Think about what makes places terrible: is it that they’re misery-factories where everyone is being tased for not completing TPS reports fast enough or is it that the rules are being applied unevenly or aren’t being set reasonably for everyone?

From the perspective of the people in the other side in that latter case everything is fine and everyone else are just whining. You can especially see this in places where status is uneven (e.g. the guys who went to the right schools call the shots) or where there’s some kind of hazing tradition (e.g. medicine or law have brutal startup loads for early career people but are resistant to change because all of the senior people have, by definition, been the ones who were able to deal with it and changes won’t benefit them).

Maybe it's a part of a bigger plan to win people back. Who knows, he may be involved in that.

A lot of Silicon Valley engineers are extremely focused on money as a status indicator, despite the rhetoric about passion, changing the world, etc.

But he's also expanding his responsibilities, going from just Mac SoC design to being in charge of Intel's entire division.

He is in a position to build his own staff and run his own show, build his own culture and just generally control his own destiny in a way that line engineers are not.

He likely had the power to negotiate all kinds of working conditions, budgets and general other power before he signed on the dotted line.

A high-level, high-demand executive has a very different hiring experience than the average engineer.

Obviously money isn't everything, and I think Facebook has dethroned it, but for quite awhile Apple paid the highest salaries in the industry; at least that was the case for me when I worked there.

It's much tougher to measure other metrics, as how much you value autonomy and "not spending your entire day triaging emails" is going to be a lot more subjective.

The person who gifts a sledgehammer would be popular, I imagine

Where is "over here"? That seems like an awkward way to give a gift.

shrug depends.

I've been working at Apple for the last 17 years. At my last perf-review (which went very well), my boss was talking about promotion and where I wanted to go in my career: ICT6 (really hard to get, ICT5->ICT6 is based more on opportunity becoming available rather than ability IMHO) or Management. ICT6 comes with a $200k or so pay rise, a significant fraction of my comp, so it's a big jump.

My answer was simple enough: I plan to retire within the next 5 years (I'm 52 now); I'll go whichever path will make the most money before I retire. I'm willing to put up with a non-ideal work environment for a while in order to reap more financial rewards that might let me retire even earlier.

(I have an excellent working relationship with my boss, who is an adult and acts like one; we can talk openly and honestly about these things)

I make a lot of money at Apple, and I like working here, but it's still work and I work to live, not the other way around. I want to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour while I'm still young enough to appreciate it, so my drive is simply money. It's evolved over time, and certainly when younger, "cool project" was more of a drive, but now that I'm approaching end-game ... things change.

It might help prevent top physicists and EE students from taking stupid finance and Facebook jobs.