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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

#171

Post by wing-_-nuts »

tshaddox wrote: post #11
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9

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. 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.

Just FYI, while cost of living is a problem pretty much everywhere in the Bay Area, the infamous sanitation issues are isolated to an incredibly tiny portion of the Bay Area.

The homelessness and drug use I hear about in SF really boggles my mind. If california were a nation, it's GDP would be higher than the entire nation of india. Why in god's name can a place as rich as SF and the bay area not address their problems? Seriously? This isn't hard. Look at Portugal. Are you really telling me this couldn't be done on a smaller scale in California? Do they simply not care?

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

#172

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Shebanator wrote: post #153
shrimpx wrote: post #136

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.

Also a hiring manager and I agree: The job-hopping mentality is greatly exaggerated online.

I go through a lot of resumes, but hardcore job hopper resumes are still very rare. Numerically, they'd have to be overrepresented in the applicant pool due to changing jobs 2-5X more frequently than everyone else.

It's not a big deal if someone has a couple short jobs on their resume or even a series of short-term engagements. But what may not be obvious until you've done a lot of hiring is that it's really hard to tell the difference between someone who changes jobs every 12 months for a pay increase compared to someone who changes jobs every 12 months because they get PIPed and managed out of every company they work for. Some people are really good at interviewing, but will show up at your company and proceed to ride your performance management track until they're pushed out, at which case they hop into the next company and move on.

So at minimum, job hoppers get much more intensive interviews and reference checks. But more realistically I just give priority to candidates who have track records of accomplishing bigger things over longer periods of time at companies.

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

#173

Post by mancerayder »

19h wrote: post #165
Shebanator wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seniors and leads aren't going to get a lot of depth in a short period time, either. Seniors and leads do a lot of non-deep work that, depending on their responsibilities, may involve "lead" activities that take away from deep-diving uninterrupted.

Also I don't think seniors and leads with short stints are to be trusted (from recent experience with such people).

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

#174

Post by mancerayder »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #34
wronglebowski wrote: post #2

> "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…

Also - is this even new? >50% of engineers at Google are L4+. For the last few years, at L4 you should have been getting annual ~$100k grants over 4 years if your work in The Bay. My understanding is that FB paid even more, and that Amazon was maybe 20% behind at the same level. It's not like pre-covid engineers got nothing and now you get a $120k Bonus suddenly.

Are these on top of a cash bonus?

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

#175

Post by PragmaticPulp »

shrimpx wrote: post #136
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #94

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.

> 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.

A few short engagements are no big deal, but serial job hoppers are a warning flag for deeper investigation.

I won't overlook a resume for having a job hopper signature, but we will be going very deep into their accomplishments at these companies. It's often hard to ramp up at a company and deliver something significant from start to finish and production follow-up in 12 months.

Most of the job hoppers I interview end up citing projects that they contributed to, but can't really pin down much significant that was really their own contribution. It's not impossible, but it's far more common to find significant contributions in 2-4 year engineers.

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

#176

Post by masterof0 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #94
wronglebowski wrote: post #2

> "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…

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…

> If you have 10 jobs in 10 years on your resume, every hiring manager who sees it will instantly recognize that you're a job hopper who isn't likely to stay longer than a year.

HMs in small companies, maybe, in big companies , they dont care, they are paid to bring talent in, they don't get penalized if an employee quits after a year.

> This provides the chance to accomplish bigger things, build ....

I have seen your other comments along the same line, is mostly wrong, at least here in the US, is always business , you have an obligation to yourself(or your family, etc...) not to your employer, most smart people hiring understand that you switch jobs seeking a higher TC, in the same way businesses change course/pivot seeking higher profits. The "stay forever and maybe one day you will get promoted", is a thing of the past. You make more money switching jobs than waiting for a promotion, lots of companies don't have enough "senior positions" or all the next level positions are covered, so you would have to wait until your manager (or next level pos) retires or leave. Also, managers see people who are afraid to leave, or "loyal" to the company as people then can squeeze more work out of.

> It also becomes difficult to really accomplish anything big if you're always leaving a company before you can really hit your stride.

"Anything big" like what?

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

#178

Post by anm89 »

ripper1138 wrote: post #15
judge2020 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is how it works, but if they're awarded now and Apple maintains its current growth it could be worth 4x (AAPL is up ~400% compared to 4 years ago).

Extremely unlikely that Apple will 4x again in 4 years. Last 4 years stock performance are an extreme outlier for the all big tech companies.

Lol, yeah they would be worth 12T at that point. Either the dollar implodes and Apple becomes a sovereign nation or 4x aint happening.

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

#179

Post by a4isms »

a4isms wrote: post #169
shrimpx wrote: post #136

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.

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 a…

p.s. There's more than just shepherding long projects, that's just the easiest thing to explain. But to add some colour, other things a senior engineer is expected to demonstrate are:

1. Experience with the consequences of their choices. Ok, you were able to get a job at company X, get up to speed, and lead a major cross-team or cross-group initiative within two years. What happened after that? Did it create the desired outcomes? Why? Why not? Were there unanticipated consequences? What part did you play in dealing with those?

2. Experience with change. Managers--even entire management orgs--change. Were you around long enough to live through one such change? Or did you jump ship without acquiring any experience or scars from the change? Strategies change, e.g. Pivoting from B2C to B2B, or weaning a company off a dependence on sales-led growth. Do you have experience with not just the technological consequences, but the organizational consequences? Do you have the skill of creating an oasis of calm within the chaos?

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

#180

Post by kerneloftruth »

m_a_g wrote: post #18
frozenport wrote: post #4

We've been interviewing a bunch of Apple engineers. 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.

In what ways did it become a dumpster fire? I thought Apple was a great place to work, but now I'm curious...

Things change. Their products used to be so good they were considered as a standard for quality and usability. Few of the iconic companies of the past retain their status. Apple has sunk a long way; but, like IBM and Microsoft, though, there's a still a lot of air to fall through before they hit ground.
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