That is true, and I think that is one of the mistakes I made before the negotiation started. At some point, I told the recruiter —“I know many engineers want to

That is true, and I think that is one of the mistakes I made before the negotiation started. At some point, I told the recruiter —“I know many engineers want to work at Apple. I will carefully consider any offer you extend.”—. I told them that because I was not sure if they were really ready to extend and offer or not. > Also, apple offers stock last I knew anyways, which can be quite attractive in some circumstances. For the sake of clarification, USD $228k already includes the annual bonus and the average (hypothetical) vested stock, so the base salary is actually much lower than that. Banks and other entities do not care about your stock grant or annual bonus, they only care about your base salary, so qualifying for a good mortgage will be an interesting challenge.