Before you pay for that next certification, hoping for a raise, check this out. Why AMD’s is paying $4.9 Billion Acquisition of ZT Systems, California announces a strategic retreat on AI safety legislation in the face of fierce resistance.
All this and more on the “actually, having thought it over, Mr. Petty, We WILL Back Down” edition of Hashtag Trending.
I’m your host, Jim Love. Let’s get into it.
Before you dump big money into that next certification, in a surprising twist, the gap between certified and non-certified IT skills pay has reached its widest point in 24 years, according to recent research by Foote Partners. Their latest IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index reveals some intriguing trends in the tech compensation landscape.
The study measures the impact of acquiring skills on bonuses received:
– Non-certified IT skills are now earning an average cash pay premium of 9.6% of base salary.
– In contrast, certified IT skills are commanding a 6.5% premium.
This data comes from a comprehensive survey involving over 4,400 employers across 83 Canadian and US cities, covering more than 434,000 tech professionals.
David Foote, chief analyst at Foote Partners, explains the significance: “The use of cash pay premiums for individual certified and non-certified skills is more popular than ever. Employers are coping with highly volatile market conditions. Without agility and flexibility in compensation practices, it is nearly impossible for them to hire and retain the talent that’s necessary to execute on shifting business initiatives.”
Some key insights from the report:
Certifications do add cash value. And IT certifications saw a notable uptick, with the average market value for 632 certifications increasing by nearly 1% in Q2 2024. This follows a 1.3% decline in Q1, marking the highest positive swing over two consecutive quarters since 2006.
Non-certified IT skills also gained ground, with 710 skills showing a 0.7% increase in Q2. Interestingly, only 160 skills changed in market value during this period, compared to 240 in the previous quarter.
Volatility in cash pay premiums for IT skills and certifications has decreased significantly, reaching its lowest level since 2019. Only 21% of skills changed in market value, down from 30.5% in the previous quarter.
What we’d like to know is the impact of skills acquisition and job retention and hire-ability, especially given the large number of layoffs that continue in the tech industry.
These trends underscore the dynamic nature of the tech job market and the ongoing challenge for employers to attract and retain top talent in an ever-evolving landscape.
For more detailed information, you can refer to Foote Partners’ full IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report. There’s a link in the show notes.
Sources include: Foote Partners
And here’s my constant dilemma. Do I use the Canadian or American pronunciation. Since it’s a US company, I’ll defer to the US zee instead of the Canadian zed.
In a significant move that’s reshaping the tech landscape, Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, has announced its acquisition of ZT Systems for a staggering $4.9 billion. This deal, expected to close early next year, marks a pivotal moment in AMD’s strategy to bolster its position in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence and high-performance computing markets.
So why did they do this?
ZT Systems, founded in 1994, is a major player in the server manufacturing industry, particularly for hyperscalers and cloud builders. Despite its low profile, the company generates an impressive $10 billion in annual revenue.
But AMD’s is not interested ZT Systems’ manufacturing capabilities, they want its team of 1,100 system engineers.
As Forest Norrod, general manager of AMD’s datacenter business, explains, “It became clear that we needed to substantially up our game here. With AI systems, it is increasingly clear to everyone in the industry that this is going to drive tremendous challenges in designing systems at these power levels, at these signaling rates, at this level of complexity.”
So the acquisition is aimed at enhancing AMD’s ability to design and validate complex AI and high-performance computing systems. This is crucial for competing in a market where system-level engineering is becoming as important as chip design. And they are willing to pay about 4.5 million per engineer, although they will get something for divesting the manufacturing operations.
And AMD does plan to divest ZT Systems’ manufacturing operations, focusing solely on the engineering talent and expertise. This move is designed to avoid competing with AMD’s existing customers in the server market.
But no matter how you stack it, the deal represents a significant investment for AMD, costing more than its expected revenue from datacenter GPUs for the entire year of 2024.
This underscores the strategic importance AMD places on system-level expertise in the AI era.
This acquisition highlights the increasing complexity of AI and high-performance computing systems, and the growing importance of system-level engineering in the semiconductor industry. It also demonstrates AMD’s commitment to maintaining an open ecosystem and customer choice, differentiating its approach from some competitors in the market.
As the AI race heats up, this is a bold move for AMD to step up to a much bigger position in the market and compete with rivals like NVIDIA in the lucrative AI chip sector.
Go big or stay home.
We’ll all be watching this to how it plays out.
Sources include: Next Platform
California, the state that has pioneered tough legislation against big industries was the first to blink in a conflict between the state and its high-tech industry. It has revised its proposed AI safety legislation in response to concerns from leading AI companies.
The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, also known as SB 1047, has had a number of changes to address industry feedback while, the state insists, it still maintains its core regulatory goals.
The bill faced resistance from AI companies like Anthropic and even federal lawmakers such as Representative Zoe Lofgren who expressed concerns about potential negative impacts on California’s innovation economy.
And it is a challenge. California is home to 35 of the world’s top 50 AI companies, highlighting the state’s crucial role in AI development and the potential impact of this legislation.
State senator Wiener who introduced the bill, acknowledged the changes, stating: “While the amendments do not reflect 100 percent of the changes requested by Anthropic – a world leader on both innovation and safety – we accepted a number of very reasonable amendments proposed, and I believe we’ve addressed the core concerns expressed by Anthropic and many others in the industry.”
The bill focuses on “frontier models,” defined as state-of-the-art AI models requiring more than 10^26 operations to create, at a training cost exceeding $100 million.
Key changes to the bill include:
- Limiting enforcement penalties
- Dropping criminal perjury provisions
- Removing language creating a Frontier Model Division
- Reducing the legal standard for compliance attestation
- Adding an open source carveout for developers spending less than $10 million on fine-tuning models
- Narrowing whistleblower protections
Most of these provisions would take a much deeper dive to understand, so the general California voters, who overwhelmingly support safety legislation will be mostly unaware of the ramifications.
So is the bill still valid? On the plus side, it does have support from AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, emphasizing its importance in balancing innovation with safety concerns.
But will it be enough to contain the AI of the future? Even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, not generally given to over-hyping his predictions, suggesting that within a few years, we might see models “better than most humans at most things.”
As the AI landscape continues to evolve rapidly, legislation like SB 1047 will play a crucial role in shaping the future of AI development and deployment.
And there is a needed balance between regulation and innovation. There is no doubt that Europe is taking much stronger positions on AI and in reigning in big tech, but they have discovered that in many cases, the big tech companies will hold back on bringing new features to market. Europe’s bet is that being the world’s second largest economy, they hold all the cards.
California, although its economy is the size of many countries in the world, isn’t in the same position. And its economy is driven by those high-tech unicorns and even startups. It can only push so far.
We can only hope that California hit the right balance.
Sources include: The Register
And that’s our show for today. You can find show notes at our news site technewsday.com or .ca take you pick.
Hashtag Trending in the summer features daily news Monday to Thursday with a weekend edition that drops late Friday.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host Jim Love, have a Terrific Tuesday.
