Zuckerberg Enters The Ring With Apple Vision: Annual Salary Of Meta VR Developer More Than Average American Makes In A Decade

Costs were a major concern for investors when Facebook rebranded to Meta Platforms Inc META and laid out a new vision for the future of the company focused on the metaverse.

Although 2023 has been dubbed the "year of efficiency" for the Facebook parent, it turns out Meta is luring in VR employees with outrageous salaries. 

What To Know: According to a Washington Post report citing people familiar with the matter, Meta is paying programmers capable of creating virtual reality-related tech abnormally high amounts ranging from $600,000 to nearly $1 million annually. 

Meta is paying "significantly more" than most other gaming companies, according to Patrick McAdams, CEO of Andiamo, a data-driven tech recruiting firm.

"It’s not an exaggeration to say that their total compensation is double or more than double of what you’ll get at a large gaming company," McAdams said.

Meta spent approximately $10 billion on its metaverse build out in 2021 and another $15.9 billion for its Reality Labs division last year. The metaverse-focused business lost about $19 billion over the last two years.

Why It Matters: It appears a significant portion of its metaverse and VR spending is going toward offering eye-popping pay packages to programmers. The report indicates that Meta is willing to pay "unusually high salaries" in order to get the best developers to work for the company instead of for competitors. 

A former recruiter for the Mark Zuckerberg-led company told the Washington Post that there usually wasn't much competition on the offers they made because they would "pay way above market rate" for several roles. 

See Also: Mark Zuckerberg Faces Backlash Over Plans To Let Children Access Metaverse

Of all the VR developers that were offered jobs at Meta over the last nine months, the average compensation was nearly $540,000. For comparison, Apple Inc's AAPL highest pay packages for VR developers were a little below $500,000 and Alphabet Inc GOOG reportedly paid its top-tier developers approximately $440,000. 

Meta is trying to beat the competition by hiring the best talent, but competition continues to increase. Sony Group Corp SONY just released its PlayStation VR2 in February, and Apple dropped a bomb on the market with the release of its high-priced Apple Vision Pro. 

One executive from a smaller gaming company said he was unable to hire a senior developer last year because Meta had offered the candidate $800,000 per year with a performance bonus that could see total compensation rise to about $1 million. 

"This candidate was a senior [developer who didn’t have] super unique experience [or] skills. Facebook was doing pretty wild stuff a year ago," the executive reportedly said.

META Price Action: Meta shares are up more than 130% year-to-date, according to Benzinga Pro.

Photo: Brian Penny from Pixabay.

Some elements of this story were previously reported by Benzinga and it has been updated.