From what I read, their average salaries are much lower but their loyalty is much higher. Besides, you don't hear of too many Apple employees quickly leaving for other places, at least not as much as Facebook/Google.
Why?
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Are_You_Gonna_Do_...
Okay, that's from the 80's, but you never know, it might still be true and makes a good story either way.
Our brains can only superimpose our romantic fantasies over reality for so long. One romantic fantasy would be "I'm cool because I work at Apple". I can't see a talented person working somewhere for more than a year or two unless they genuinely were satisfied with the job and environment. Money isn't the only thing that motivates people.
You spend majority of your waking hours at work, so the perceived margin has to be very high to justify taking a less satisfying job, but which has higher signaling potential.
For a perceived margin to be high either a) the actual margin is high b) the person has to perceive \epsilon of social status much higher than \epsilon of job satisfaction. Generally, the people who value social status are almost by definition not going to work hard enough to become "half-decent (or better) engineers".
This also ignores the fact that most adults are either already in long term relationships or are celibate (voluntarily or involuntarily). "Looking for a girlfriend/boyfriend" is a temporary state, unless you're really interested in the dating game as a hobby which likely means less time for other hobbies e.g., hacking.
In my case, I'm in a long term relationship, having met my girlfriend while working in a nameless start-up doing email security (hardly "sexy", but plenty of technical challenges that I'd never see where I to work on "yet another app"). She could care less what the name of the company I work for is anyway.
So we're left with several logically valid conclusions:
* Apple hires worse engineers: people who are too interested in status to devote time to studies, people who are more interested in "playing the dating game" rather than fulfilling their passion. Typing this on a MacBook Pro, I see no evidence of this.
* Marginal signaling is really a lot better at Apple than Google. I can't see any evidence of that. Both are household names. Google has a reputation for hiring best, Apple has a reputation for building quality products (implying, hiring best).
* The quality of work is roughly equivalent at Apple and Google and decisions are often made by factors such as one offering work that the other doesn't, etc... People love working for both and only a minority is leaving either to work on "hotter" but less technically challenging applications.
I'll leave judgment for the reader, but something (perhaps reason?) is telling me latter is the case.
What I'm thinking is that Mike got "Mid Level Manager" and "Mid Level Developer" confused...
Anyone have any ideas if this is true?