gap, leading to frequent job hopping or blind entrepreneurial pursuits.
• Young groups are falling into career nihilism. Facing the threat of being replaced at any time, some young people are worried about becoming lower-class citizens and find it hard to focus on their current work.
• Middle managers feel paralyzed. Due to lack of energy to start a business and no core AI skills, many middle managers burdened with family pressures are facing the risk of their positions being hollowed out.
• The ultra-rich are losing their sense of purpose. After rising from an annual salary of $150k to a net worth of $50 million within a few years, some face a complete upheaval in life plans, often continuing to start businesses solely to gain status and identity.
Das believes that in this AI gold rush reshaping society, the anxiety of trying to keep up with wealth through effort is psychologically tormenting many Silicon Valley practitioners. And the side effect of this anxiety is precisely what drives more people to frantically develop AI products capable of creating wealth. (Source: BlockBeats)