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Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

businessinsider.com

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Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#51

Post by lotsofpulp »

eastbound wrote: post #47
jachee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management is the only one who benefits when labor doesn’t openly share salary information. Let the information flow. Knowledge is power.

No. With full public information, bad employees benefit from being able to ask for more, good employees just flee elsewhere. Because it’s impossible to reason someone on their skills. Full information is hell on Earth.

Management’s job is to get rid of bad employees. Good employees do not have unlimited places to “flee” to. And full information is when markets allocate resources most efficiently.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#52

Post by candiddevmike »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
dom96 wrote: post #6

At this point is there any disadvantage to legislating that all companies should share a transparency report where they list their levels + avg, min, max, median salaries for each level?

I’m opposed to disclosure laws that would be prone to expose the income of individual people. If Alice is the only SWEPR5 at a company, that proposal publishes her salary. If Bob is clearly the best SWEPR4, Cathy the middle, and Dave just barely got promoted to that level, their salaries are also individually published. I don’t object to good faith ranges being required in job listings, but I oppose anything that wou…

Did you know there are some countries where you can look up anyone's income?

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#53

Post by hasperdi »

candiddevmike wrote: post #52
sokoloff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m opposed to disclosure laws that would be prone to expose the income of individual people. If Alice is the only SWEPR5 at a company, that proposal publishes her salary. If Bob is clearly the best SWEPR4, Cathy the middle, and Dave just barely got promoted to that level, their salaries are also individually published. I don’t object to good faith ranges being required in job listings, but I oppose anything that wou…

Did you know there are some countries where you can look up anyone's income?

Norway is one

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#54

Post by ekianjo »

Mechanical9 wrote: post #50
sokoloff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are 100 SWEPR5s in the proposal above, Alice's nosy co-worker or neighbor only learns the range of Alice's salary. If Alice is the only one, they learn the precise value.

I think the question is more why should an individual's salary be private? Personally, I think money is power, and I want to know about power disparities to better protect myself. But I understand there are factors to consider.

By all means please tell us your salary in a public hn comment then. Nobody is stopping you

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#55

Post by munchbunny »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #12
eganist wrote: post #5

From the article: --- Level 70: Base pay: $231,700 to $361,500 On-hire stock awards: $310,000 default to $1.2 million with approval Annual stock award range: $0 to $945,000 Level 69: Base pay: $202,400 to $316,000 On-hire stock awards: $235,000 default to $1.1 million with approval Annual stock award range: $0 to $750,000 Level 68: Base pay: $186,200 to $291,000 On-hire stock awards: $177,000 default to $1 million wi…

I started off at MSFT over a decade ago and though I haven't worked there in quite a while I'll say that these numbers look very old to me - there's no way Level 59's base salary range is 74-110k today (e.g. about 3 years ago, a new-hire Lvl 59 friend of mine said he was on $115k base and he said he felt he was in the middle) The publicly disclosed numbers on Levels.fyi are much closer to reality, IMO.

Am a manager at Microsoft so I can see where the policy-based midpoints are once regional adjustments are made. The base numbers look low by a rough 20% compared to what a Redmond HQ dev would get paid at the given level number. Bonuses are based on a level-dependent target percentage which you can find if you search for it.

And yeah, the Levels.fyi base pay distributions are closer to the truth.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#56

Post by tristor »

velcrovan wrote: post #34
xvector wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company I've talked to with "transparent" comp has offered absolutely terrible comp, even for their highest possible offer. In reality "transparent comp" becomes an excuse for companies to not negotiate.

If it is legislated that everyone has to do it, then people looking to sell their labor can do so with perfect knowledge of where the market is at, reducing the negotiating strength of these shitty companies. This is how it already works in Norway. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

And how is tech compensation in Norway compared to the US? That's what I thought...

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#57

Post by Devasta »

eastbound wrote: post #47
jachee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management is the only one who benefits when labor doesn’t openly share salary information. Let the information flow. Knowledge is power.

No. With full public information, bad employees benefit from being able to ask for more, good employees just flee elsewhere. Because it’s impossible to reason someone on their skills. Full information is hell on Earth.

So you would rather have your own compensation package be lower if it ensures that your coworkers packages are also low?

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#58

Post by yreg »

sokoloff wrote: post #39
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it matter if Alice was the only one or not? Disclosure laws inherently expose the income of everyone

If there are 100 SWEPR5s in the proposal above, Alice's nosy co-worker or neighbor only learns the range of Alice's salary. If Alice is the only one, they learn the precise value.

Does the precise value matter for anything though? I would say that any privacy intrusion happens with the range already.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#59

Post by ekianjo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #51
eastbound wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. With full public information, bad employees benefit from being able to ask for more, good employees just flee elsewhere. Because it’s impossible to reason someone on their skills. Full information is hell on Earth.

Management’s job is to get rid of bad employees. Good employees do not have unlimited places to “flee” to. And full information is when markets allocate resources most efficiently.

Information asymmetry is a natural thing. It benefits job seekers too because your prospective employer does not know everything about them.

If all info was freely available knowledge brokers would have immense power.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#60

Post by solardev »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
dom96 wrote: post #6

At this point is there any disadvantage to legislating that all companies should share a transparency report where they list their levels + avg, min, max, median salaries for each level?

I’m opposed to disclosure laws that would be prone to expose the income of individual people. If Alice is the only SWEPR5 at a company, that proposal publishes her salary. If Bob is clearly the best SWEPR4, Cathy the middle, and Dave just barely got promoted to that level, their salaries are also individually published. I don’t object to good faith ranges being required in job listings, but I oppose anything that wou…

Why does that matter? They should all be able to know each other's salaries.
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