I wonder if there will be a mass resignation at Microsoft as a new job might pay more.
To me, it sounds like they considered this, and thought majority would not resign and go work for someone else that pays more. Some of those will not be replaced and some might need more pay. Over all this might be cheaper for MS.
Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
471–480 of 597 posts
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#472I wrote up some notes on my observed realities on how mid-size and up tech companies approach compensation: https://glenngillen.com/sensible-remote-compensation/ Employees have a mistaken belief that if profits are high they get to share in the spoils, they won't. Shareholders are who get those rewards. Either via increased valuation, dividends, buybacks, or all of the above. The only exception to that would be emplo…
I'm fine that but let's cut the bullshit. Quit trying to create a "culture", we are not family, we are not friends, we owe each other nothing aside from a paycheck and 40h of work a week, we don't need to help each other, we don't need to innovate, we don't need to show up early or leave late, we are strictly transactional. Don't be surprised when I leave for $1 an hour raise, don't be surprised when I don't go the extra mile. I am nothing to you but a resource to be expended just like coal or plastic and you are nothing to me but a paycheck. At least that would be honest.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
This hurts junior employees the most. Tenured employees have equity as a large part of their comp, they are invested in the stock price, not the few % annual bump.
Not really true for Microsoft. At Microsoft we generally do not get significant new stock grants or refresh grants, even on promotion no new stock is granted often. This may be different for principal engineers or certainly partner level folks - but senior engineers with more than 4 years of tenure will have essentially no significant stock to vest.
Are you sure this is typical and you're not just getting the shaft? It sounds way off to me. I've been out of MSFT for a while, but refreshes and cliff-fills are pretty standard for their competitors and I'd be very surprised if they weren't doing it for their above-average performers too.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#474I wrote up some notes on my observed realities on how mid-size and up tech companies approach compensation: https://glenngillen.com/sensible-remote-compensation/ Employees have a mistaken belief that if profits are high they get to share in the spoils, they won't. Shareholders are who get those rewards. Either via increased valuation, dividends, buybacks, or all of the above. The only exception to that would be emplo…
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Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#475I wrote up some notes on my observed realities on how mid-size and up tech companies approach compensation: https://glenngillen.com/sensible-remote-compensation/ Employees have a mistaken belief that if profits are high they get to share in the spoils, they won't. Shareholders are who get those rewards. Either via increased valuation, dividends, buybacks, or all of the above. The only exception to that would be emplo…
>Employees also seem to think they're entitled to receive payrises every year based on their performance, indexed/adjusted to account for CPI increases too
In some EU countries, companies are mandated to provide CPI increases. This has the effect of a natural greed-flation brake.
IMHO, should be the norm worldwide.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's literally thousands of other employers out there desperate for good tech people.
> desperate for good tech people …great people don’t want to be held back by average people.
Most people who consider themselves to be great are painfully average.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#477With the rate of inflation and interest rates going up, salaried workers need a cost of living adjustment at the very least, even if we forget about a bonus or a big pay hike. This decision is unethical to full-time employees seeing the tidy profit they made. It's a clear signal to the employees not to expect any practical reward for hard work, what a great way to motivate people. This is yet another large and powerf…
Wages are not downstream of profits - they are a price in a market for labor. If companies could pay 0 they would pay 0, and if employees could charge infinite they would charge infinite. It's better this way - otherwise employees at companies that make no money would have to take no salary.
> Wages are not downstream of profits - they are a price in a market for labor.
That is correct, and a point many in this discussion miss.
> It's better this way - otherwise employees at companies that make no money would have to take no salary.
Not so fast. For one, companies that "make no money" eventually go bankrupt and pay nothing to nobody.
It's not "better" or "worse", paying what the market requires is simply the way things are in a free market.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can increase the income taxes of wealthy people considerably (specifically income taxes, not business taxes). A 50%+ marginal rate will help motivate C-level execs to opt for re-investing profits into their business rather than into buybacks of their stock to boost their own personal income. At the same time you'd be helping to provide services that will benefit the lives of the bottom 90% of the country with hig…
This. Wondering how easily people make things so simplistic (as the other commenters are doing).
Definitely not this.
Capital is distributed to shareholders when the company has few good options to deploy it internally.
These distributions are then reinvested by shareholders to more efficient purposes.
If a company can’t efficiently deploy its capital and can’t distribute it… it just buys other companies and becomes a conglomerate with ever increasing market power.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
This hurts junior employees the most. Tenured employees have equity as a large part of their comp, they are invested in the stock price, not the few % annual bump.
This is a very "techy" viewpoint. There are only a very small number of companies globally, (a percentage that can be rounded to 0), that give equity as part of the employee compensation.
I feel like tech is the implied context here. In tech, the number is a lot closer to 100% than 0%.
Re: Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the obsession with CEO salaries. Envy is not a productive way of thinking about economics. In a huge company, distribute the CEO compensation to employees and it will be peanuts (in microsoft's case, it is something like $200 per employee - not per month or anything, that is the total). I don't get it. If all the CEOs in the world were forced to make $0, it will not meaningfully change the amount of money…
> Envy is not a productive way of thinking about economics. This is an incredibly uncharitable way to frame the parent comment. > If all the CEOs in the world were forced to make $0, it will not meaningfully change the amount of money in workers' pockets. That's just not true.
>> If all the CEOs in the world were forced to make $0, it will not meaningfully change the amount of money in workers' pockets.
> That's just not true.
But its not far from wrong -- cutting a ten million dollar a year expense and putting it to worker pay will not make workers rich in the colloquial sense.