Approximately 100 people have already jumped ship from Microsoft to Meta, according to former employees. Apple, on the other hand, is paying hefty bonuses to keep its employees.

As Meta Platforms sets its eyes on constructing the Metaverse, employees from Microsoft and Apple are hopping ship.

According to former Microsoft employees mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, roughly 100 people have left the tech giant’s augmented reality division to join Meta Platforms in the last year. According to them, Meta has been focusing on hiring employees who worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality (AR) devices.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Linkedin profiles show that over 70 members from Microsoft’s HoloLens team have departed the project in the last year, with more than 40 of them accepting new jobs at Meta.

Microsoft workers are key assets to Meta because of the company’s first mover advantage in the AR field. Microsoft debuted its HoloLens project in 2016, and the technology has since evolved into one of the most advanced headsets on the market.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is aiming to prevent potential personnel exodus to Meta by giving generous stock options and bonuses worth $50,000 to $180,000. The bonuses were presented to a group of engineers in silicon design, hardware, and certain software operations staff in late December 2021.

Facebook’s bid to become a “meta” social media platform

Until a big rebranding process in October 2021, Meta Platforms was known as Facebook, signalling the company’s rising ambitions beyond social media. In the months following, its virtual reality hardware division “Reality Labs” has been hard at work, successfully developing a prototype of their virtual reality “haptic gloves” in mid-November 2021.

Despite these early triumphs, the centralised Meta’s ambitions to rule the Metaverse have drawn widespread condemnation from the wider community, including leaders in the crypto, NFT, blockchain, and GameFi industries.

Given his experience with data mining, privacy, and content regulations, some crypto luminaries, like as Jenny Ta of Hodl Asset, have recommended that Mark Zuckerberg should not be the one to lead Facebook into the Metaverse.

In a November interview with Cointelegraph, she stated, “In order for him to have a clean slate for Meta, he must stand aside and have a new CEO run it.”

For a long time, Microsoft and Apple have had their sights set on the Metaverse. Microsoft unveiled a slew of Teams improvements and upgrades to its Xbox gaming device, as well as a new product named “Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces,” in early November 2021.