Artificial Intelligence: Talents Rising at Gold Prices

Blessed are the young graduates who master the arcana of artificial intelligence (AI) because companies will come to them. "It is up to us, employers, to convince the most qualified of them to join us," says Romain Lerallut, director of research and development of the French Internet retargeting company Criteo. It's not easy for everyone.
With the current craze for this discipline, the rating of professionals has exploded. The creation of laboratories in France by international giants such as Facebook has further increased competition between companies to attract these rare talents.
On February 21, Microsoft announced the opening of a global development center in Paris, home to about a hundred engineers. In 2018, IBM has announced that it wants to achieve 400 hires in this branch in France. Samsung has opened an innovation center in the heart of Paris to accommodate a hundred specialists, and Facebook has promised an investment of 10 million in its Paris laboratory by 2022 ...
To get the best profiles, these tech giants have forged strong links with research, like Google, who took part in the creation of a chair of artificial intelligence at Polytechnique. "We have partnerships with schools to allow students to work on projects," said Nicolas Sekkaki, president of IBM France. Students have sometimes not even finished their studies when they join these companies in internship or to finish their thesis. "The researchers who publish a lot are the most courted by the GAFA [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon], with offers of salaries that only they can formulate," says Romain Fouache, Dataiku's operations director - a start-up In December 2018, the French government raised more than 100 million dollars (89 million euros).
Article reserved for our subscribers Read also Luc Julia, artificial intelligence "made in France"
Faked competition at the income level
All the actors make the observation of a competition rigged at the level of the incomes. "As soon as a large group wants to build a big team, it suffices to inflate 20% salary proposals," said Fred Raynal, CEO of Quarkslab, a company specializing in cybersecurity. "They imported the Silicon Valley compensation model, with stock options or free shares," says Romain Lerallut.

The rest is reserved for subscribers.