I was inspired by some of the posts on Blind about Microsoft making great retention offers and decided to ask my manager instead of just putting in my resignation. Looks like it's true that the retention budget has significantly increased at Microsoft. For folks not on the Microsoft channel: there have been several posts about strong retention offers in the recent weeks. For example a L65 with 360K got his TC raised to 710K to match a Amzn L7 SDE offer. Guess Microsoft is following the strategy of giving great retention offers, fairly good offers of new hires that are valued and pretty strong new grad offers instead of making pay increases across the board. My manager was able to raise my TC almost 40% to match my highest external offer (at Apple). L62 at Microsoft with 220k TC -> raised to 315K TC for 2 years (base raise, cash award and SSA). I have 7 years of experience in total. Offers I had: (1) Apple ICT4: 320K (2) Zillow Senior Engineer: 290K Retention breakdown: - Base goes from 148k to 162k (apparently they have a lot of budget to raise base pay this year). - Merit bonus stays at 10%. It'll be 16k. - My current untested stock vests about 57k a year. I'll keep that. - I'll get a stock award of 200k vesting over 4 years adding 50k to my TC. - I'll also get a special cash award of 60k vesting over 2 years adding another 30k to my TC.
Why?
That's great you did it, and the company responded! Nice to see blind helping people, and Microsoft valuing employees.
Thanks. To be honest, the compensation structure isn't fixed at all at Microsoft and I was quite unhappy about that but now I'm starting to feel they're deliberately assigning budget for retention & new hires with the hopes of pushing out rest & vest peeps of yesteryear.
Blind was definitely the reason I even realized I was underpaid and interviewed.
how come u ain’t take Apple? got that employee discount too lol
I really liked the people I talked to at Apple but a 5K raise is too small to switch companies. :(
Did you talk to Apple? I am sure they can increase your offer if they want you. You lose nothing by trying since you are happy to stay at Microsoft anyway. My Apple offer is C$66k higher than Microsoft’s.
It sounds like you still need to have a competing offer to get any benefit?
Yeah. And there's a bunch of work your manager needs to do - so you won't get it if your manager doesn't think it's worth it either.
Do you have to show some written proof like with google when negotiating?
Did you show offers, or did you just give them details and they took your word for it?
For non tech they still suck
I think if anything Microsoft is already at the industry standard for non tech. Did you know Tech Writers and Ops people get the same pay as engineers at Microsoft? That's unheard of in the industry. For example non tech at Meta makes 50% of engineering.
Sure but Microsoft pays engineers like 50% of what Meta pays so that just means both Meta and Microsoft pay non tech the same
Can you please post thr breakdown for the retention?
Adding to the post.
That just means you were severely underpaid until now. Congrats though
Nice! congrats!
Thanks!