Trending news states that Apple is in a war for talent with companies in the Silicon Valley, Meta particularly being a top threat.
Reportedly, in order to retain its workers, Apple has gone ahead to reward them with amounts ranging from $50,000 to $180,000. Software engineers and related tech professionals received about $80,000, $100,000 or $120,000 in stock.
Why does almost everyone think it’s a war against Meta?
Well, Meta has hired about 100 engineers from Apple in the last few months, although Apple also employed some workers from Meta, Meta seems to have taken more.
Both tech giants are becoming vicious competitors in the production of augmented- and virtual-reality headsets and smartwatches. Interestingly, they both have major plans in the release of hardware over the next two years.
Does Apple normally give this kind of reward?
Not actually, these are different from Apple’s compensation packages, including a base salary, stock units and a cash bonus. It’s well known that Apple sometimes awards additional cash bonuses to employees, but this new reward is definitely surprising and breeds lots of questions and assumptions.
But then, not all Apple engineers received this bonus, just 10% to 20% in applicable divisions did. We can imagine they are top talents in the company.
This is definitely offensive to some engineers who didn’t receive the shares. The value of some of the bonuses equaled the annual stock grant given to some engineering managers. And their value stands to increase if Apple’s stock price continues to rise. The shares are up 36% this year, putting the company’s market capitalisation at nearly $3 trillion.
Is Meta sitting back?
No way. Meta has stepped up efforts to take in engineering talent from Apple’s augmented reality, artificial intelligence, software and hardware engineering divisions. The tech company has dangled significant salary raises as it looks to refocus around hardware and the metaverse.
Where’s this leading to?
We watch and see. Both tech giants will always remain giants.