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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Market south to Bryant, and 10th st north to the waterfront (i.e. SOMA) is a pretty prolific area, I frequently see the city deploying porta-potties to keep it under control due to the campsites that pop up. Also yeah Tenderloin, Lower Nob Hill, Design District, civic center, pretty much that whole "fertile" crescent. It's no surprise that the city gave twitter huge incentives to put their headquarters in between civic center and central soma.

I walk my kid to and from daycare in that area and see street pooping if not every week, three times a month. There's a reason why people move away from the city when they have kids. We are not far off from doing the same after almost seven otherwise very enjoyable years here.

I've "only" seen two discarded needles on the street the entire time I've been here though, one was outside of a major grocery store just before Thanksgiving.

The rest of the peninsula is pretty vanilla and mundane though. As are the parts of the city not an hour's walking distance from market street. It was very interesting visiting manhattan though, I'm not sure where everyone there goes, but their SOMA-style areas seemed overall cleaner than ours, which leads me to believe it's partly a city management issue.

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

#162

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 proces…

> 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… Strict standards for the masses, bonuses for the leadership.

The is the natural consequence of commoditization. If you are rank-and-file engineer #8430, you're a commodity. You've molded your skillset into a specific shape that fits into a particular hole, and as a result you get options. You get security. Because there are lots of engineer-shaped holes at lots of companies. Unfortunately, there are lots of engineer-shaped people. You can be easily replaced by someone with a similar skillset. So why pay you more and more, when if you quit, it's no big deal? Supply and demand at work.

These "headline" hires are different. They have rarer skillsets that are harder to come by. They're harder to hire, harder to replace, and often require poaching. Demand for them is high, because supply is low. Of course they're going to get paid more, and of course those deals are going to involve more flexibility and negotiation. For the same reason you see lots of negotiation during the purchases of cars/houses/etc, but not buying paperclips/cereal/other commodities at the store.

This is just markets at work. I think the mistake is assuming that just because you exist in the same company as someone else, your role in the market is (or should be) identical.

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

#163
post #151
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has product managers?

> Apple has product managers? hiring so many project managers. https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/search?search=pm&sort=relevance...

Project vs Product

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

#164

> "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." 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…

Sure, it's not going to discourage someone that is very actively looking elsewhere already. But for people on the fence? And the people that would follow them if they made the jump? That's who this is aimed at. And who knows? For the folks already looking to get out, if the first one or two opportunities to come their way don't work out, maybe they'll decide to stay too.

This is especially true for anyone looking to jump ship mostly for the money: If someone wants to jump ship for an extra 40k-50k, then giving them 30k makes the difference pretty negligible, all else being equal.

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perception is that everyone knows job hopping is normal and companies will be happy to have you for that 1-2 years if you’re good. It’s not a black mark on your resume. For me a questionable resume is someone who spent the past 20 years at Accenture or something. Signals possibility of being too entrenched in those habits to make a contribution in a new environment.

As an engineering manager, this is definitely not true for me. If you have a long history of short tenures, you aren't worth the time to bring up to speed (which is generally 4-6 months). Having a short stint or two isn't a big deal though, people work for companies that have financial problems, or they get a bad manager, or whatever.

I agree. If an applicant doesn’t seem to be invested into any previous company enough to stay more than a year they’re going to be sorted out very early on.

On top of that, most of our most productive engineers stayed over 4 years.

Unless you’re a senior or lead, it’s unlikely that you have had the opportunity to gain enough deep exposure to many technologies and problems in a very short tenure at a company.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bonus is a bonus. Presumably this is on top of whatever they had before, so an extra $20K to $45K per year is icing on the cake. In reality, most engineers aren't bouncing around from company to company every year trying to squeeze every last dollar out of their compensation. The strategy works well for a few iterations in early careers, but eventually it starts becoming counter-productive. If you have 10 jobs in 1…

My perception is that everyone knows job hopping is normal and companies will be happy to have you for that 1-2 years if you’re good. It’s not a black mark on your resume. For me a questionable resume is someone who spent the past 20 years at Accenture or something. Signals possibility of being too entrenched in those habits to make a contribution in a new environment.

