The recent drama involving OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft caught my attention not only for the entertaining corporate governance drama…it also got me thinking about compensation.  Before Altman returned to OpenAI after his weekend ouster, Microsoft offered to match salaries for anyone who wanted to join Altman in his announced move to the tech giant.  The plan was to create an entirely new research division at Microsoft in order to keep Altman's team together.  But it also cleverly avoided upsetting internal pay equities.