I have been told Microsoft has great work life balance. I am just wondering about, what happens on the 5th year. How does the refreshers work ? I read in blind that going up after L64 is pretty tough. Thanks for the inputs.
At the end of every fiscal year you are eligible for stock bonus, it varies by the level you’re at and is a % of your base salary basically.
That's annual cash bonus and stock bonus right . I am more interested about what they give on the fifth year, since their stock offer what they give us is for the first 4 years. So wondering about 5th year.
You'll have a big drop off because the stock refresher really sucks unless you get lucky with repeated SSAs. Just plan on leaving before 4 years and boomerang back when you can get a fat stack of fresh equity
Thanks that helps to get a better idea.
Annual stock awards are lower than FANG, but a lot of people get addicted to that sweet, sweet WLB. Still higher TC than 80% of the companies out there, though.
This is bit depressing. I hear that if anyone gets promoted from 62 to 63, stocks are not granted. Even if they are, it will be peanut as compared to newly hired 63s. Eg new 63 might be getting 150k of stock for 4 years. Promotion from 62 to 63 May either give 0 stock or could be like 50k
Does this depends on the team?
May be. But overall on an average it should not have a lot of differences
You won’t get 0 stock and get promoted. It would be like 20k over 5 years.
They don't go up too much tho compared to FB for instance,, check this, has ranges for each level: https://youtu.be/dkVIgHyFFMo
Generally you run out of stock after your initially vest and leave, unless you got a bunch of special stock awards.
When does special stock awards happen ? And based on what factors ?
Last year they gave one to engineers with 100% rewards or above (I think). Before last year it was on a case-by-case basis. We’ll see what they do this year. When it was case-by-case, I think it was based on individual performance, but you had to be on a decent team. The problem is normal stock rewards are super low, like ~10k for an SDE 2 and ~20k for a senior engineer. The base and bonus is similar to google, but google annual stock rewards are like 5x higher.