Microsoft Engineers' Pay Data Leaked, Reveals Compensation Details (businessinsider.com) 73
Software engineers at Microsoft earn an average total compensation ranging from $148,436 to $1,230,000 annually, depending on their level, according to a leaked spreadsheet viewed by Business Insider. The data, voluntarily shared by hundreds of U.S.-based Microsoft employees, includes information on salaries, performance-based raises, promotions, and bonuses. The highest-paid engineers work in Microsoft's newly formed AI organization, with average total compensation of $377,611. Engineers in Cloud and AI, Azure, and Experiences and Devices units earn between $242,723 and $255,126 on average.
Leaked / Voluntarily shared? (Score:2)
How does that work?
They shared the data voluntarily, but the spreadsheet got leaked?
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rtfa
Microsoft employees typically share this information anonymously through spreadsheets to promote pay transparency. These are not official Microsoft corporate documents. That means the spreadsheet obtained by BI includes only information employees voluntarily decided to share and isn't comprehensive.
An internally shared document people contributed to anonymously, presumably assuming it wouldn't be leaked to outside sources (although that the data itself is anonymous probably reduces how many people care
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rtfa
I, for one, tried and ran into a paywall.
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I, for one, tried and ran into a paywall.
Maybe the story will leak somewhere...
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rtfa
That would be $1, kind sir. Would you like that in rupees?
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There are a number of websites for people in the relevant industries that can be consulted. Nothing is especially new about this, MS isn't even the top tier paycheck, for that you need to be in one of the quant firms.
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Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Good.
Pay data should not be secret.
Anonymized, aggregated pay data may be useful, but knowing the compensation for coworkers may not be a good thing for group harmony.
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Not everyone is WORTH the same amount.
Some have been there for years and contributed more to the company over the years and deserve raises beyond base pay.
Some end up contributing more....maybe working those extra hours or coming up with unique solutions.....they deserve to be recognized with extra compensation.
Perhaps some folks are just better negotiators coming in...and there is nothing wrong with that, perhaps coming in you ar
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked many a job. I know quite well that some people are worth more to the company than others. However, I have seen little to make me believe that the people who contribute the most are getting paid the most, nor that the people who contribute least are getting paid the least. If anything, in my experience the opposite is true.
Many of the lowest contributors actually have negative utility, and should be fired immediately rather than shut out at raise time, of course. But, as often as not, those same parasites are the ones who get promoted. Meanwhile, everyone's recognized de facto go-to for 15 years may be languishing in an officially thankless dead-end position because they're just not a complainer.
And all of this injustice is only permitted to happen because of the opacity of the system, which loudly purports to be merit-based, but almost never is, except by accident
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While, of course, this happens...I find to be the exception rather than the rule over the many years I've been working.
Granted, a good part of this DOES require skills in se
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not my responsibility to make someone else life "better"....unless it is family or close friends....
I'm not working with any close personal friends of family....so, I want what works best for ME...and in the current world, it works for me this way.
I don't want to work for the lowest common denominator.
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But that's life....
And . . . that's just learned helplessness [verywellmind.com], a difficult barrier to overcome to change anything.
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I'd look that person in the eyes and tell them that sounds like a "you" problem.
It's not my responsibility for someone else not growing up and growing a pair....it's not my problem if they are weak.
It's a competition out there and I play to win....I do what's best for "ME".
This is just how most people are.
Life is not fair...never has been, never will....and we should not cater and push for
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Of course you are....you are paid to do a job...don't do it and you are readily replaced.P When did people start trying to think otherwise???
This is a new phenomena.....
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That is hardly a desirable state of being.
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Depends on what you mean.
Aggregate....that's cool.
What "I" personally make..that is no one else's fucking business.
Some things ARE private to people and for many, that is pay/bill rate.
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Aggregate....that's cool. What "I" personally make..that is no one else's fucking business.
Nope. People you work with should know how much you are paid, and you should know how everybody else is paid.
Hiding things only benefits fraud, favoritism, and sweetheart deals. Transparency helps everybody.
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> Transparency helps everybody.
Not the company. Your top engineer might be worth compensating highly but people are jealous and resentful and mistreat people they envy.
Then the mistreated engineer leaves because they make it awful for him, not over pay.
None of that would happen with Vulcans but we mostly hire Humans around here.
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> Transparency helps everybody.
Not the company.
Despite Citizens United [wikipedia.org], corporations are not people.
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If I am good a negotiating a "sweetheart deal"...that is between me and the employer, no one else's business.
Pay is a private thing....I don't run around telling close personal friends of mine how much I make...is this something YOU share freely?
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It should be unless someone wants to make it public.
How is it your business what I make?
Now, I don't happen to care. I make a pissant $135K/year. But there are lots of reasons people may not want their pay info publicly available.
$1.2M is crazy (Score:2)
For a worker (non- managerial, non-executive) to pull over $1M in salary is crazy. I've heard of highly compensated Google employees pulling $800k, but this one takes the cake.
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Somebody must know how to do some things that are awfully valuable.
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Somebody must know how to do some things that are awfully valuable.
AI. At my company, job postings that differ mainly with the mention of AI add an additional $40k, and that's $40k on the posting. The reality is that AI experts earn hundred of thousands more. There are AI users and there are AI model creators. We're not talking about the users, of which there are many. We're talking about people that know about the innards of models and how to create better models. There aren't that many of those creators, and that's why they get paid a lot more. We're also not talk
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Well, in Seattle and in CA in many areas...those liberal cities with VERY high tax rates, extremely high housing costs and high cost of living in general, making $500K a year means nothing...the equivalent to making $80K in a more normal city.
