Compute as Compensation

Employers are beginning to include dedicated AI inference resources — token budgets, Copilot subscriptions, or guaranteed GPU time — as explicit elements of job packages. Candidates now ask in interviews what compute allotment they'll receive, and some offers already list such subscriptions alongside salary, bonus, and equity. — Treating compute as a negotiable form of pay restructures labor bargaining, creates new nonmonetary rents tied to platform access, and could entrench project‑level inequalities and vendor lock‑in across the tech sector.