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

businessinsider.com

91–100 of 224 posts

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

#91
post #30

>On-hire stock awards: $310,000 default to $1.2 million with approval >Annual stock award range: $0 to $945,000 Wow. Those numbers are huge

Context is key - for that level, they're pretty bad numbers compared to the rest of big tech. Equivalent at Meta/Google/Amazon would be making vastly more. Microsoft usually punches well below its weight for compensation.

They return the favor with a chiller work-life balance and Washington State's lower taxes (obv not applicable to the large campus in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara)

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

#93
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.

Why should they earn the same? They’re not the same person.

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

#94
post #79
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Go ahead and prove causation on that, please. You're not going to be able to, because it's impossible.

Sure, impossible to prove, but a terrible example to bring up for the other position as well.

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

All* US government salaries are public record. If you know your neighbors name and department/agency, there’s a good chance you can look them up.

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

#96
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.

Why should everyone at the same level earn the same? There are still differences in skill and willingness to work for a given range.

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

#97

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

What’s your salary?

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

#98
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.

They're at the same level, but maybe not doing the same job. Even if they're nominally in the same "job code" the actual mechanics of what they are doing, the sensitivity of their work, the skills required for success, the markets/industries they are operating in, the pay scale where they live, the level of functional support they are receiving may all be substantially different. Of course there may also be other decisions such as upping salary to entice an employee not to accept that other job offer they got (do you want to remove pay leverage of looking for jobs elsewhere by mandating same salaries?), or any such other consideration.

Individual pay isn't some 2+2=4 math equation, it's multifactorial. Now any company with good internal controls would have people in some sort of band where for comparable (not identical) work there's a range of normalcy relative to the value the work provides in the given markets the labor is occurring.

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

#99
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If an individual salary ought to be secret, why does the US insist on advertising the salary of so many people (not even just the salary range either - but the individual name = $xxxxxx) If a salary shouldn't be secret, why does the US insist on allowing some people to keep their salary secret?

Advertising the salary of people paid by the government as a means of accountability to the taxpayers? No problem. If you don't like it, don't live on the taxpayers' payroll.

Advertising the salary of sports figures as a means of enforcing competition-protecting salary caps? No problem.

Advertising the salary of people for which there is no current requirement, for which there is a current practice of non-disclosure, and for which there is no taxpayer accountability benefit? I think that merits discussion rather than a advance conclusion of "a few of us think it's a good idea, so get bent".

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