Re: $1.2M is crazy (Score:2)
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I have family in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
I have more left over after all taxes than they make, period.
$500K in seattle is not equivalent to making $80k somewhere else.
Hell, $190k in Seattle isn't equivalent to making $80k somewhere else.
Realistically, they'd need to make probably $160k to have a similar amount of disposable income as me. But of course they won't, because that's like 6x the median pay for their area.
If it were, I wouldn't be paying for my nieces and nephews
Y
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Let's say you've got a someone making $80k in St. Louis.
And you've got someone making $190k in Seattle.
Seattle person is paying ~$2k a month in rent (median), and St. Louis person is paying ~$1.1k a month in rent (median)
Seattle person is making $15.8k/mo gross.
St. Louis person is making $6.6k/mo gross.
Both of their take-home is ~70%.
Seattle person has $11k take-home.
St. Louis person has $4.2k take-home.
They pay their rent.
Seattle person now has $9k left.
St. Louis
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Or know a few juicy details about certain execs and their after hours activities.
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Those at that pay range are level 69 engineers, which is a partner level role. Someone at that level will generally have a couple hundred people reporting up through them.
Re: None of these people are engineers. (Score:2)
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For 1.2M not necessarily. I don't know about MS, but people in that pay-band at my employer don't necessarily have any direct reports, but they are the senior-most engineers and setting direction for their units. By ratio, there are 1 of them for probably 500 lesser slobs. These are not entitlement positions, you have to essentially create them, or one has to open up.
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Those at that pay range are level 69 engineers, which is a partner level role. Someone at that level will generally have a couple hundred people reporting up through them.
There are two tracks, person-manager (who has reports) or individual-contributor (who doesn't). Someone at Microsoft or other big tech companies can be either track. And both tracks offer similar career advancement and pay. I suspect there are as many ICs as managers at that pay range.
Its just a regular salary adjusted for location (Score:4, Funny)
For a worker (non- managerial, non-executive) to pull over $1M in salary is crazy.
No, it's just a $150K salary with a downtown Manhattan cost of living adjustment. :-)
On a more serious note, I expect MS acts like other big tech companies and does have an adjustment for locale. I've had family take advantage of remote work and relocate to a more rural area and there was a big change to their take-home as the locale adjustment changed. I'm told, in this one case, the locale adjustment was realistic and money in their pocket after paying bills is about the same.
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First, the salary figures in the article are inflated by about 20%. The base pay of a 64 is not 190k. Also, the bonuses you get even in a good year are nothing like what is advertised.
Next, MSFT does adjust pay based on locale, but only in a negative sense and on a state-by-state basis. Real world example: I had a place in Woodstock, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley. Full 100% MSFT rate because it was in VA. If I chose to move to West Virginia, even the neighboring county to VA, they'd reduce my pay by ab
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For a worker (non- managerial, non-executive) to pull over $1M in salary is crazy.
Not if that person's contributions are making zillions of dollars. Frankly if more workers got this sort of recognition for their efforts CEO pay would not be on my radar.
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In the blackberry movie there were 2 of them making 10 million.
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No, they are functionally technical executives/leaders/directors. Technical ladder goes to job titles like Principal/Fellow/Distinguished engineer. They may not have direct reports, but functionally they're acting like executives. They're not sitting in front of their computers all day writing/checking in code, as you'd expect the regular SWE sitting in the trenches does.
240 is not a lot (Score:2)
401k can be like a raise. (Score:3)
401k match is absolutely a raise (Score:2)
Think of it this way - If you get a 50% match of your 401k contributions, that 401k investment had a 50% return that year.
Show me any other investment that returns 50% the first year, guaranteed.
I've worked in tech (not big tech) since 1986, and always contributed at least the maximum match amount every year, typically 6%. Put the money in broad-based index funds and left it alone through the crashes of 1987, 2000, and 2008.
Its current balance is $1.3 million.
You are absolutely an idiot if you can afford to
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... in any large city.
There's your problem. Maybe that $1M salary is really just a $150K salary adjusted for Manhattan cost of living. :-)
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And you have left like 8k per month. This is barely enough to cover the mortgage, a car loan and buy food in any large city.
Let's say you have a huge mortgage of $4k/month and an expensive car loan at $1k/month (though if you lived in a large city you might not need that). The GSA estimates $79/day for food/incidentals for travel to most large cities which would mean basically eating out for every meal - that would be about $2,700.
Overall you can live a lavish lifestyle in a major city and you'll still have $700/month extra spending money on that salary
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My mortgage is $1100/month.
I don't have a car payment.
I eat maybe $500/month in food.
Pent up aggravation (Score:2)
Does this mean I search the hacker's data to see who F'd up a given MS feature and chew them out by name(s)?
Salaries haven't gone up that much (Score:2)
Looks like wages have gone up maybe 50% in the last 16 years. Inflation has driven up my cost of living by more than that in the past 3 years.
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How? (Score:3)
Considering all the screw-ups and mishaps we see on a weekly basis coming out of this company, how can these people be paid that much?
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Hush money? ;)
"B-19? Sudoku!" (Score:5, Funny)
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$4567.89 was a separate signing bonus.
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Pay (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit they pay people to write this code? I always assumed they just directly gave homeless people meth and a laptop.
Microsoft Recall leaked it? (Score:2)