Microsoft Doubles Salary Budget To Retain Staff As Cost of Living Rises (seattletimes.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report originally published at Bloomberg: Microsoft plans to "nearly double" its budget for employee salaries and boost the range of stock compensation it gives some workers by at least 25%, an effort to retain staff and help people cope with inflation. The move will mainly affect "early to mid-career employees," the software giant said in a statement Monday. "As we approach our annual total rewards process, we are making a significant additional investment this year to compensate our employees globally," the Redmond-based company said. "While we have factored in the impact of inflation and rising cost of living, these changes also recognize our appreciation to our world-class talent who support our mission, culture and customers, and partners."
In addition to contending with cost-of-living increases and a tight Seattle housing market, Microsoft is locked in a fierce battle for talent with companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook owner Meta Platforms, as well as startups. [...] Microsoft's salary package is composed of base salary, bonus and stock. The changes will apply to a substantial part of the company's workforce, which stood at 181,000 as of June 30, 2021. The company didn't discuss pay figures, so it's hard to tell what the new compensation levels will translate to in dollar figures. But the Glassdoor website estimates that a new graduate working as a software engineer at Microsoft makes about $163,000.
In addition to contending with cost-of-living increases and a tight Seattle housing market, Microsoft is locked in a fierce battle for talent with companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook owner Meta Platforms, as well as startups. [...] Microsoft's salary package is composed of base salary, bonus and stock. The changes will apply to a substantial part of the company's workforce, which stood at 181,000 as of June 30, 2021. The company didn't discuss pay figures, so it's hard to tell what the new compensation levels will translate to in dollar figures. But the Glassdoor website estimates that a new graduate working as a software engineer at Microsoft makes about $163,000.
Re: If/when inflation goes away (Score:3)
Whatâ(TM)s your point? If inflation has driven prices up that requires salaries to rise, they need to stay up unless those other prices fall. Are you assuming there will be a general deflation? I suppose for things like gas prices and real estate it will come down. Other things, I doubt.
Also, wages tend to be âoesticky downward.â They are very hard to reduce, regardless of economics.
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Also, wages tend to be âoesticky downward.â They are very hard to reduce, regardless of economics.
This is one reason deflation is worse than inflation.
With inflation, companies can give employees raises to keep up.
With deflation, rather than cutting salaries, employees are laid off, feeding the downward spiral.
So many levels (Score:4, Funny)
Do other Big Tech companies do such finely graded pay distinctions? Feels like a dungeon crawling game.
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Feels like a dungeon crawling game.
Coincidence? I think not [history.com]
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Re:So many levels (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. I previously worked at a large tech company that had various numbers called "job grades." There might have been 10-20 numbers used and different kinds of employees would have different sets of numbers allotted for them. Hourly (non-college educated) folks might be a 78 or an 80. Engineers might be a 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32. Executives might be a 50, 51, 52.
Some HR committee would set a salary band for each job grade. The process of moving between job grades was opaque and byzantine. I discovered shortly before leaving that even a couple of levels up the hierarchy from me, people didn't really understand how it worked. But the job grade thing serves as a way for employees to feel like they're "moving up" without actually being truly promoted.
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My job title includes (Entry Level) in it, which has never bothered me much, because when I have asked for pay rises they have given me more or less what I asked for.
This year I'm being told that I have reached the limit of what my job title pays, so there will only be a 2.5% raise which is actually a massive pay cut.
I wrote a list of the responsibilities I have in an effort to show that the job I do is not the actual job title, but I think some member of
Re: So many levels (Score:2)
I've had similar feelings and situations at work. Maybe not the same motives, but not wanting to leave because of those I work with and the time in the trenches that build that comrade.
I've also found myself at a disadvantage because of that. Never forget, business is business, and nobody can fault you for doing what needs to be done to care for yourself and yours. :)
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Well, you could start doing what your job requires you to do - look up you
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I suspect I am going to need to start looking which is a shame, but that's life I suppose.
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Yes, or close to that fine of a grade:
https://www.levels.fyi/?compar... [levels.fyi]
200,000 employees (Score:2)
With nearly 200,000 employees, with a hundreds of different positions, it makes sense for a company the size of Microsoft or Google. Obviously a company with only a couple hundred employees doesn't need that. Also, a company with thousands of salespeople doesn't necessarily need to make the same distinctions since they all have the same job.
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I'm not saying that - I don't know the details of Microsoft's structure.
What I am saying is, to take your analogy a bit further, it makes sense for the army to have a standardized pay scale for sargeants, with whatever criteria. Setting the pay individually for each and every one is impractical for an organization the size of the military, and would likely result in outcomes that don't make sense when you compare how much Sargeant Jones makes vs Sargeant Smith.
The other thing I was saying is that if you hav
Re: So many levels (Score:3)
I think a new graduate at Microsoft starts at level 62? I joined at level 64 after my phd. There aren't that many fine-grained levels for engineers, and levels 62+ correspond mostly 1:1 with what google does, I believe.
I assumed that levels 1-60 were presumably to encode temp staff, contractors, cleaners, cooks, admins, landscapers, security, all within a uniform integer id, and I assume they were non-continuous so eg levels 11-19 might be career progression in one category. All guesses on my part.
Does it really matter (Score:2, Troll)
Inflation is one t
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If all the money just gets extracted from you by corporations anyway? They keep buying up all the single family houses and renting them back at crazy prices and they're buying up all the apartment blocks. When new houses are built they're only expensive luxury units. Anyone who tries to build affordable housing gets slapped down.
