In the battle for tech talent, Apple pays its best developers high unscheduled bonuses.
(Photo: Reuters)
Dusseldorf The Californian electronics company Apple pays many of its developers a surprising bonus of up to 180,000 dollars in stock options, as reported by the news service Bloomberg. They are expected to be carried over over the next four years. With this, the group wants to bind important talents in the fight with the Facebook parent company Meta.
“High performers”, among other things, in chip design, the hardware and software divisions as well as the associated operational departments are to receive the bonus worth 50,000 to 180,000 dollars. Converted to around 44,000 to 160,000 euros, which, according to the developers, partly corresponds to the annual share bonus that managers in development usually receive. About ten to 20 percent of the developers in the departments should receive the bonuses.
This is Apple’s reaction to the realignment of Meta. The Facebook mother has been recruiting experienced and talented Apple developers for several months. Around a hundred developers have already switched to the Facebook group. Meta also promised its employees significant wage increases.
The company needs the developers for the new focus on the Metaverse, an environment in virtual reality (VR) into which other Internet services are to be integrated. The focus of development is also on “Augmented Reality”, i.e. VR services that are integrated into reality via transparent displays, artificial intelligence and the software and hardware required for these technologies. Meta also wants to create 10,000 new jobs in the European Union.
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Apple and Meta will probably become close competitors in the segment of virtual reality headsets and smartwatches as well as the associated software in the next few years. Both companies are planning major hardware developments in these areas over the next two years. Apple has also poached some key Meta employees.
Apple shares are up 31 percent this year alone. The company should soon be the first to be worth more than three trillion dollars.
More: The Metaverse: The next level of the internet faces many problems