Bob Mansfield Is Getting Paid a Lot Not to Leave Apple

Experiencing an “insurrection” after hearing that Bob Mansfield was taking off, Apple CEO Tim Cook offered the SVP an exorbitant cash package to stay on board and guide the hardware engineering team, as several senior engineers had vociferously complained about his replacement, Dan Riccio.

On August 27, 2012, Apple announced that Craig Federighi, the company’s vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, the vice president of Hardware Engineering, had been promoted to senior vice presidents.

]Both Federighi and Riccio now report to Apple CEO Tim Cook and serve on Apple’s executive management team.

In the same press release, Apple also announced that Bob Mansfield, who had announced his retirement in June, would, in fact, remain at Apple.

“Mansfield will work on future products, reporting to Tim Cook,” Apple said in June.

Yesterday, October 3rd, Bloomberg ran a feature story on the post-Steve Jobs era at Apple quoting high-profile figures with knowledge of the talks inside the walls at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.

One particular tidbit of information caught the attention of the Apple blogosphere as the story said that a number of senior engineers on Mansfield's team “vociferously complained to Cook about reporting to his replacement Dan Riccio.”

These people reportedly felt Riccio was not prepared for the role. The report also mentions that Cook “nearly witnessed an insurrection” after Mansfield announced his planned retirement.

However, Tim Cook would later see that this doesn’t happen.

As the story goes, Cook asked Mansfield to change his mind and stay on board to continue supervising the hardware engineering team. In exchange, Cook gave Mansfield “around $2 million a month,” which translates into about €15.4 million.

Riccio, as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, is still tasked with leading the Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod engineering teams.

Apple says Riccio “has been instrumental in all of Apple’s iPad products since the first generation iPad.”