Tell me about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the last few years has been one of the largest wealth transfers in the history of this country. It's absurd. A teeny tiny shitbox with all the walls knocked out of it and no wiring recently went for $350k in my area. Every other option is one million+.
I've been seeing more and more people living out of their cars and cheap RVs. Especially this last year. There's a particular street they all tend to park on. I'm not sure why. They are (mostly) not mentally ill or
New graduates make *WHAT*????? (Score:3)
I have been in this industry for 20 years and I *still* don't make no $160k per year...
Holy shit, man.... I am definitely working at the wrong company.
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Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a good work/life balance? Do you feel you get treated well by your employer?
If the answer to both of those is yes, you might be at exactly the right company. Money isn't the only thing in life. I worked at MSFT back in the day, for several years (when the stock didn't break $25/share for years on end). The money was fine, but there were a lot of downsides to the company culture. I moved on to a different company and haven't looked back except long enough to say "damn I'm
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Yes and generally yes. Still, that figure is *significantly* more than what I currently make, and was honestly a bit of a shocker to me. Until I saw that figure, I actually felt like I was being paid pretty well for the work I did. Would I like to be making more? Absolutely... but I get by on what I bring home now. I just know I won't ever be able to actually retire (because I started saving at laest 10 years too late, and don't actually make enough to fully compensate for the lost time).
As I have
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Yes, location is definitely a thing too. The pay rates being mentioned are probably for the Seattle market (Seattle, Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, etc.). I live nearly an hour away from the tech companies here, in a 2k sqft house built in 1953 (with all the problems you would expect of a house built in 1953), and allegedly it's worth almost $900k. Housing here is stupidly expensive, and when you get closer to the tech companies in Seattle and on the Eastside, it's far more than where I am.
We also have one
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The other day I had an email from a recruiter for a remote job, choice of three countries to live in (freedom of movement is a wonderful thing) and "unlimited budget" for salary. He said that salary was not the limiting factor.
I was half tempted to reply with a silly amount and see what happened.
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Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a good work/life balance? Do you feel you get treated well by your employer?
100% correct. That's not a $160,000/year job. It's actually an $80,000/year job. $80K for each of the 40-hour work "weeks" you're going to be forced to cram into a single 5-day period on a calendar.
Quite frankly, it's not money people should be demanding from their employer who clearly has always had enough money to pay you more and didn't. No, what is truly valuable to the 21st Century employee, is work/life balance.
You don't deliver that, and you might as well build an HR plan around your revolving d
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You're clearly on a different team than I was on, and/or the company has change a LOT in the post-Ballmer years (which I know it has in many ways, but I don't expect it's been that drastic as many of the asshats I worked for are still there in management roles, according to LinkedIn). My average was probably 80 hours/wk. Some were only 60, but some were easily 100. Add in Friday night maintenance windows that end at 3am or later, and mean you basically don't have a weekend, but need to be back on Monday
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a single 5-day period on a calendar.
Wait, what? You get weekends off?
A huge pay raise may indicate workers are fleeing (Score:2)
Re:A huge pay raise may indicate workers are fleei (Score:5, Informative)
No business doubles their salary on a whim.
Microsoft is not doubling salaries.
TFA is very poorly written, but what is actually happening is they are doubling the budget for salary increases.
So if the average raise last year was 5%, it will now be 10%.
That is nothing more than adjusting for inflation and not enough to keep up. If last year you got a 5% raise and inflation was 2%, your real salary increase was 3%. This year you get a 10% raise, but inflation is currently 8%, so your real increase is 2%, which is a smaller raise in real terms.
Microsoft should give their PR dept a raise for spinning their stinginess into a story about how generous they are.
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Okay, clearly that figure must be location based... I just checked glassdoor salaries in my area and they are a bit more in line with what I am actually making right now.
My apologies for my prior outburst.
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I was really surprised when I interviewed for jobs recently how big of a difference there was in pay for what was substantially the same job. I talked to companies that were looking to hire a senior digital design engineer for total compensation ranging from $105,000 to $300,000. The low side is pretty crazy considering that that's less than someone graduating (without experience) will probably make (in terms of total compensation).
The experience had me wondering why anyone worked at some of these places.
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How much time has gone by over the increase period you're talking about ?
Black horse (Score:2)
Outsourced labor costs have not risen that high yet, maybe its the exchange rate.
Oh how very misleading (Score:5, Informative)
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...Why can't journalists bother to get the details right?
(Sponsored journalists) "It's cute that you think we got it wrong..."
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As a automotive electronics engineer a decade in, I can bet you that an entry level salary job at MS pays more than I make now, I am cool with that, its a bit of a rock star job in a expensive town, they should be happy with 2%, and if not they have freaking Microsoft on their work history.
The issue I take with this is all the non salary jobs, where's the 2% for the guy mopping the floors making a nickel more than local minimum market rate? Yea I know the game, company pays another company to come in and it
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They want to stop driving to an office every goddamned day.
They want to be more productive by sitting behind a computer for 8-10 hours instead of knocking off after 7 hours because they face 2.5 hours in Seattle traffic every day.
Being in an office is much less productive for most tech workers.
Being behind a windshield is completely unproductive for anyone who isn't a bus driver, garbage man, concrete truck, etc...
You don't have this problem in places where viable public transport is a thing, and thus you can leave the driving to the driver while you look out the window, read, or even... perish the thought... get some work done. Even better, about 90% of your monthly spending on transportation... simply goes away.