Keep in mind that the stock isn’t converted to cash when they grant it. It stays as stock from the beginning, so if the company goes up in value, it’s effective

Keep in mind that the stock isn’t converted to cash when they grant it. It stays as stock from the beginning, so if the company goes up in value, it’s effectively worth more and more each year so long as you don’t sell it. $180k in AAPL 4 years ago is more like $540k now. If you don’t sell the stock, even after tax you’re potentially looking at $300k over a 4 year period. Plus, if you continue to get decent bonuses each year, this grows even more. Over a typical period over the past 10 years, Apple engineers would easily expect “salary” to be considerably less than half their actual income, especially when you consider the size of a typical sign-on RSU bonus and the amount it will grow. Now of course, the longer Apple keeps growing like this, the less and less likely it is to continue its trajectory, so I don’t know if new engineers will see the same gains, but over the past several years it would have been a pretty sweet deal.