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Comment by brokencoder | Hacker News Reader

Apple's management has enacted a policy of not offering competitive compensation for top engineering talent. I've had multiple Apple managers express frustration with the company's inability to attract and retain top talent. I myself got an offer from Apple for less than half what three other top companies offered, and Apple was unwilling to negotiate.

This product cancellation and Apple's general product quality decline is the inevitable result of this short-sighted, penny-wise, pound-foolish strategy to keep payroll down.

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I'm not sure that this is anything new. Apple has been known for decades as a company unwilling to pay top dollar but rather count on their mystique / sense of mission to attract talent. However, with the mystique fading and no longer having a go-go stock price to make options/RSUs as attractive, that strategy is probably not working nearly as well as it used to.

Where’s the evidence of this talent drain creating great products elsewhere? I believe this is possible but am genuinely curious.

Lately it seems to be happening elsewhere entirely, at least on hardware front. See for example Huawei's foldable. Google and Microsoft will gladly solve their software problems, what they are mainly missing is their own distribution channels overseas. I think it we are now caught up to Japan in ~1970s, soon it will probably be time of dominance like ~1980s.

Who said that they were necessarily creating great products elsewhere? I only argued that they were likely going elsewhere. What happens when they get there is a function of management/environment/etc. Most companies don't offer a sense of mission or mystique to their people, but strangely many are willing to settle for stacks of money instead.

For a company like Apple who a) tries to differentiate on engineering and b) has ridiculous amounts of money this is an entirely unforgivable policy.

Source beyond your own experience? Would love to read more about the fact that Apple is offering people 40% and refusing to negotiate. That would be huge news.

Yep, need source. www.levels.fyi and Glassdoor shows comparable compensation.

Across the board Apple just seems to be struggling to execute on software. What they do offer is incomplete and buggy and they're falling farther and farther behind on new features. If they're serious about pivoting to being a services company they need to fix this ASAP. There's a deep-seated arrogance at Apple that I think they inherited from Jobs that isn't serving them well now that their competition has gotten its act together.

Just as a thought experiment ask yourself - of the apps you use daily on your iPhone, how many are made by Apple, other than Safari?

Pretty much all of them? On my home screen, music, maps, calendar, photos, camera, wallet, news, reminder, phone, messages, mail and safari. Work fairly great too :). Seems they know what they’re doing by the massive profits they bring in.

Safari, music, notes, reminders, mail, health, activity (apple watch), breathe (apple watch), calendar, shortcuts (acquisition), messages, maps, clock, calculator, weather,

I use all of those regularly and they work well. I also use 3rd party apps for some of the same categories.

I use maps for routing, but google maps for search and points of interest

Tims a miser, which is great for supply chain management but when it filters down into the hiring and the end product, well we're already beginning to see the results of that in the sales numbers.

What self respecting Nerd would work for Apple? serious question

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