> "Most engineers received stock worth $80,000 to $120,000, with the bonuses provided as restricted stock units that are set to vest over the course of four years provided the employees stay with Apple and do not take jobs at other companies."<p>Is that really a significant amount enough to ward off being poached? 120k over 4 years is 30k a year if linear. I would think at the pay scales being discussed they would get 30k a year just to move companies.
Apple is reaching a size where the un-coordination of its leadership and processes as it has grown (while yet rigorously enforcing other negative aspects of corporate culture) are producing a place that is harder and harder to enjoy working for. It worked for a while when the company was small enough and lines of command were short enough for leadership to control effectively, but it has grown while the people processes have not been consciously updated to fit.<p>Maybe this is just 1% problems. So let me be specific and you judge. Promotion within Apple is getting nearly impossible as a career path, because company-wide "standards" on how to promote someone (above a certain level) invite division-wide scrutiny and justification to peers (of the people doing the promoting). Not to say that it was a huge career path in the past (you had to be lucky), but at least you got paid competitively. Now, can't pay someone market rate because that would be going out of band. While at the same time, people who come in as "headline" hires from external are given not nearly such scrutiny and instead get $Ms and hiring bonuses and directorships. AIML, I'm looking at you. Strict standards for the masses, bonuses for the leadership.<p>And Apple is also not good at training/setting up/teaching people how to advance while working inside the company. So you are practically incentivized to leave and come back for your career advancement (once you realize it and want to stop banging your head against the wall). But not in any way that was deliberate, which loses the company a good deal. Maybe doing that better could have saved the company the billions they're having to pay now to keep people.<p>I remember a Steve Jobs quote where he said, "we don't hire smart people to tell them what to do, we hire them so they tell <i>us</i> what to do." It doesn't feel that way much at all now, because seems like Apple just wants labor.<p>And the annual review system is a joke. It serves just to gather feedback from peers and file it away in the drawer, since the salary bumps and bonuses are already all determined top-down from leadership. So what's the point of giving feedback or striving out of your way (unless you have some project that's got major visibility on the line)?<p>I thought that Apple was a welcome exception from the college-kids-software-companies, with some more maturity and rigor to it. Turns out every company has issues. Eventually you come to accept what the company is in your small pocket of it, and take it or leave it.
Pretty much everyone I know who worked in Software at Apple had a bad experience. The common refrain was that engineers are treated like crap at apple, and it's the designers who get all the glory.<p>It makes me excited for the future of software engineering to see moves like this. Clearly Apple, and many other companies, are starting to understand just how critical devs are to a modern business. And they are finding that to get good devs, you have to treat devs well too, in order to compete with companies like Google & Meta. My bet: salaries, especially for experienced engineers, continue to skyrocket.
Interesting, Apple pays $180k over 4 years to prevent good engineers from going to Meta.<p>Meanwhile, Meta gives >$1M in discretionary equity to top performers to prevent them from leaving. I don't think Apple picked a big enough number here.
Amazon upped their L5 and L6 pay bands by 100k on the upper end. These companies are having trouble retaining and attracting talent, word has also spread on the internet about poor treatment of employees. 30k a year is nothing when someone else will give you a 150k raise.
This is nothing new. I've heard that some well-known tech companies are offering fairly large additional stock-based long-term incentives (up to 2-3x salary in some cases) to key senior engineering talent to keep teams together for the next few years.<p>LTIs are a pretty standard retention practice in general, especially for key employees who are already at the top of their pay bands, but the churn in the industry over the last 18 months has probably driven up the actual value of them across the board, and potentially even shortened the vesting period.
Back in 2008 or so I remember rumors of Google giving million dollar stock awards to keep engineers from leaving, particularly female or other under-represented classes. These Apple award numbers sound downright stingy for a trillion dollar tech company.
Apple is clearly an incredibly successful company but to take an example why would an energetic young developer ever choose to work on Apple Music over Spotify? I say this as an Apple Music subscriber but one is a company that is existentially all in and the other that sees a revenue stream. This is evident in the quality of the respective products. If you’re not in the AR/car divisions then what is the point.
Well, I’d love to work for Apple, but I have no interest into moving from Minnesota suburbs to the Bay Area with all of its sanitation and ludicrous cost of living problems.<p>If I was Apple… it was the wrong time to build fancy headquarters. You got a few years, and now the area around it is falling apart and your employees have fallen in love with remote work.
I've heard (2nd hand) Microsoft also handed out SSAs ("Special Stock Awards") last month, but it's unclear how they chose the recipients (all across the level range and performance score range, though it appeared more targeted at ~3-4 year hires who are probably approaching their cliff and considering jumping).
The comments talking about the amount not being enough etc is what I really hate about this place. The amount of money referenced can be life changing for a lot of people and even the concept of getting a bonus for many people is just not part of their reality. If you don’t keep your feet, this place can very easily make the ordinary developer feel like they’re doing something wrong in their career and question why they also aren’t earning exorbitant amounts of money. Not that I’m projecting!
My expirence from other large companies is these bonuses will be given to wrong engineers. But that is the nature of the beast. Nobody yet figured out the fix.
On one hand it seems like it would have happened already, but I still have to wonder if the FAANG arms race will have consequences in 5-10 years when all these overpaid engineers call in rich and decide to go work on something more interesting and with less bureaucracy in the way.
Slightly off topic. I saw this news at Bloomberg which is what is referenced by macrumors. Noticed that picture selling PowerBook G4 which was sold between 2001-2006. Really? News media just stopped investing in photos? This is even before the iPhone era:)<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-28/apple-pays-unusual-180-000-bonuses-to-retain-engineering-talent" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-28/apple-pay...</a>
In 1979 an inflation-led recession rocked the US economy, abated for about 3 quarters, then returned for another 4 quarters starting in 1981. I expect the same to happen in the months ahead, and in that context Apple's offer is attractive. For anyone who hasn't lived through a deep recession, or an inflation-led recession (stagflation)... it really sucked.
We've been interviewing a bunch of Apple engineers.<p>I doubt the $30k a year with some difficult vesting cliff is going to keep those guys working at the dumpster fire that has become Apple.
Speaking of employee stock options,<p>Does anyone have a recommended resource that details what practically happens to my options when a company IPOs?<p>I know there’s a lot of variables but I imagine there’s some common patterns and things to be aware of.<p>The entire thing is Greek to me and might become very important soon.
these offers seem to be _down_ from 10 years ago when the retainers were 10x as large?<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-engineer-3-5-million-to-turn-down-facebook-offer/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-engine...</a><p>That was Facebook-Google though. Apple likes to do no-poaches... <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...</a>
Someone should make a platform that's like Linkedin meets ebay... You basically list your resume, salary, and companies can bid for you... No need to apply, etc..just get offers.
Apple is the biggest brand in the world and consumers love the company more than any other brand. Meta/Facebook is a peanut when it comes to the consumer hardware space. AR/VR will probably replace the smartphone in 10 years but I don’t think Apple has anything to worry about. Apple will cannibalize the iPhone themselves.
What skillet is needed for these jobs that in so much demand? I've been working with infrastructure/VMware for 10 years and just a year in Azure. Looking for a quick way to catch up and ride this gravy train.