Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

A few days after the interviews, Chen Zelin sent over several more candidates specializing in C++.

Chen Yiran and Gao Dewei conducted another interview and finalized a candidate.

Liu Yi, a Cornell CS Master's graduate, previously worked at National Instruments for four years developing test systems and has a solid foundation in C++. We are also in talks with Chen Zelin, a potential candidate in the VLSI field.

Although there are relatively few people, at least every position is filled; the only thing missing is high-performance computing.

Chen Yiran certainly didn't actually go to see the heir of Nvidia, not to mention that Huang Shengbin hadn't even started working at Nvidia yet.

Even if he actually got the job, it just seems really strange that he would ask someone else to help him poach someone from his own company.

But he had other options. He'd met several SLAC engineers at a lecture during a Stanford course. During their conversation, Chen Yiran learned that one of them, an HPC expert specializing in Monte Carlo simulations, was looking to switch jobs.

There were quite a few people listening to the lecture. After the lecture, Chen Yiran wanted to ask for contact information, but the crowd was so tight that she couldn't find anyone after leaving the room.

On Wednesday afternoon, Chen Yiran went to Stanford. The speaker, Dr. Anderson, was from the SLAC computing department and talked about the application of GPU acceleration in particle physics simulations. The data density of Monte Carlo simulations with thousands of nodes was somewhat similar to that of chip placement training.

After the lecture, Chen Yiran stayed in the classroom without leaving immediately. The speaker was packing up his laptop, and several students were still gathered around asking questions. After they dispersed, Chen Yiran went up to him and struck up a conversation. They were all from SLAC, and Chen Yiran wanted to ask if he knew anyone who was planning to switch jobs.

"Dr. Anderson? I'm Chen Yiran, a visiting scholar at Stanford. The GPU cluster scheduling scheme you just mentioned is very similar to a project I'm working on."

Anderson glanced at him, clearly not recognizing him, then paused, looked again, and said, "Wait a minute, you're the one who sold to Microsoft? Want to sponsor our project?"

Those professors are really shameless; they just ask for money directly.

"That's me. I'm currently working on chip design tools, which requires massively parallel training. I heard that some people at SLAC wanted to switch to industry?"

"You need someone for HPC? We seem to have someone here who wants to go abroad, his name is Zhou Tianyou. If you need him, I'll give you his contact information. Remember, if you become successful in the future, you have to donate to me."

Anderson then took out his phone and scrolled through his contacts: "I'll send you his email address. Just say I introduced him. He's a pretty easy person, but he's been a bit down lately. I heard he lost a lot of money in 08, which is why he wants to go into industry. He's very capable; he should be able to handle your task."

That very night, Chen Yiran emailed Zhou Tianyou, getting straight to the point and stating that he was the founder of FlowEDA and needed someone with expertise in HPC, introduced by Anderson.

I received a reply the next morning, and we agreed to meet at Coupa Cafe on the Stanford campus to discuss the matter.

Zhou Tianyou graduated from Peking University with a bachelor's and master's degree and then pursued his doctorate at Stanford University. He spent five years working on Monte Carlo simulations at SLAC.

Since we're both from Beijing, the conversation flowed smoothly. Zhou Tianyou was very direct about his situation: "We're both from Beijing, so I won't hide it from you. I was a bit of a fool before. Before 2008, I invested a lot in the stock market and even bought a house with a mortgage. Now I'm in a really awkward situation. My wife complains about me every day, raising kids is expensive, and life in Silicon Valley isn't cheap either."

My situation at Stanford is quite stable, and I earn a decent amount, around $100,000 a year. However, I want to earn more; I've lost too much money in the stock market. You mentioned you work in EDA (Electronic Data Automation). I've looked into it briefly, and if it involves data sharding, inter-node communication, load balancing, and fault tolerance, I should be able to handle it, as long as you offer more money.

Chen Yiran nodded and said, "We need reinforcement learning for chip layout, and the engine training requires massively parallel computing, GPU cluster scheduling, distributed training, and communication optimization. I have a general understanding of your previous work; although there are differences, the core is the same. As for your salary, how about I double it? This price isn't low."

Chen Yiran had Jasmine study it carefully beforehand, and also asked Chen Zelin and Gao Dewei for their opinions. Basically, they all confirmed that Zhou Tianyou's level could meet their needs.

Regarding annual salary, Chen Zelin also offered some suggestions. People at this level would generally see their salaries nearly double if they jumped to the industrial sector, since while such positions are rare, the number of people capable of performing them is also limited. Chen Zelin ultimately suggested an annual salary of 18 yuan, given the current economic situation. However, Chen Yiran, considering they were both from Beijing, felt it would be better to offer double that amount.

