I recently accepted an offer from Microsoft for L63. I came to know that in this review period, a lot of SdE II and above folks got Special Stock Award (essentially a shit load of stocks compared to normal).. does it essentially mean, new hires are getting a bad deal in joining Microsoft? Unfortunately my offer will not be revaluated based on current market rate atleast till 2019 and I am not sure if this SSA (market match for retaining employees) will be applicable next year.. Suggestions? Also, what were approximate Stock numbers offered in review?
You shouldn’t feel sad since I am sure you would be getting tons of RSU. Most of the folks at msft haven’t got such awesome RSUs like these in last 5-10 years. Our refreshers have been or are peanuts without SSA
What were approximate ssa numbers?
How paying SSA to current employees does make your offer a bad deal? You got an offer and you are still going to receive whatever is mentioned there, no matter if some people get 100k more or get fired.
How is not getting SSA a bad deal for you if you are not a Microsoft employee yet? Sorry to be rude but, are we trying to retain you before even you joined? Why not just compare your offer with your current comp or whatever you expect or whatever you could get at an even better company? I feel like you are being entitled. You always have an option to decline the offer. Maybe if you join and prove to be an excellent employee that we are afraid of losing, you might get SSA next year. But who knows.
MS bonuses are peanuts unless are working a bazillion hours a week.
I think SSA is just a way to revamp your TC. If company wide TC was revamp, it should trickle down to even new offers. TC must have been revamped by Microsoft to compete with other companies in the area. When i say “recent offer”, my offer is still 1 month old, so anyways I am not getting new TC for that level..
Part of the reason comp needs revamping is that on-hire awards were vastly out stripping compensation for long-term employees, even good ones. Through that lens, there's nothing to trickle down, offers were already high. Unless you're asserting that your offer doesn't include stock well above standard for your level.
I believe my offer does not include stock above average for Senior SDE. I am not sure what is the norm for L63 though...
How much on-hire stock does your offer include? I'm guessing it's larger than the SSAs, but not sure what they have to do with this anyways because they were for retainment and you are not yet at Microsoft to be retained. I wouldn't count on SSAs again next year. Although they (or some other compensation overhaul) may happen, nothing guarantees, or even indicates that they will at this point (the wording was "one time stock grant"). Best to plan and make decisions as if they won't happen again, and it's a bonus if they do. For what it's worth, my understanding from what I've seen here on blind is that the SSAs ranged from about $30k to $100k of Microsoft stock, depending on impact and level, with a strong bias towards the lower half of that range. This was on top of normal yearly stock grants which you can count on in the future but are much smaller. I think (not a 63 myself and these numbers probably aren't quite exact) target for 63 is around $20k and max, which you're unlikely to get even as a strong performer, is $35k.
Yea you missed the train. The big SSAs were a one time thing for US engineering. You should have started a few months back, sorry. These types of comp windfalls tend to only happen every 8-15 years, so you’ll likely need to wait awhile for the next train.
Well if you join and do better than average, you will probably get some special stock next year. If it’s still around.
I am pretty sure I will do better than average.. What I heard is people got awards like Goog or so.. thats a shit load of money
At 63 you’d get a total of around 85-100k stocks if this years trend continues.