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Comment by toasterlovin | Hacker News Reader

The employees are all machine learning engineers with a focus on autonomous vehicles (aka, the current hot shit in machine learning), which means they're probably all making $300k+ per year at the low end. They'll be fine.

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Lol if you think that they make that much at a failing startup

But they’re no longer at a failing startup. They’re at Apple.

Lol if you think they make that much at Apple.

But the original point stands. They should be able to get good paying jobs somewhere.

300k is roughly the levels.fyi estimate for Apple, level ICT4 (which is considered a slightly lower level than Google L5, Facebook E5).

Why would engineers in a highly sought-after field not make that much at Apple?

You'd be surprised how low pay is in sought-after fields. Everyone wants in and accepts less.

Apple is not known for high pay. Employees get little plaques that say “the journey is the reward.”

And your 300k from levels.fyi is not base salary. Base salary is listed as 180k, more in line with reality.

There's no difference between RSU and salary compensation except that one only comes twice a year.

Vesting?

Sure, you don't know exactly how much it'll be, but you can expect it's gonna be pretty good. I suppose it's also harder to get the value into your 401k.

Apple can and does fire people in their acquisitions, including engineers and other skilled positions.

And those people were never at Apple.

There's a bit of tautology - They are at Apple because if they were fired in the acquisition they were never at Apple.

As someone who has been through an acquisition, it's a liminal space. You remain the employee of the company being purchased, right up until the purchase goes through, which is after the offers from the purchaser are extended to people. The amount of people coming over can be part of the due dillegence and terms of the deal. (e.g. n engineers are to be purchased, but all the engineers suck, so the deal is off, or the price is reduced.)

Apple never extended an offer, or an offer was not accepted. Either way, they were not at any point an employee of Apple, or any other company.

Yep, eazenberg is right. I kinda know what they were paying. It's not how much you think.

why not say it for all of us to know?

Because that would break the unwritten confidentiality I have with the people there. And life just can't be lived by burning bridges :)

Definitely not true.

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