Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#211

Post by oblio » Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

heywhatupboys wrote: post #127

vore wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there is a clear disparity between how much you make on the amount of stock you can reasonably have versus how much executives make on the amount of stock they have. The parent comment implies there is some kind of level playing field here, which there really isn't.

that is moving goalposts. The CEOs will have more stock beause they have larger wealth and earn more money.

Cool, could they start paying dividends so that I can keep my shares and get money each year instead of having to sell them?

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#212

Post by oblio » Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #75

jandrese wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time a company is one day telling the employees that they need to take a pay cut to keep the company "competitive" (and this pay freeze is actually a pay cut), and the next day they're doing a stock buyback and the C-Suite is giving themselves enormous performance bonuses they need to worry about unionization.

Dividends should be a sign that a company has excess cash and can't find a good place to invest it. Paying a dividend while asking workers to take a pay freeze signals they don't believe the workers are returning enough value to justify paying them more.

What are stock buybacks, then? They're more employee hostile than dividends, that's for sure.

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#213

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:49 PM UTC

fingerlocks wrote: post #208

efields wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plumber at the house with an overflowing toilet sure has some leverage, too.

I mean, not really. Every house has a main water shutoff valve. You can watch a 5 minute YouTube video on how to snake a toilet yourself. Or spend an hour installing a new toilet.

The best plumbers can always pivot to content creators on #DrainTok

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#214

Post by dangerwill » Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:49 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #140

slg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is worse from a corporate greed perspective because it is effectively saying that Microsoft can't afford to give out a pay raise to anyone. Meanwhile, they had a net income of $17.6 billion last quarter[1]. A layoff can at least be due to a change in direction or some departments, teams, or employees not delivering the necessary value to justify their continued employment. This is saying no one at Microsoft is d…

The company and its income is for the benefit of the shareholders, not the employees. Maybe the argument can be made that they should pay more money to certain people to improve their future income, but that has nothing to do with how much money they make.

Fiduciary duty was not always the end-all-be-all of corporate decision making. This has been a see-saw battle between employee wellness, customer satisfaction, and shareholder returns, and we are at the apex of shareholder dominance currently. But that does not mean this is set in stone. General Electric explicitly put employee wellness and customer satisfaction above shareholders in the their business documents as late as the 70s.

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#215

Post by laurels-marts » Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #143

jselysianeagle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Entirely possible that the quantity of trading jobs available isn't nearly as high as something like MS though. Yes, exactly. Other companies like Jane Street definitely exist in the finance space and pay really well but collectively hire far fewer engineers than FAANG + FAANG-like companies do. The thing I like about them though is that most of the time their comp is all cash (salary + bonus) so you don't have to…

Yeah, that's what people tell me, though the Jane Street interview is pretty tough; I've interviewed with them three times, and also been declined three times...so maybe I'm disproving my own point here.

How were the interviews like?

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#216

Post by jbc1 » Wed, May 10, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #73

diversionfactor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having friends and former colleagues who work in the "yuppie Wall Street job", it doesn't pay the obscene salaries you think it does, even at the major hedge funds and investment banks, even in NYC and Chicago. The number of super-high NFT development jobs is vanishingly tiny. Most jobs at trading and investing firms for developers pay the same or even less than elsewhere. Sure, if you're a Calypso or Endur or Murex…

Fair enough, I was thinking about companies like Jane Street, paying starting wages of about $200,000/year for engineers [1], and I've seen a few other trading places offering similar wages. When I was at Apple, my base pay was $175,000 when I left, with about $60,000/year of stock. I've never worked for Microsoft but I assume that the pay is comparable to Apple Entirely possible that the quantity of trading jobs ava…

Qualified to work for Microsoft and qualified to work for Jane Street are entirely different tiers.

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#217

Post by pb7 » Wed, May 10, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #37

BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny about it. Employees also get stock options.

Stock grants, not options. Pedantry aside, those grants are being cut, too.

It’s actually not that pedantic, it’s like calling JavaScript “Java”. For stock options to be profitable the stock has go up. Stock grants are simply cash in a currency that may be more or less valuable than originally granted.

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#218

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 10, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

asd88 wrote: post #160

qbasic_forever wrote: post #100

Yet they're making huge stock buybacks and profits each quarter... something is fishy. This is going to royally backfire as soon as the first big tech company blinks and starts hiring and poaching frustrated engineers. The exact same thing happened in the aftermath of '08 where companies that cut and held salaries flat were scrambling in '09 to retain and keep engineers--I distinctly remember Microsoft doing an acros…

Nah, Microsoft has been underpaying engineers in the US for almost a decade now. Their solution is just to replace one frustrated engineer leaving with three in India and that seems to be working great.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#219

Post by pb7 » Wed, May 10, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #211

heywhatupboys wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is moving goalposts. The CEOs will have more stock beause they have larger wealth and earn more money.

Cool, could they start paying dividends so that I can keep my shares and get money each year instead of having to sell them?

You can sell X% of your stock every year and pretend it’s a X% dividend. It’s the same thing. It’s not like you get any voting rights.

Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

#220

Post by ladberg » Wed, May 10, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #135

tombert wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I was thinking about companies like Jane Street, paying starting wages of about $200,000/year for engineers [1], and I've seen a few other trading places offering similar wages. When I was at Apple, my base pay was $175,000 when I left, with about $60,000/year of stock. I've never worked for Microsoft but I assume that the pay is comparable to Apple Entirely possible that the quantity of trading jobs ava…

The total number of PropTrading engineers in the US is most definitely in the low to mid thousands at most. Most PropTrading firms are tiny from a headcount perspective For example, Citadel has around 600-700 engineers globally and Jane Street only has around 400-500 globally. Both of these firms are actual behemoths headcount wise, and most other trading firms tend to be way smaller (total headcount in the high doub…

FWIW I switched from FAANG to trading last year and got a pretty big comp increase. I was entertaining an offer from another FAANG at the same time and it was still nothing compared to my offers in trading.