Apple Prepares Rp 6.7 Billion Bonus to Prevent Employees from Joining Competitors

Apple is reportedly preparing a large bonus to retain engineers working on the iPhone project and prevent them from moving to rival companies. According to a Bloomberg report, this bonus is given outside the regular cycle or out-of-cycle, serving as an additional incentive beyond the usual compensation schedule. Its value is not insignificant, amounting to around $200,000 to $400,000 or equivalent to Rp 3.3 billion to Rp 6.7 billion for the entire period. However, the bonus is not paid in a lump sum in cash. Apple pays it in the form of shares that will be liquidated gradually over four years. This scheme requires employees to remain with Apple to receive the full bonus value. If they leave earlier, part of the bonus could be forfeited. This step is seen as a response to the increasingly tight competition for recruiting talent, particularly from technology companies aggressive in the AI field such as OpenAI and Meta. In several cases, rival companies are even said to offer compensation packages far higher. Therefore, Apple is deemed to need additional incentives to prevent its key talent from being easily recruited by competitors. One name that has received much attention is Tang Tan, Apple’s former VP of product design, who now serves as head of hardware at OpenAI. There is also Abidur Chowdhury, the industrial designer behind the iPhone Air, who is said to have left to join an AI startup called Hawk AI. This wave of employee movement has also been seen throughout 2025, when dozens of Apple engineers and designers were reported to have left the company to join OpenAI or Meta. Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman even stated that OpenAI has recruited more than 40 former Apple employees to strengthen its hardware team. Not only to OpenAI, several Apple talents are also said to have joined Meta. Some of them are former design executives, AI researchers, and figures who previously led model development and technology research at Apple. This situation shows that the competition for talent in the AI and hardware industry is now increasingly fierce. Although employee movement is not new in Silicon Valley, Apple appears to want to minimise the risk of losing more key talent. However, this large bonus strategy is not guaranteed to be fully effective, given that rival companies can still offer more attractive compensation. Apple itself is said to have taken similar steps in 2021 by giving bonuses of around $180,000, though the results at that time were not entirely successful in stemming the employee exodus.