Desk·2026-10-09
Anthropic staff still leads the OpenAI paper rank
Same staff-engineer title. Anthropic prints the listing-path staff year. OpenAI prints the bridge-round book under it by about $90k. A GPT-6 ship does not reprice the seat.
Anthropic typical $1,250,000 against $1,160,000 at OpenAI.
Staff typical
Anthropic typical sits ~1.08× OpenAI
Same title. Claude staff clears $1.25M typical on a $300k base. ChatGPT staff clears $1.16M on a $363k base.
How to plan it
Sit the staff rank before you mark the ship
A staff engineer planning 2027 should treat Anthropic and OpenAI as two next seats, not one staff band. OpenAI rolled GPT-6 into paid ChatGPT on 8 October. That is a product ship. It does not move the book. Anthropic staff prints $1.25M typical on the ledger with a $300k base. OpenAI staff prints $1.16M typical with a $363k base and a thicker top, $1.6M against a Claude top that sits on the typical. The Claude book leads the rank by about $90k. The ChatGPT book leads cash: the base is about $63k higher. The IC year still runs the other way — OpenAI software engineer prints $653k typical against $591k at Anthropic — so the staff seat is the flip. If you can hold paper and want the staff rank, sit Anthropic first. If you want the higher base and the thicker top, sit OpenAI — but name the mix.
Also: Anthropic vs OpenAI · Who pays SWE