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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

#201

Post by alphakappa »

masterof0 wrote: post #176
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…

> 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 you…

> 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.

Recruiters might be paid to bring people in, but HMs are the ones whose teams these hires typically work for, so being able to do productive things with them is more important than just bringing people in. The cost of retraining, losing institutional knowledge etc, and just the time it takes to bring in a new person are all costs that take away from the actual work of building the product.

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

#202

Post by blacksmith_tb »

sofixa wrote: post #122
mgraczyk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a mean spirited comment that doesn't belong on HN. Not going to argue but I don't feel that comments like these add anything of value to the discussion.

I disagree. Meta is a big tech company which is up there with Rio Tinto in "purely evil how the heck do they still exist" land. Tech people should be able to discuss how terrible they are. And one of the only possible ways to influence them from the outside is to shame those selling their morals for money.

That doesn't seem too hyperbolic to me, though to be fair to Rio Tinto they don't just poison rivers and blow up cultural heritage, they actually produce needed materials in the process. I'd say working for adtech is closer to a job with a defense contractor making landmines, maybe not quite so gruesome, sure, but so negative that the positives are awfully hard to see...

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

#203

Post by csallen »

supernova87a wrote: post #193
csallen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 particul…

Some of what you say is true. But lately, it feels like one of the skills of management hires is simply being able to talk like you know how to do the job. And when they then get in the company, turns out they have no better idea / skills to change what we do than anyone internally. But they just got paid 3x to join and find that out. But hey, maybe that's the game. And maybe the dumber companies are getting hoodwink…

I see stories regularly of engineers who know very little, yet get hired and paid huge sums to fuck around for years and coast while staying under the radar. It happens at every level. It's turtles all the way down.

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

#204

Post by tshaddox »

flunhat wrote: post #21
bagels wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that even referring to? My sewer works just fine and trash is picked up regularly.

Poop on streets is very common in San Francisco. Most of the bay area doesn't have that problem, though. Map: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab72091...

Even in San Francisco it’s mostly in a small geographic area, although it does happen to overlap closely with high foot traffic shopping and tourist areas.

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

#205

Post by bobsil1 »

verisimilidude wrote: post #41
aritraghosh007 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area is 6900 square miles of land and cost of living is as high as any other metro on average per square mile. London, Tokyo, New York and pretty much every other major metropolis has problems akin to the Bay Area but we never quite as frequently refer to London or Tokyo “falling apart” the way we like to attract all our collective attention to bash the Bay Area here.

With all of its wealth and demand, the Bay Area should look like London or Tokyo or New York. Instead it looks like Tracy. It’s not falling apart, but neither is it growing up. It’s stagnant.

Lowrise with mountains and surf breaks is actually pretty nice.

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

#206

Post by jedberg »

xrikcus wrote: post #36
nawgz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now the area around it is falling apart Lol. As a current Cupertino resident and non-Apple employee, this is the nicest place I’ve ever lived. Massive perfect roads, extremely low crime or homelessness, modern buildings, and easy access to freeways. It’s not at all like downtown SF

Coming from Menlo Park even, Cupertino feels a bit too dull and suburban, but it is astonishingly well maintained in comparison to anywhere else in the bay area. No doubt that the city is doing a great job.

I've lived here for 12 years and I can tell you that you are totally right -- it's very dull and suburban and also well maintained. It's practically a company town. The Mayor couldn't even name the second biggest employer in town after Apple. I think it's actually Amazon.

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

#207

Post by capableweb »

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…

> Most people I know who end up at FAANG level companies are interested in sticking around for at least 3-4 years

Which, unsurprisingly, also happens to (usually) be the vesting period for their stocks/options they agreed to receive when starting there.

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

#208

Post by hu3 »

double_nan wrote: post #33
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #24

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.

That explains the state of Xcode and WWDC-driven documentation.

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

#209

Post by masterof0 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #197
masterof0 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 you…

> 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. Hiring managers care because it's a big hit to your deliverables every time someone leaves and you have hire someone else, bring them up to speed, and try to get them back up to the same level of knowledge as the person who left. If you have a team of 6 and…

People leaving companies every 1-2 years, doesn't mean, that on any given team, everybody will leave every year, so your example is a bit over the top.

> It's actually becoming fairly common for companies to give back-weighted compensation or hiring bonuses that must be paid back if the employee leaves before two years, especially for job hoppers.

Which companies are doing this?

The way companies keep employees around is with good RSU vesting schedules, and end of the year bonuses, etc... I understand that a team with people leaving all the time, is bad for business , that's why companies (that care) have incentives in place to avoid that. But judging a person for wanting a better pay/treatment/wlb is ridiculous, I can see your point from the business owner perspective.

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

#210

Post by hamburglar »

sofixa wrote: post #122
mgraczyk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a mean spirited comment that doesn't belong on HN. Not going to argue but I don't feel that comments like these add anything of value to the discussion.

I disagree. Meta is a big tech company which is up there with Rio Tinto in "purely evil how the heck do they still exist" land. Tech people should be able to discuss how terrible they are. And one of the only possible ways to influence them from the outside is to shame those selling their morals for money.

I think an interesting thing here is that even if we all can agree that Meta is bad in the extreme, it's still fairly easy to hook engineers who want to solve non-evil problems on a massive, massive scale. They can tell themselves they're not working on a specific feature or service that participates in the evil, they're just using their talents to ... make an absolutely massive chat system, or incredible optimizations to network topology, or SSL termination at a mind-boggling scale. These aren't directly evil projects, and there are very, very few places where you get the opportunity to work on them at facebook scale.

I think this is how people justify it to themselves. It's probably how I'd justify it to myself if I went there. I personally don't ever plan to work there and the bigger and more evil they get, the weaker that justification becomes, but hey, it's a real thing.

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