If you a serial job hopper (stayed less than 2 years at more than 60% of your portfolio employers), that is a red flag for me as a hiring manager. Yes if you are stuck at Accenture for 20 years doing the same shit, that is also bad but you can't just hop jobs every year or so and call it normal. Teams want candidates to stick around especially if they are any good and if I don't see that on your Resume at least for some companies in your past, I would pass specially for senior roles.

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

#167
post #59

Speaking of employee stock options, Does anyone have a recommended resource that details what practically happens to my options when a company IPOs? I know there’s a lot of variables but I imagine there’s some common patterns and things to be aware of. The entire thing is Greek to me and might become very important soon.

I'm sure there's variables, but your company will most likely setup something with a brokerage and then you'll have to create an account there and have an employer equity account which will track your options. When you exercise them, the shares will go into your regular brokerage account and you can trade them like anything else (potentially subject to trading windows and other temporal conditions). Once you've got s…

Thanks. I was under the impression that until my options became stocks, my interface would be some person in the finance department. If my options appear in some managed brokerage account of mine, that makes this a lot more transparent.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bonus is a bonus. Presumably this is on top of whatever they had before, so an extra $20K to $45K per year is icing on the cake. In reality, most engineers aren't bouncing around from company to company every year trying to squeeze every last dollar out of their compensation. The strategy works well for a few iterations in early careers, but eventually it starts becoming counter-productive. If you have 10 jobs in 1…

My perception is that everyone knows job hopping is normal and companies will be happy to have you for that 1-2 years if you’re good. It’s not a black mark on your resume. For me a questionable resume is someone who spent the past 20 years at Accenture or something. Signals possibility of being too entrenched in those habits to make a contribution in a new environment.

It depends on how big the things you're building are. If you have an influence in direction-setting, policy, procedures, norms, even company culture, if you're involved in large projects that take time, then 1-2 years might not be enough. Certainly not 1 year. If you're in a large organization, it takes many months to just build the relationships enough to accomplish bigger things.

Jumping around every 1-2 years is fine if you're junior or mid. After that you're suspect. We had a guy who left after 1.5 years. It was sudden and disruptive, and the guy burned bridges. We were not surprised since his past jobs were like that (short stints, and anger by the end of the last one). However, now, everyone we interview who's senior, we look at a different light with regards to job hopping.

Lesson learned with regards to that. Beware of senior engineers who job hop.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bonus is a bonus. Presumably this is on top of whatever they had before, so an extra $20K to $45K per year is icing on the cake. In reality, most engineers aren't bouncing around from company to company every year trying to squeeze every last dollar out of their compensation. The strategy works well for a few iterations in early careers, but eventually it starts becoming counter-productive. If you have 10 jobs in 1…

My perception is that everyone knows job hopping is normal and companies will be happy to have you for that 1-2 years if you’re good. It’s not a black mark on your resume. For me a questionable resume is someone who spent the past 20 years at Accenture or something. Signals possibility of being too entrenched in those habits to make a contribution in a new environment.

I interview 50% or more of the senior engineers we (A YC-backed company that is post-IPO and still growing rapidly) hire. I assure you that our interview process for engineers at this level is weighted towards significant involvement in projects.

We consider it unacceptable if all the projects a candidate wants to talk about "began before I was hired, and shipped after I left." And that's what you get if you are an aggressive job-hopper your entire career, not just at the beginning.

I am never against someone wanting to negotiate the compensation they deserve for the skills they have developed. And certainly, for many skills, job hopping is the strategy for maximizing your pay for the skills you are able to learn and refine in 1-2 years per job.

But if you don't develop the skill of taking a major multi-year project from inception to completion, there is a skill you don't have that we will not pay for by hiring you at the top two levels of our org.

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

#170
post #88

Does Apple hire remote only engineers?

I know some people working there who are remote. (For example one lives in New York but works for a team that is located in Cupertino.) From what they’ve told me it all depends on what you can talk your manager (or a hiring manager) into. If you’re good enough and they want you badly enough, you can get what you want.
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