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Comment by CoolGuySteve | Hacker News Reader

I was a software engineer at Apple during this time and I'm sort of pissed about this. It always bothered me that the richest company in the world could be so stingy.

Anyone know if there's a class action coming up or anything?

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The reason Apple is stingy is not because of this antitrust case. Apple pays (relatively) poorly because they don't want people to work there for the money. As I'm sure you know, Apple employees are fanatics about the company's products. Apple wants those people, not the "WTF? You're only giving me $100K and no free food? What is this shit?" people, even it it means losing a couple good engineers. Many other Silicon Valley companies are content giving their employees ridiculous salaries and perks, and don't really care whether engineers are evangelical about their products. For mostly cultural reasons, Apple hires people who wouldn't turn around for a slight raise. In fact, back when Palm was still a company developing WebOS, the standing offer for iOS engineers was to DOUBLE Apple's salary. Think about that - not enough employees were leaving for anything less than a 100% raise. Even at Apple's low salary levels, I think that says something about employee loyalty.

Have you ever worked for Apple or are you just speculating? Your observations are incongruent with my time there. You definitely do not need to be a fanboy to work there.

At an all hands, someone asked SJ why the pay was low and he gave some wise ass remark followed by 'you own stock, don't you?'

Yes, I have worked for Apple. Anecdotally, almost everyone I met was a fanboy.

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