Faced with a growing number of its software engineers defecting to its Silicon Valley rivals, Apple Inc. is said to be offering big bonuses of up to $180,000 in stock to ensure key workers will remain at the company.

Bloomberg reported today that “select engineers” at Apple were told they would be receiving the bonuses last week. The “unusual and significant” bonuses ranged between $50,000 and $180,000 and took the form of restricted stock units which take four years to fully vest. That gives employees more incentive to remain with Apple rather than jump ship to a competitor such as Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. or Google LLC.

The payouts are different from what’s included in Apple’s regular compensation packages, which usually involve a base salary, cash bonus and stock units. Apple has in the past sometimes awarded cash bonuses to select employees, but the latest stock grants were much bigger than normal and also surprisingly timed, anonymous sources told Bloomberg.

The report said between 10% and 20% of Apple’s engineers in “applicable divisions” were awarded the payouts, meaning that many engineers were not offered such a bonus and are therefore reportedly quite annoyed at being left out.

Big tech companies are reported to be scrapping over a scarcity of engineering talent in Silicon Valley. Bloomberg said Meta has managed to lure around 100 engineers from Apple in the past few months. Meta is said to be especially interested in engineers with experience in augmented reality, artificial intelligence.

Apple’s situation hasn’t been helped by its strict return-to-office plans that have apparently irked a number of its employees. The company will eventually require that its staff return to the office for at least three days per week. In comparison, Meta, Google, LinkedIn Corp. and others have told many of their employees they’ll be able to work remotely forever. For many, that’s likely to make such companies a more attractive proposition.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE there has always been competition among Silicon Valley companies for the best talent, but up until recently it was mostly about the perks of the office. Nowadays though, he said people want flexible work strategies and the companies that understand this demand will be best positioned to attract and retain talent.

“Those who make mistakes here will pay the price in talent loss,” Mueller said. “Indeed, Apple already seems to be paying for its work policies with better employee stock options. But is this a good return of that employee stock? Paying people for something that deep down, they don’t want to do, will not work. Only the future can tell where Apple will end up with this.”

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