this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines reveal salary, hiring bonus, and stock award ranges by level::The guidelines viewed by Insider show ranges for base pay, hiring bonuses, and annual stock awards but vary by role and location.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Microsoft's pay guidelines for job offers:

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 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $490,600

Level 67:

Base pay: $171,600 to $258,200

On-hire stock awards: $168,000 default to $700,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $336,000

Level 66:

Base pay: $157,300 to $236,300

On-hire stock awards: $75,000 default to $600,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $160,000

Level 65:

Base pay: $144,600 to $216,600

On-hire stock awards: $36,000 default to $300,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $90,000

Level 64:

Base pay: $125,000 to $187,700

On-hire stock awards: $24,000 default to $250,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $60,000

Level 63:

Base pay: $113,900 to $171,500

On-hire stock awards: $17,000 default to $200,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $44,000

Level 62:

Base pay: $103,700 to $156,400

On-hire stock awards: $11,000 default to $125,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $32,000

Level 61:

Base pay: $92,600 to $138,100

On-hire stock awards: $6,500 default to $75,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $24,000

Level 60:

Base pay: $83,500 to $125,000

On-hire stock awards: $4,500 default to $50,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $16,000

Level 59:

Base pay: $74,400 to $110,800

On-hire stock awards: $3,000 default to $30,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: $0 to $12,000

Level 58:

Base pay: $70,300 to $92,600

On-hire stock awards: $2,500 default to $20,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

Level 57:

Base pay: $63,800 to $83,000

On-hire stock awards: $1,500 default to $10,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

Level 56:

Base pay: $60,700 to $77,900

On-hire stock awards: $1,500 default to $10,000 with approval

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

Level 55:

Base pay: $55,200 to $71,300

On-hire stock awards: N/A

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

Level 54:

Base pay: $51,600 to $67,000

On-hire stock awards: N/A

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

Level 53:

Base pay: $46,600 to $59,700

On-hire stock awards: N/A

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

Level 52:

Base pay: $42,500 to $54,600

On-hire stock awards: N/A

Annual stock award range: "By career stage"

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wtf are these levels, do I have to get XP from pokemon battles?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I think you need to win against people in comparable level or above your level

[–] d13 1 points 1 year ago

https://www.levels.fyi/ shows how titles relate to the levels and compares to other companies.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ranges don't mean much unless you know what they mean.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Level 52, 42k/year...

What's level 1 then?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Level 1

Base pay: 3.50

Bonus: chicken nuggets default to chicken strips on approval.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Goddamn Loch Ness Monster!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Overseas, surely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I’m equivalent to level 69 :nice:

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Paywall, and no complete dump of the ranges?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


It's unclear how broadly the guidelines apply, or whether they are just for one specific role or business, but the ranges provide a window into how Microsoft thinks about its various level designations.

The lowest was a $42,500 salary, with no hiring bonus and no guaranteed stock award.

There's also a level 80 for a "technical fellow," which is typically one of the highest-ranking executives at the company.

In 2022, when the economy was still booming, Microsoft granted an across-the board compensation raise for levels 67 and lower through larger stock grants, in response to growing internal dissatisfaction with compensation compared to competitors, and to stop employees from leaving for better pay, especially to Amazon.

As Insider previously reported, earlier this year, as the economy faltered, Microsoft froze base pay raises and cut its budget for bonuses and stock awards.

Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]).


The original article contains 800 words, the summary contains 154 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Will the level 80 "technical fellow" please stand up?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

so you get hired at level 70 and get 310k of stock? Is this normal for large tech companies? Do you have to sign some kind of blood oath to ~~Bill Gates~~ current CEO Satya Nadella to say you will remain there for n years? Presumably you can't just get the stock and fuck off? Also, why is stock based compensation (potentially) so huge compared to base pay? Is this to make sure employees work extra super duper hard, or some way to reduce taxes?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Level 70 corresponds to distinguished engineers, very few engineers have that level at MS (and Google etc). You don't get hired at that level unless you're already a computer science celebrity.

And yes you have to stick around because the 310k of stock will likely come with a vesting schedule, usually 4 years, i.e. you get 1/4 after one year and the rest gradually over the course of the 3 remaining years.

It's bigger than the base pay because stocks is basically the company printing money. Also it's only an initial grant, while the salary has to be paid every years until the contract is terminated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You can assume contracts are involved in those c-level deals. Breaking contract usually involves renegotiating the shares to some degree. The stock options are certainly a means to consider them stakeholders so there is more incentive to produce.

[–] onlinepersona 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Let's be honest, as European IT non managerial staff, that's enviable. Our pay normally caps at around 80k? 90k? Above that and you're probably in the 1%. Probably 10% are above 70k?
There's basically no purely technical path that gets you beyond 100k unless you're working for a foreign (probably UK or US) company. Maybe, maybe Swiss? You can't just keep getting technically better in your field (devops, qa, dev, architect, ML, data engineer, data analyst, ...) or multiple and make bank like these people do.

Managerial staff though... no limit in sight. I've seen managers piss away 200k on an incomplete homepage redesign because... no fucking idea, and they earned double my salary. I was dragged into meetings where managers revealed at every turn that they did not understand the people they were managing. It's understandable that they don't understand exactly what the engineers are doing, but not understanding the people is worse IMO.

You should be able to rely on your technical team to make technical decisions. IMO a manager's job is to give enough space for engineers to reach the best technical decision possible and deliver, while keeping them on track. But instead they keep organizing inane meetings with the sole outcome being another meeting with otherwise minimal action points. And the meetings are in the middle of the day.
Of course testing is not important to them (waste of time), documentation is not important (waste of time), deployment environments (expensive, no use), velocity in a sprint or sprint planning - you guessed it, waste of time.

Say what you will about Microsoft and big non-European companies, they may not care much about their employees as humans, but they pay them better.