Apple Rewards Engineers With Stock Bonuses To Prevent Them From Switching To Meta: Reports

(RTTNews) - Tech giant Apple Inc. (AAPL) is reportedly giving stock bonuses to some engineers as an effort to prevent them from switching to other tech companies, like Meta.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple informed select engineers in silicon design, hardware, software, and operations that they would receive stock bonuses of between $50,000 and $180,000. The bonuses were presented by managers as a reward for high performers.

The stock bonuses given out by Apple are not part of normal payment packages, which include a base salary, stock units and a cash bonus.

The report says that Apple and Facebook-owner Meta are battling for top talent in the silicon valley. Meta poached nearly 100 engineers from Apple in the last few months, while Apple also recruited several key Meta employees.

Meta is recruiting from Apple's augmented reality, AI, and engineering divisions, as the company plans to launch a smart watch in the coming years that will directly compete with the Apple Watch. Meanwhile, Apple is prepping to launch its own AR/VR headset, which will compete with the Meta-owned Oculus virtual reality headsets.

In October, reports said that Meta was planning to hire 10,000 engineers to build Mark Zuckerberg's version of the metaverse.