[prisoner655321]

This is very common and almost always predicted. 4 years is the end of the initial stock vest. If you don't get a major promotion, or even two, your compensation takes a nose dive. It's no wonder they left.

[solomatov]

Companies like AAPL give refreshers especially to the key people. The fact that they left to GOOG most likely means that the search engine isn't that high on the priority list of Apple right now.

[isatty]

Refreshers aren’t going to be high enough (I don’t know about exec compensation though) to avoid the cliff. Promotions are the only way.

[astrange]

Refreshers are high enough to do that at Apple (or not). There aren’t enough levels to get promoted, and the stock keeps going up.

[prisoner655321]

The stock going up is what kills it. Apple’s stock has gone bananas the last 4 years, no refresher is going to beat or match that.

[JKCalhoun]

Likely the initial shares were the an order of magnitude larger than the refreshers?