Apparently, there has been an uptick in staff exiting the firm in search of greener pastures and the Tame Apple Press is refusing to say why. Instead, they are running a story about how the super cool Apple, which is a wonderful place to work, is offering some engineers in silicon design, hardware, and select software and operations groups of the out-of-cycle bonuses, which are being issued as restricted stock units.

The shares vest over four years, providing an incentive to stay at the iPhone maker. The bonuses, which came as a surprise to those who received them, have ranged from about $50,000 to as much as $180,000 in some cases.

Many of the engineers received amounts of roughly $80,000, $100,000, or $120,000 in shares, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the programme isn't public. The perk was presented by managers as a reward for high performers.

Of course, there is no indication how the rest of the workers will feel about all that money going to others, but since Apple forces staff to sign NDAs against speaking about wages and conditions they will probably be unaware of it.