Why Meta's AI chief Yann LeCun turned down a job at Google?

Yann LeCun , Meta’s chief AI scientist, recently revealed that he turned down a job offer from Google in 2002. He said one the reasons he didn't join Google was because of 'low pay' and the workforce back then was really small. In a post on X, he explained, "The salary was low. Obviously, the stock option package would have ended up stratospheric. But we had teenage sons getting close to college and needed cash. Housing is more expensive in Silicon Valley than in New Jersey."

He further wrote at that time Google had 600 employees and no revenue source. "Google had 600 employees and no revenue at the time (this was January 2002, before ads, gmail, etc). You can't really do real research at that stage. My job would have involved a lot of corporate strategy, technology development for products, management, etc." He wanted to refocus on basic research in machine learning, vision, robotics, and computational neuroscience.

A number of reasons:
1. Google had 600 employees and no revenue at the time (this was January 2002, before ads, gmail, etc). You can't really do real research at that stage. My job would have involved a lot of corporate strategy, technology development for products, management,…

— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) January 3, 2024

LeCun also candidly mentioned, if he would have joined Google, he thinks the research culture at Google would have been different. "I might have made it a bit more open and a bit more ambitious a bit earlier," he added.