It’s payday for a lucky group of Apple engineers. Bloomberg reported on Friday that Apple is paying what some are calling six-figure “special retention grants” intended to keep a small number of hardware and software engineers from leaving the company.
The bonuses, anonymous sources told Bloomberg, are worth between $100,000 and more than $200,000 in restricted stock units that vest over several years, providing another incentive for engineers to stay at Apple. Apple couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Apple gave out a larger round of stock bonuses of up to $180,000 in December, according to Bloomberg. The beneficiaries reportedly included hardware engineers working on virtual and augmented reality headsets. Others were in Apple’s custom chip design group, which has reportedly seen some turnover as Meta has staffed up for engineers to work on metaverse projects.
The bonuses show the level of insecurity that some of the top-paying companies in the industry feel in this tight market for tech talent. (Even Google employees are feeling unhappy with their compensation.)
With inflation and employee angst about having to return to the office — which Apple employees will need to do three days a week starting by May — Apple and other tech giants are throwing more and more money at employees to retain them.
In the last few months, Alphabet has adopted a new cash bonus plan that allows employee bonuses “of nearly any size for nearly any reason,” The Wall Street Journal reported last month, and Amazon has raised its cash-pay cap from $160,000 to $350,000, according to The New York Times.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE