No Loyalty to Tim Apple: iPhone Giant Offers $180K Bonuses to Prevent Engineer Defections to Facebook

Lucas NolanDecember 29, 2021

Tech giant Apple has reportedly issued significant stock bonuses to some engineers in an attempt to prevent top talent leaving for Facebook. The retention bonuses are as much as $180,000 for key engineering talent.

Bloomberg reports that Apple is attempting to prevent its top talent from leaving to join tech rivals like Facebook (now known as Meta) by offering significant stock bonuses. The company informed some of its engineers in silicon design, hardware, and select operation groups last week that they would be receiving out-of-cycle bonuses issued as restricted stock units.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg askew on a TV ( MANDEL NGAN /Getty)

Apple CEO Tim Cook waves as he arrives for the Economic Summit held for the China Development Forum in Beijing on March 23, 2019. (Photo by Ng Han Guan / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read NG HAN GUAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The shares vest over four years which provides an incentive for the engineers to stay at Apple. According to individuals with knowledge of the matter, the bonuses came as a surprise to many. The value of the bonuses ranged between $50,000 and $180,000 in some cases. The bonus was reportedly given to the engineers by managers as a reward for high levels of performance, but the goal of retaining talent by including a four-year timeframe is clear.

In recent months, Meta has poached around 100 engineers from Apple. Seemingly worried about this, Apple is now attempting to incentivize developers to stay at the firm. With both companies moving into similar industries of augmented and virtual-reality headsets and smartwatches, it’s easy to see that competition between the two will increase in the coming years.

Some engineers who didn’t receive the shares are reportedly angered and believe that the selection process is arbitrary. Some of the awarded bonuses are equal or greater in value to the annual stock grant given to some engineering managers. And the value of this stock is likely to rise, given that Apple shares are up 36 percent this year alone.