Apple Showers iPhone Team with Large Bonuses to Prevent Key Talent from Leaving

Apple is known to be providing large bonuses to engineers working on the iPhone project. This step is taken as an effort to retain talent so they are not recruited by other companies. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple has approved out-of-cycle bonuses for several members of the iPhone product design team. This means the bonuses come as a surprise, outside the regular bonus schedule that employees normally receive. The value is not small. The bonuses are said to range from $200,000 to $400,000, or approximately Rp 3.3 billion to Rp 6.7 billion, if calculated for the entire period. However, these bonuses are not given in direct cash form. Apple provides them in the form of shares that will “vest” gradually over a four-year period. With this scheme, employees must remain working at Apple for four years to receive the full bonus value. If they leave earlier, part of the bonus may be forfeited. In some cases, competing companies even offer much larger compensation. It is mentioned that there are Apple engineers offered packages up to $1 million per year in shares to switch jobs. This phenomenon has triggered concerns about the departure of important talent from the company headquartered in Cupertino, California, USA, to other companies. One example is the departure of Tang Tan, former Apple product design VP, who now serves as head of hardware at OpenAI. In addition, several Apple engineers have reportedly been recruited by other companies in recent years. Abidur Chowdhury, for instance—the industrial designer behind the iPhone Air—is reported to have left to become design lead at AI startup Hawk AI. The wave of Apple employees moving to AI companies has become increasingly evident in recent times. Throughout 2025, dozens of Apple engineers and designers are reported to have left the company and joined OpenAI or Meta. Not only to OpenAI, several Apple talents have also landed at Meta. Some names mentioned include: This movement shows the intense competition for talent in the AI and hardware industry. Nevertheless, employee rotation is actually not a new thing in Silicon Valley. Many parties view movement between technology companies as a normal occurrence. Apple itself took similar steps in 2021 by providing bonuses of around $180,000 to retain employees, although the results were not entirely effective. On the other hand, competing companies can still offer higher compensation, so Apple’s bonuses are not necessarily sufficient to retain all talent, as compiled by KompasTekno from 9to5Mac and Apple Insider.