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

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Norway is one

Incidentally, Norway appears among the countries with the lowest perception of corruption in the world: #4 among 180 countries (0). It would be interesting to look if there is any correlation with other countries where income records are publicly available.

0: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank

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

#82

Would be interesting to see people rough idea of YOE to Level mapping for MSFT. Everything from Level 50 through 60 looks pretty junior, like grad hires and possibly outside HCOL areas. Surprised there is so much granularity. I do also find the base to stock ratios interesting. I guess base pay caps out in FAANG the same way it does in fintech / Wall Street tech. $360k base is a lot of money obviously, but its intere…

For software engineers, 59 is entry level (e.g. a college hire). Promotion to 61 (SWE 2) usually happens in 2-4 years of experience. Promotion to 63 (Senior) is usually 5-7 YoE. Promotion to 65 (Principal) is highly variable but a capable person who climbed the ladder all the way from 59 and didn’t get stuck with a crappy team/manager along the way would usually get there around 9-10 years, give or take.

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

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Upthread proposer asked "is there any disadvantage[?]" I listed one (or two, if you count "this won't accomplish much because of the equity comp portion"). Philosophically, whether an individual's ought to be private is an interesting but distinct question. This proposal has the disadvantage that it makes disclosures about individual people who might not want that disclosure made and which are not being made today.

It’s only a disadvantage if you already consider individual disclosure a bad thing.

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

#84
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Information asymmetry is a natural thing.

What does this mean? Why does natural even matter? Humans changed a lot of things that are “natural” to better their lives.

>It benefits job seekers too because your prospective employer does not know everything about them.

Temporarily embarassed billionaires. Aka you like to think you are the 1% who can out negotiate an employer because you are so in demand. 99% of people will be at a disadvantage no matter what.

Also, https://theworknumber.com/

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

What is the purpose of a “knowledge” broker, if the thing they are brokering is already available to everyone?

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level 59 is entry-level for an SE (e.g. an undergraduate hire), Level 58 is for Interns. People at Level 59 are expected to reach Level 60 within 2 years or they'll basically get managed-out, but once you get past Level 61 people generally take things more slowly. In West Coast circles (Blind.app, et al) Microsoft's reputation is that it's still "the country club" where you go if you want a stable career without too…

The downside is you have to put up with Microsoft's ineptitude. I was on a Microsoft project for about 6 months and it was a terrible experience. Everyone was out for themselves, asking questions was treated as an annoyance. Condescension at every turn. It was a small team and perhaps not representative of all of Microsoft, but it was a bad enough experience that I'd never consider working there in any capacity.

My experience was the opposite. I was surrounded by veritable gods of the industry but you wouldn't know it in-person; I even shared a hallway with at least 2 people who had their own Wikipedia articles.

Yes, I had a bad case of imposter syndrome too.

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

#86
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.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. I came in to level 59 in 2008 and my base was 80k-ish. These numbers seem really old.

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

#88
post #69

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…

Why shouldn't Dave and Cathy know what Bob is earning? They're the same level, they should earn the same.

While I support all efforts at increasing information transparency, I disagree that prices need to be the same. It is possible that humans are sufficiently different in the quality of the labor they are selling that a buyer might price them differently.

For example, I am willing to pay a higher price for someone has 10 years of experience and is less likely to make mistakes or other desirable qualifies more than someone who has 0 years of experience, even though they are doing the same work.

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

#89
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?

It would cause wage growth leading to a lower percent (but an increase) increase in other prices (housing, etc).

No?

This is such a random comment I don't know how to respond to besides a "No?"

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

#90
post #69

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…

Why shouldn't Dave and Cathy know what Bob is earning? They're the same level, they should earn the same.

Everyone at the same level is not the same. At most companies people can expect to be in level for a few years.
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