The project could be 7-10 years old but they didn’t start on day one with hundreds of people. Let’s say a core of ~50 people for 5 years as proof of concept then ~350 people for another 5 years at 300k per person on average, that’s a 600 million dollar investment.
Sure they could have a larger team, but they also don’t pay testers anything close to 150k year.
$300k/annum is the carrying cost of low to mid engineers at big tech. For the kind of talent you need to pull this off, I’d at least double it (and maybe closer to $1M/year for the early folks)
Employees are expensive. That $200k salary comes with 100k in RSUs and then 25+% overhead.
Then factor in bonuses for leadership when they finally get the thing to ship…
And 350 people sounds like way too few, considering the novel R&D. Maybe 2000 would be my guess.
What’s the ratio of testers:developers and how much do testers make? Not everyone on a this kind of a project is making even low end software developer salaries, and not every RSU vests which is a big part of why they are so popular.
I’ve heard people quote hundreds of people working on the Vision Pro which is already a lot of people for Apple. The company only recently broke 150k employees globally and a large fraction of that are working retail at their stores. Now split the remainder across iPhone, Mac, iPad, App Store, Apple TV, Air Pods, Watch, marketing, this car project, back end infrastructure etc and ~2,000 people on Vision Pro for 5+ years just doesn’t line up.
I agree that for the Vision Pro headcount 2000 is unlikely, but you also have to include all the other functions – chip design, marketing, all the people that interface with the manufacturing partners, the manufacturing partners themselves, the people who design the production lines, the people who design and program the machines on the production line, the people embedded in TSMC overseeing chip fab, the people TSMC will have embedded in Apple overseeing chip design... it goes on.
For an idea of the scope, a number of years ago it was reported that Apple had 40 business class seats from SFO to Shenzhen pre-booked every single day. That's how much it takes to interface with manufacturing. Now this isn't the iPhone, the scale is smaller, but this stuff is hard and takes a lot of people, it's practically why Tim Cook got the CEO job.
I completely agree manufacturing takes significant oversight, but only a tiny fraction of that manpower goes back 2+ years on a small scale production project like this.
Apple has a pipeline and they move experts between projects. The team making commercials is another late yet critical addition.
IME, having worked at big tech on moonshots, outsiders wildly underestimate how many people it takes to build a new platform. There is just so much work needed. I could be wrong on the AVP, Apple might make it work, but my prior is what it is.
Now discuss the millions spent on the physical R&D, corp acquisitions (Apple was for a while averaging 1-2 acquisitions/day), whatever licensing fees they need to pay out for initial access, this is easily a multibillion dollar bet.
The project could be 7-10 years old but they didn’t start on day one with hundreds of people. Let’s say a core of ~50 people for 5 years as proof of concept then ~350 people for another 5 years at 300k per person on average, that’s a 600 million dollar investment.
Sure they could have a larger team, but they also don’t pay testers anything close to 150k year.