Zhou Tianyou took a sip of coffee, remained silent for a few seconds, then nodded helplessly and said with a touch of sadness, "One wrong step can lead to eternal regret. I actually really like working at SLAC. But this loan crisis has ruined everything. Sigh, I even tried to buy at the bottom last year, and then I got buried. If I don't come out and make more money now, my wife will bury me in the ground."

Chen Yiran was speechless: "It can't be that bad, can it? You didn't borrow money to speculate, at most you've lost your savings, why are you acting like you're going to die?"

Zhou Tianyou said somewhat embarrassedly, "The main reason is that I can't bear to see my wife go out to work hard. She has a strong sense of crisis and always feels that she can't do without money. Now she keeps wanting to go out to work to save some tuition fees for the child, even though the child is only 3 years old."

I see, so-called Beijing men care about their reputation.

"How much of your savings have you lost?"

"I lost about 30, not completely wiped out, I still have a little left. But I bought a house in South Bay, and with the mortgage and raising children, I won't be able to save any money if I don't want my quality of life to decline."

Chen Yiran nodded, impressed by Newton's stock trading skills.

"Alright, it's settled then. You'll get an annual salary of 20. You'll be responsible for building and optimizing the entire GPU training cluster. I'll provide you with three R710 servers initially, and we can expand as needed later."

Zhou Tianyou nodded: "When do I start work?"

"The office renovations will be completed next Monday."

"OK."

Over the next week, the remaining positions on the team were filled one by one.

Sanjay, an Indian, had worked at Texas Instruments for five years in embedded C++, giving him a solid foundation.

Wang Xue dropped out of Berkeley's EECS program in her junior year and worked at Sun Microsystems for two years as a Java low-level developer. She left Sun after it was acquired by Oracle.

Chen Yiran spent a lot of time persuading Raj Patel, whom he knew before, to come over.

Raj was highly valued at Nvidia; otherwise, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn there.

His family seems to be wealthy, and they don't lack money. Chen Yiran's previous attempts to sway him with money failed.

After much painful reflection, he changed his approach and made full use of various workplace PUA theories he had seen in later generations.

Then Gao Dewei was brought along to earnestly boast about the company's future, successfully convincing the honest young man to be completely fooled.

He even seriously admitted that his salary at Nvidia was too high, and that there would be pressure to match it here, so he was willing to take a pay cut to join.

Anyway, he's already financially independent. He worked at Nvidia for ten years, earning two to three million a year, and also accumulated a lot of stock.

As if afraid he wouldn't believe him, Raj directly stated that his family manufactured pharmaceuticals in India, doing OEM production for European and American brands. His father gave him two million US dollars in pocket money every year.

Although he was an only child, Raj's father didn't force him to take over the business, perhaps because he had only ever worked with generic drugs. Raj's father's education was simply to strive for excellence. The family business could be managed by professional managers later. But Raj was absolutely required to achieve results and do something of technical value.

What a nice guy! Chen Yiran felt her impression of India had improved. She wished she had a dozen employees like him.

After sending out all the offers, Catherine made an employee list and sent it to Chen Yiran.

Chen Yiran leaned back on the sofa, looking at the list on her phone screen.

Chen Yiran, CEO. Annual salary: 0, accommodation and transportation at his own expense.

Catherine, Administration + Accounting. Annual salary: $54,000.

Gao Dewei, Technical Partner. Annual salary of 30 RMB + 5% equity.

Raj, Technical Partner. Annual salary of 20 + 3% equity.

Zhou Tianyou, HPC Technology Lead. Annual salary: 20 yuan.

Lin Zhiwei, VLSI/Placement Engineer. Annual salary: 18.

Amit, VLSI Design Engineer. Annual salary: $165,000.

Zhang Minghui, C++ System Engineer. Annual salary: 155,000 yuan.

Liu Yi, C++ Systems Engineer. Annual salary: 15 yuan.

Sanjay, C++ Systems Engineer. Annual salary: $145,000.

Wang Xue, C++ System Engineer (internship converted to full-time). Annual salary: 12 RMB.

The total annual salary is approximately 150 million. Including rent, equipment depreciation, ADP service fees, coffee beans, printing paper, and other miscellaneous expenses, the company's annual operating costs are kept below 200 million.

Chen Yiran felt that the initial 15 million seemed a bit too much.

The main reason is that Jasmine is too strong; the structure she wrote is good enough.

"Jasmine, is there anything else I haven't thought of? Is there anything I need to add?"

There's nothing else to add. Our top priority now is to improve our security measures after the security company finishes its renovations. We'll also need to install our own cameras and other equipment.

"Okay, once the company's inspection is completed on Monday, which coincides with Children's Day, it's the perfect time to do protective measures. We still have so many spotlights and SABRE OC-17 spray at home, so let's distribute them as employee benefits on Monday, two for each person. Regardless of how technical our company's technology is going to be, we at least need to have sufficient firepower."

"Uh, I really forgot. Okay, I'll call the bank right now."