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Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

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Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#71

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. 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 t…

I never worked at Apple, but I've been an Apple developer, since they were a pretty scruffy outfit, and everyone was waiting for them to go belly-up.

From my perspective, Apple has always treated their engineers quite well. Guy Kawasaki once said that "Working for Apple is like being paid to go to Disneyland."

It may no longer be the case, but I have always assumed that engineers at Apple have always felt valued.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#72

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.

> AR/VR will probably replace the smartphone in 10 years What? How? Why? Those devices have completely different uses...

AR is a superset of the smartphone

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#73

Interesting, Apple pays $180k over 4 years to prevent good engineers from going to Meta. 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.

> Apple pays $180k over 4 years to prevent good engineers from going to Meta

Much better wording than what the article says, which is "likely meant to keep companies like Facebook parent company Meta from poaching employees".

Poaching, as far as I know, is illegal trafficking of animals. Why are media companies insisting we see the human workforce as animals, and that we should view companies offering better pay/work as "stealing" employees when in reality, it's just people switching jobs, something that is normal?

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#74
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.

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.

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.

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 us what to do." It doesn't feel that way much at all now, because seems like Apple just wants labor.

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)?

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.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#75
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this animal poop or human specifically?

Human

There is actually very little evidence for this. It is likely that it is mostly dog poop.

EDIT: the comments in response are non-sequiturs. The map does not display mostly human poop. It is mostly dog poop. I know I know, you see people poop all the time. But that’s not what the map is.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an insider perspective on this, but from where I'm sitting, it sure looks like the giant bag of money is sufficient and Meta/Facebook hasn't had to worry about any of those things for a long time.

The giant bag of money is the tax. If they weren't having problems with retention and hiring because of the ethical dilemma, they wouldn't have to offer such a large retention bonus.

I think context matters a lot with these recent articles about eng salaries. Hiring any mid-level and up engineer is tough right now, and Amazon recently bumped their salary bands by quite a bit. I think other companies are now catching up.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#77

Interesting, Apple pays $180k over 4 years to prevent good engineers from going to Meta. 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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#78
post #66

Fuck me, how do I position myself as a developer being poached for $200k?

Go to one of a dozen or so privileged colleges that FAANGs almost exclusively hire from.

Or more realistically, know someone who is already at one of those companies and can vouch for you and get your resume looked at by a recruiter. After that it's mostly a matter of how well you can handle a high pressure tech interview loop.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#79

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.

> AR/VR will probably replace the smartphone in 10 years What? How? Why? Those devices have completely different uses...

I'd argue that since most of the younger generation uses their phones for social media, AR/VR has real potential in replacing traditional social networks in the next decade. The only thing I can think of that wouldn't fit well in AR/VR is reading articles.

Re: Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the designers get all the glory… sign me up! Maybe I’m naive, but designing UI stuff is a lot less stressful than making things actually work.

Designers and PMs. Apple is being ran by designers and PMs. Which is not really a bad thing from users point of view.

> Apple is being ran by designers and PMs

The nice thing about being run by PMs is that products and feature ship.

I joke bitterly with my friends at Google who can't seem to consistently deliver anything outside of their existing cash-cows.

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