My friend recently got an offer from Microsoft for an SDE position. She has 3 years prior experience working in a finance company as an SDE.
The recruiter gave a verbal offer & said a written offer will be given only after a verbal approval from the candidate. The recruiter also said that she can not disclose the level in which she is being considered for the job. The interview rounds are cleared, and my friend also had a conversation with hiring managers, and found a team that is a mutual fit.
Is it normal for the recruiter to not reveal the hiring level to the candidate?
The compensation numbers also seem lower than the market, especially with 3 years prior work experience. Are these numbers the norm @ Microsoft.
Base: $115k
Signing bonus: $15k
Stocks: $20k over 4 years
There are no other competing offers at the moment. Any ideas on how she can proceed with the salary negotiations?
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Also, for industry hire, the stocks are considered good. Most industry hires get paltry stocks unless they are a rockstar, competing offers, and coming in at a higher level.
As a lvl 60, she won’t get a huge amount of stock in her yearly refresher, but the extra sign on amount will keep her motivated as she gets promoted to a level. Microsoft weights comp towards cash for lower levels and changes the mix toward stock as the levels progress. I don’t know what lvl 60 stock refreshers are currently, but the amount is pretty low. I was a high-level performer @ 60 and got ~$7k a few years back.
New grads do tend to get much more in signing bonus and stock, but that’s life.
With all that said, this is a decent offer, and she’ll benefit from having Microsoft on her resume. Microsoft is a great place to work, and the shift toward cloud-based businesses is opening up lots of opportunities for folks who are hungry to make an impact. It’s great that she is bringing outside industry experience. If she comes to Microsoft for 1-2 years, learns a ton and has impact, she’ll get promoted fairly quickly, and she can move to another tech company if she wants. I’m guessing Microsoft is a step up from where she is currently, and if she’s not happy with the compensation compared to what she could get at other tech companies, she’ll be able to move fairly easily.
The recruiter seems to be pushing her to accept the offer quickly (within a day or 2 since the offer was communicated to her).
Is this normal at Microsoft, or is the recruiter trying to avoid salary negotiations and/or not have her interview with other companies?