Would You Quit Your Job for $200 Million?

How much would someone have to pay you to quit your job? $50k? $100k? A lifetime supply of tacos and a Peloton?

Well, Meta just offered one guy $200 million. Yes, two hundred million dollars, with an M.

Happy Tuesday, July 15th, 2025. Where tech companies are tossing money around like it’s Monopoly night and someone just flipped the board.

Here’s what happened: Meta (aka Facebook’s cool rebranded cousin) is reportedly trying to steal one of Apple’s top AI guys; Ruoming Pang by backing up the money truck and dumping a Mount Everest–sized pile of cash on his lawn.

This guy’s no ordinary programmer, he’s the genius behind Apple’s coolest AI stuff like:

• Genmoji (because normal emojis were too basic)
• Smart email summaries (finally, we can pretend we read emails)
• Notification sorting (for when your phone is having an attention-seeking crisis)

Oh, and he was also leading around 100 engineers building Apple’s large language models basically helping Siri become less… Siri.

So Meta came in like: “Hey Ruoming, what if instead of doing that at Apple… you did it over here, for a mountain of money?”

Sources say that $200 million deal includes salary, bonuses, stock options, probably a pony, and maybe a golden retriever that hugs you every time your code runs without errors.

And Apple? They looked at the offer and said: “Yeah… nah. Take care, buddy.”

Meanwhile, Meta’s on a hiring spree that makes NFL draft season look tame.
Even Sam Altman (yes, that OpenAI guy) said Meta’s been tossing out $100 million signing bonuses like they’re handing out mini Snickers on Halloween.

At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta starts offering people yachts, personal chefs, and a private island with free WiFi just to switch teams.

Apple’s trying to fill the Pang-sized hole by promoting Zhifeng Chen and spreading the workload across a bunch of senior engineers. Kind of like when your favorite band loses the lead singer and hopes three backup singers can collectively carry the high note.

Meta, on the other hand, is going full sci-fi with its new Superintelligence Labs where they’re chasing AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
That’s the dream where AI becomes so smart it can do everything a human can but with fewer snack breaks.

They’re hiring big names left and right like ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Alexandr Wang from Scale AI. But let’s be real, are they actually close to achieving AGI, or is this just another one of those “I’m five minutes away” texts when someone hasn’t even put on pants yet?

Is Meta really building the future of AI, or just trying to outshine Apple in their ongoing tech soap opera? Honestly, probably both.

But now I have to ask, what if you got so good at what you do... Like, scary good, that companies had to throw millions at you just to steal you away? Whether you're in AI, accounting, or helping sales or dev teams stop using 12 tools to do one job, what would it take for someone to say, “Here’s a boatload of cash, please come work for us”?

Think about it, could you be that good? The world’s in a full-on talent war. And Meta just reminded us: Being great pays, a lot.

Real talk, what would it take for you to be worth $200 million? Are you even in the kind of industry where that’s possible? Could learning or using AI be your golden ticket out of middle-seat-on-Spirit-Airlines money and into private-jet-with-a-cappuccino-bar money?

Hit reply, I’d love to hear where you stand.

- Matt Masinga