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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

#201

Post by pc86 »

solardev wrote: post #186
Someone1234 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the lowest paid employees at the state and federal level already have their pay revealed, and it hasn't caused a problem yet. As far as I know, only orgs like the CIA (and similar) where their employees aren't public are hidden from public view.

It's probably the highest paid ones who don't want others to know... goes against equal pay for equal work and all that. For every rockstar 10x developer who actually is worth much more because they are truly exceptional, there's probably a bunch of others that just happened to have good. career trajectory, or entered during a bubble peak, or have a better diploma, or the right connections, or are skilled negotiators…

I don't see how it couldn't result in lower wages over time, especially for folks who are good at negotiating, have planned their career/company moves out over years or decades to maximize salary, etc. Businesses have a budget for payroll, not every business owner is Scrooge McDuck hoarding their gold coins. You have a distribution in pay for lots of reasons, and if you try to eliminate that you're going to end up with the same amount of money spread across the same amount of people in a slightly different way, but everyone at the upper end loses out.

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

#202

Post by pc86 »

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…

Salary is about 90% of the compensation picture for almost everyone in the US. If you add in things like 401(k) matching and employee-paid insurance premiums, you've got about 99% of the picture covered (in addition to having something far too complex to publish on any individual level). The vast majority of companies offer no stock, no or minimal/token bonuses, and no perks with any real financial value.

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

#203

Post by pc86 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #172
sofixa wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that credit scores in the US include things such as evictions and credit card use, scores going down if you repay a loan in full and other bullshit, which a random bank determining your credit worthiness in France doesn't do. They ask for proof of income, check with Banque de France if you have outstanding debts or if you have failed debt payments, and that's it.

Evictions are not reported on a credit history report. There is no single credit score in the US. Anyone can calculate whatever they want from a credit history. There is no requirement for a lender to negatively view a borrower’s decision to buy pay off a loan. In fact, I doubt any even do. Using a credit card is borrowing money, hence shows up on a credit report.

Of course there's no requirement, but everyone knows that paying off a loan early can, in some circumstances[0], lower your credit score. Nobody is taking the time to look into your score and see why it was 810 last month and is 780 this month. They just use the 780 and move on, so it can absolutely affect the rate you get, and whether you get approved or not. No creditor is overriding a denial because they spent time investigating your recent score change.

[0] Usually the credit score is a measure of how likely you are to hold credit over time. It is not a "how good are you with money" or "how much money do you have" score, it is a "how likely are you to pay this back under the agreed-upon terms" score. Part of that score is the mix of different credit types, so if you pay off your final installment loan (e.g. car, house, private loan, student loan), your mix of credit types just went from N to N-1, hence a temporary, minimal drop. This is also why paying something off early can negatively affect it (in certain models, but I don't think this happens much anymore). This is always used by people to explain how credit scores are stupid and evil and idiotic and evil and stupid, but its effect is always overblown, and your score almost always rebounds within a few months.

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

#204

Post by RestlessMind »

velcrovan wrote: post #106
tristor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The raw numbers are different, I’m guessing (I haven’t looked). A tech worker in Norway also pays less for healthcare and housing, is healthier, spends less time in traffic and lives in a society where everyone lives safer and more equally, and has more power to walk away from a shit job than someone in the US. It’s a system that values autonomy for the most people over the power of a tiny sector of the economy to ra…

> A tech worker in Norway also pays less for healthcare and housing,

A tech worker in SV has healthcare covered and makes so much more than a Norwegian that they can afford SV rents.

> is healthier,

Life expectancy in Norway: 83. Life expectancy of northern Europeans in the US: 83 for men, 85 for women [1]. Wrong to look at life expectancy at a state level since it is based on cultural/ethnic traits and not based on your passport. Same numbers for East Asia - men (85), women (88) which is similar to East Asian countries (eg. Japan @85).

> lives in a society where everyone lives safer and more equally

More equally - not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Depends on the details. Though looking at the number of talented individuals flocking to the US from the supposedly egalitarian countries, it seems US is doing something good.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026916/

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

#205

Post by pc86 »

figmert wrote: post #69
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…

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

> They're the same level, they should earn the same.

No, they shouldn't. They should earn exactly as much as they can get their employer to pay them. I've worked hard in my career, I've negotiated hard for pay at new jobs, raises, bonuses, promotions, etc. Some people don't. If I'm not going to be able to negotiate my pay, by definition I'm going to be making less. Why in the world would I want that?

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

#206

Post by jasonpeacock »

mrweasel wrote: post #43
prepend wrote: post #4

Anyone know why they start at level 52? Is there some story behind 52-70 instead of 1-19? Or is it just arbitrary?

I've noticed that a lot of US organizations love to use "levels", but coming from the outside it's borderline impossible to know what those levels mean. We have IC levels, and I'm sure I'm on some level, but have zero clue as to what the level may be or mean. In cases like this where you just have payment guidelines for a level 52, you might as well not know. What's level 52? Is that an intern or senior management?

https://www.levels.fyi does a good job of showing how levels compare across companies.

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

#207

Post by munchbunny »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #73
munchbunny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Am a manager at Microsoft Are you on a cool product team and hiring? I'm considering rejoining the mothership

Sorry, out of interest in staying somewhat anonymous here I’m going to avoid giving any details, but based on your question and criteria I’m inferring from other comments I’d say I probably don’t have what you’re looking for.

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

#208

Post by bitshiftfaced »

Someone1234 wrote: post #183
bitshiftfaced wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandparent poster asked what the disadvantages were. Some employees might not want their personal salary information revealed.

Even the lowest paid employees at the state and federal level already have their pay revealed, and it hasn't caused a problem yet. As far as I know, only orgs like the CIA (and similar) where their employees aren't public are hidden from public view.

Hasn't caused a problem... among a sample group who knew that their salary would be public information before choosing that career. If you change the rule so that no one even has the choice of salary privacy, is nothing lost? I'm skeptical.

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

#209

Post by occz »

bergkvist wrote: post #121
occz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxable income is public information in Sweden, and you can basically buy a catalog containing the previous years income for everyone in a given area if you'd like. Stuff like addresses and so on is also public information in Sweden, for what it's worth. This always makes me feel a bit strange when hearing people considering releasing someone's address to be doxxing and something horrible - like you can just look up…

Actually addresses being public are causing issues. Sweden has a lot of problems with gang violence, and gang members often register their public addresses to other peoples addresses, causing innocent people to be killed. The address you enter is in no way being verified beyond it needing to be a valid address.

Citation sorely needed.

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

#210

Post by kasey_junk »

lesuorac wrote: post #191
kasey_junk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what the empirical evidence suggests (though it’s a big topic of study). It’s closer to 0.4% for every 10% increase and the inflation happens almost immediately. https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/260/

0.4% you say but that paper says 0.7%. However, lets be real 10% to 1% vs 10% to 0.7% still gets the same message across. But I'm still really not sure what you're trying to argue. My claim is that a X% wage increase will be followed by an This isn't even rocket science. For any product you'll spend say $10 on labor, $15 on marketing, $5 on parts for a total of $30. If your labor costs goes up to say $20 then the tot…

I don’t particularly have a claim other than you can’t use minimum wage causes inflation as an axiom because it is theoretically contentious and doesn’t hold very strongly empirically.

The claim that it lags behind the wage change is empirically also not found.

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