Everyone knows that Palm is a sinking ship. Even Palm’s employees know it. A recent SEC filing shows us that Palm’s senior vice president of software and services, Michael Abbott, will be leaving the company some time this month. That same filing also showed some, ah, generous incentives aimed at keeping others from following suit.

Just how badly does Palm want to keep the other Senior VPs? How about a bunch of stock and a $250,000 cash bonus. If that’s not hitting the panic button I really don’t know what is. It’s probably safe to assume that Abbott was made some sort of offer to stick around, something he was willing to turn down to take all of his WebOS ingenuity elsewhere. You have to feel bad for the guy. He was an integral part of what is actually a great product (the OS, not the handsets that run the OS) but because of a serious marketing failure and some lackluster hardware Palm just never got off the ground.

Better luck at the new position, Mike.

Source: Palm